30 September 2024
2024 Busoni Composition Prize awarded to Maximiliano Alejandro Sponsorship Award goes to Lauren Siess
The Akademie der Künste awards the 2024 Busoni Composition Prize to the Chilean composer Maximiliano Alejandro Soto Mayorga, who lives in Germany. The award is endowed with 6,000 euros. The Sponsorship Prize, endowed with 2,500 euros, goes to the American composer Lauren Siess, who lives in Germany. The jury consisted of Akademie members Chaya Czernowin, Hanna Hartman and Cornelius Schwehr from the Akademie’s Music Section.
Maximiliano Alejandro Soto Mayorga is an unusually versatile composer. In his work he combines a wide range of elements such as serial thinking, traditional tonality, industrial noise music and Latin American street music. His pronounced intellectual and research-oriented openness towards other artistic disciplines and his working method that is focused on engaging in dialogue with the musicians produce a rich world of experience in sound, rhythms and historical anchor points. Sponsorship Award winner Lauren Siess creates an “imaginary ecosystem” in which she explores with great finesse and a great deal of imagination the field of tension between electronics, sound objects and virtuoso instrumental sound production.
Maximiliano Alejandro Soto Mayorga, born in 1991 in Santiago, Chile, completed his composition studies in Chile with Rafael Díaz Silva and Jorge Martínez Ulloa and in Germany (Master and Konzertexamen) with Johannes Schöllhorn. His works range from scenic miniatures to chamber music formations and orchestral compositions. Soto Mayorga teaches at universities and is also focused on social engagement, giving composition workshops for children for example. Among the awards he has received are scholarships from the Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen 2024, Neustart Kultur 2022 and Residencia Ibermúsicas 2020 as well as participation in the master classes of the SWR Symphony Orchestra in 2024 and 2021. He has also received composition prizes such as IBERMÚSICAS 2023, Ad Libitum 2024/25 and 2021/22 as well as the Composition Prize of the Chilean Academy of Fine Arts in 2016. Since 2017, over forty works have been premiered at international festivals, including festivals such as Sommer in Stuttgart, Forum Neuer Musik, EstOvest (Torino, IT), Open Ears (Ontario, CND), .abeceda (Bled, SLO), Ensems (Valencia, E) and Nuntempa (Xalapa, MEX).
Lauren Siess, born in 1996 in the United States, is a composer, violist and improviser. She received her Bachelor’s degree in viola (2019) from New York’s Juilliard School, which she attended on a Kovner Opportunity Scholarship. She is currently completing her Master’s degree in composition at the Dresden College of Music. In recent years she has studied with Stefan Prins, Manos Tsangaris, Mark Andre, Sivan Cohen Elias and Hannes Seidl. In her work she explores “imaginary ecosystems” and organic processes, often bringing self-made instruments into dialogue with standard instruments. As an improviser she performs with viola and no-input mixer. Her most recent projects include works for the MDR Symphony Orchestra and the Arditti Quartet.
The Busoni Composition Prize was donated by Aribert Reimann in 1988 and is awarded every two to three years to young composers for particularly high-quality and innovative compositional approaches. The most recent laureates include were Igor Santos and Elias Jurgschat (2021). With this award, the Akademie der Künste promotes young compositional talent; since 1992, it has also supported composers still undergoing training.
The award ceremony will take place on 30 November 2024 at 7 pm at the Akademie der Künste on Pariser Platz. The Ensemble Mosaik will play works by the laureates as well as by the founder Aribert Reimann, who died in 2024, and by the prize’s namesake Ferruccio Busoni, who died 100 years ago.