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Cecilia Damström nominated for the Nordic Council's music prize
Cecilia Damström is nominated for the Nordic Council's music prize 2024 for the work "Extinctions" (2023).
Justification: "Cecilia Damström (b. 1988) has become known as a versatile and skilled composer, who masters many different forms of expression from chamber and vocal music to children's operas and works for symphony orchestra.
As a common thread runs through Damström's composition, her way of treating the surrounding world and the pain points of our time. The long one the line of works about the climate crisis ( Requiem for our Earth , ICE , Fretus , Wasteland , Permafrost ) culminates with Extinctions written for the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and premiered in January 2024.
The work is about the origin of life, evolution and the mass death of species. The structure follows the development during the last 600 million years on a time axis, where one minute in the music corresponds to 30 million years in the history of the universe. The current Holocene period lasts 0.02 seconds.
In Damström's extensive and versatile production, Extinctions is one of the most modernist works. She skilfully uses the possibilities of the symphony orchestra and builds up a refined, long-term and captivating whole in 20 minutes.
The composer's way of treating the climate crisis based on science is rooted in a deep ethical conviction, and her way of looking at the environment and society have become inseparable parts of her identity as a composer and worldview. Not without reason has Damström been called a musical Greta Thunberg. "
The winner will be presented on 22 October at the Nordic Council meeting in Reykjavik. Read more: https://www.norden.org/sv/musicprize
(Photo: Ville Juurikkala)