Please accept cookies to listen to the playlist

back to news

Registration for Gaudeamus Award 2020 opens on 1 August with raised age limit

The registration for the Gaudeamus Award 2020 will start on Thursday 1 August 2019. The Gaudeamus Award is an incentive prize for young composers. To give even more composers the chance to sign up, this year the maximum age has been raised to 35.

Music pioneers up to the age of 35 can register with a minimum of three separate pieces. One of which, the main entry, must fit into one of the five categories:

  1. Large / small Ensemble
  2. Electric Ensemble
  3. Installations
  4. Open category
  5. Organ

There is also a special extra category: the participants can optionally submit an extra, fourth piece for the Residentie Orkest from The Hague, The Netherlands.

Jury
The entries will be judged by an independent jury. For the 2020 Award, the jury consists of Greek-Dutch composer Calliope Tsoupaki, Jordanian-German composer Saed Haddad and British composer Oscar Bettison. A maximum of four composers will be nominated for the Gaudeamus Award in 2020. The jury selection will be announced in November.

Muziekweek
Of the four nominees, a maximum of three different pieces will be performed during the Gaudeamus Muziekweek 2020. The nominees will also be commissioned to write a brand new piece for one of the two Award Ensembles. In 2020 these are the Dutch Ensemble VONK and the adventurous duo Zöllner-Roche, of the Canadian-British clarinetist Heather Roche and the German accordionist Eva Zöllner.

Age limit
Registration for the Gaudeamus Award is open to composers and music pioneers worldwide. In addition to diversity in ethnic-cultural background, Gaudeamus also strives for an equal gender balance. For this reason, as of 2020 the age limit to apply has been raised from 30 to 35 years. The objective is that from 2020 onwards at least half of the nominees for the Gaudeamus Award will be female. Gaudeamus proactively invites composers to register for the Gaudeamus Award whose work is currently underrepresented in contemporary music.

Award
The Gaudeamus Award has been one of the most prestigious awards for young composers worldwide since 1957. Recent winners of the prize are the Finnish Sebastian Hilli (2018), Aart Strootman from the Netherlands (2017), the American Anthony Vine (2016) and the Russian Alexander Khubeev (2015). The nominees for the Gaudeamus Award 2019 are Nicholas Morrish, Kelley Sheehan, Remy Siu, Stefan Maier and Scott Rubin. The Award will be presented during the Gaudeamus Muziekweek 2019, which will take place from 4 to 8 September at various locations in Utrecht, The Netherlands.