This year's festival composer is none other than Jessie Montgomery from USA. Her Grammy award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition from February this year says a lot about her qualities, and there will be many opportunities to get close to Montgomery during the festival. She will perform as a violinist in Dokkhuset, the Royal Residence and the Freemason Hall. 14 of her works will be performed during the festival, and the traditional seminar "Meet the composer" in collaboration with NTNU is a unique opportunity to get close to such a great artist.
WORKS BY MONTGOMERY PRESENTED DURING THE FESTIVAL
Strum (2006, rev. 2012)
Voodoo Dolls (2008)
Starburst (2012)
Source Code (2013)
Banner (2014)
Rhapsody No. 1 (2014)
Duo for violin and cello (2015) Loisaida, My Love (2016)
Records from a Vanishing City (2016) Lunar Songs (2019)
Peace (2020)
Five Freedom Songs (2021) Musings (2023)
Study No. 1 (2023)
History
For more than 20 years the festival has yearly presented a living composer. Our goal is to play as broad a spectre of the composer’s music as possible throughout the week and at the same time include and inspire the local music life. We believe that the barrier to new music is reduced when you meet a living composer who also can explain his or her own work.
We are very proud to have had the following composers at the festival:
James MacMillan (1999)
Jon Balke (2001) (also commissioned work)
Luciano Berio (2002)
Steve Reich (2003)
Sofia Gubaidulina (2004) (also commissioned work)
Thomas Adès (2005)
Magnus Lindberg (2006)
George Crumb (2007)
Rolf Wallin (2008)
Osvaldo Golijov (2009)
HK Gruber (2010)
Brett Dean (2011)
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (2012)
Lera Auerbach (2013)
Kaija Saariaho (2014)
Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje (2015)
Bent Sørensen (2016)
Sally Beamish (2017)
Michel van der Aa (2018)
Lasse Thoresen (2019)
Mark Simpson (2020)
Caroline Shaw (2021)
Olga Neuwirth (2022)
Valentin Silvestrov (2023)
Photo: Jiyang Chen Photography