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The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation awards the two Ensemble Sponsorship Prizes '23 to the vocal ensemble Ekmeles from New York and the Salzburg-based New Art and Music Ensemble NAMES. The award will be presented for the third time in 2023 to outstanding young ensembles and is endowed with 75,000 euros each.
(Press release of the Ernst Von Siemens Music Foundation)
With the Ensemble Sponsorship Award, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation annually supports two outstanding young ensembles. The prize serves to further their artistic and structural development. This year, the American ensemble Ekmeles and NAMES from Austria prevailed from a large number of excellent applications from 16 countries. The decision was made by the Board of Trustees of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, whose members include Intendant Ilona Schmiel, violinist Carolin Widmann, and composers Isabel Mundry and Enno Poppe. The prize was established in 2020 and will be awarded for the third time in 2023.
The American ensemble Ekmeles is one of the few vocal ensembles in the world to focus on contemporary music. The New York singers* convince with a grandiose sound, outstanding precision and intonation, with which they master even the most difficult microtonal works. At the same time, Ekmeles strikes a good balance between new works and the repertoire of past decades.
The New Art and Music Ensemble NAMES from Salzburg takes a multi-impulse approach. With eleven musicians from seven European countries, there is great cultural diversity. The ensemble builds bridges to other art forms such as performance, dance, visual arts and literature. As a democratically organized collective, NAMES has shaped its own unique style and aesthetic. For NAMES, the Ensemble Prize is "a huge opportunity to continue to engage with the things that inspire us and to create a sustainable space for our creativity," says Anna Lindenbaum, violinist of the ensemble. "It is great to see how each individual and we as an ensemble have developed over the last 8 years. The Ensemble Prize encourages us in our efforts to unite diverse artistic disciplines in one ensemble and to deal with transdisciplinary concepts. We are very happy about the possibility to continue with this and to accept new challenges again and again! ", emphasizes also Marco Sala , clarinetist of the ensemble.
NAMES will be heard on February 28, 2023 at the opening event of the 50th anniversary of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation at the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
