Jury chairman
When Søren Nils Eichberg’s chamber opera opened at Royal Opera Covent Garden in London in November 2014, Richard Morrison in The Times wrote „I can’t remember a more gripping 75 minutes of avant-garde music-theatre“ and gave it five out of five stars. Only a few months later Hilary Hahn’s Deutsche Grammophone album „27 Encores“ featuring Eichberg’s „Levitation“ was awarded a GRAMMY-award. These were culmination points in a career that took it’s beginning, when Eichberg in 2001 was awarded the Grand Prize of the Queen Elisabeth Competition of Belgium for the violin concerto QILAATERSORNEQ. Since then, he has risen to become one of the most distinctive composers of his generation, in 2010-2015 becoming the first composer-in-residence in the history of the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, one of the leading orchestras in Scandinavia. Eichberg’s works have been performed in most European countries as well as in Japan, China, Korea, Australia and the US and have been radio broadcast in the US and europewide. He has been commissioned works by Ensemble Modern, Hilary Hahn, Royal Opera London, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, The Brodsky Quartet and worked with conductors like Kristjan Järvi, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Vassily Petrenko, Christoph Poppen, Robert Spano and Franck Ollu. His output since 2001 includes more than 40 works, among others three symphonies; cello-, double cello-, piano-, horn- and violin concertos; three operas as well as solo-, chamber- and ensemble music. His prizes and awards include the Composition Fellowship of the Tanglewood Music Festival, the 3-year Composition Grant of the Danish Ministry of Culture, the Composition Stipend of the German Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship (Italy / New York) and the Composition Prize of the Onassis Public Benefit Foundation. Eichberg was born in 1973 in Stuttgart, Germany, grew up in Denmark and today lives and works in Berlin. His works are published by Edition Wilhelm Hansen (Music Sales) and Universal Edition Wien. As a conductor he has worked with: Südwestfälische Philharmonie, Junge Münchner Philharmonie, Danish Radio Symphony, Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop, Österreichisches Ensemble für Neue Musik and soloists from the Munich and Berlin Philharmonic.