Paris/ Umeå, June 26, 2023
After a successful 69th session of the International Rostrum of Composers (IRC), the International Music Council announces a new cooperation with Norrlandsoperan to offer an exceptional opportunity to the composer selected in the General Category.
Since its inception, the IRC has become the most important platform for the promotion of contemporary music via radio broadcast while offering a unique forum for professional exchange among radio music producers and presenters.
Every year, national broadcasting organisations from all around the globe present new works by emerging composers. After having listened to these works together, the assembly of delegates selects and recommends the most important works in two categories: general and “young composers”. In this way, since the beginning of the IRC, some 500 composers have been promoted and their works broadcast thousands of times within the network of participating radios. Renowned composers such as Luciano Berio or Agata Zubel had their first international successes when they were presented at the Rostrum.
Besides the invaluable exposure generated by the radio broadcasts within and beyond the network of participating radios, thanks to this new cooperation, the composer selected every year in the General Category at the IRC, will benefit from a co-commission for the Norrlandoperan Symphony Orchestra.
“IMC is very excited about its collaboration with Norrlandsoperan. Offering an emerging composer the opportunity to create, combined with access to an excellent orchestra to perform the new creation, is for us an important step ahead towards the advancement of our Five Music Rights. We celebrate this milestone in the realization of our vision for a world where everyone can enjoy access to music, where they can learn, experience, create, perform, and express themselves through music, and in which artists of every kind are recognized and fairly remunerated”, notes Silja Fischer, Secretary General of the International Music Council.
Norrlandsoperan is the leading centre for innovative opera and performing arts in Sweden. Norrlandsoperan includes Norrlandsoperan Symphony Orchestra and departments for opera, music, dance and contemporary art as well as workshops and ateliers.
It was founded in 1974 and is situated in the centre of the city of Umeå in the county of Västerbotten in the northern part of Sweden. The opera house is now a centre with many visiting international singers, musicians, conductors, stage directors, choreographers, dancers and visual artists. Norrlandsoperan is constantly cooperating with other Swedish, European and international opera houses, performing arts centres and cultural institutions.
“This is a fantastic opportunity for us to spread Norrlandsoperan’s name in the international music arena but also to host and share newly written music by international composers, which is another small step in the internationalization we are now strategically working with at Norrlandsoperan” says Erik Mikael Karlsson, CEO of Norrlandsoperan.