Matias Vestergård Hansen / JKF Photo
The Léonie Sonning Music Fund has awarded Matias Vestergård Hansen the talent prize of DKK 70,000. The grants are not applied for but awarded by the foundation’s board.
Sonning Music Fund has conducted interviews with the recipients. In the interview, Matias’ compositional process is elaborated on as working with a kind of inner mood board of small references, such as a colour, a poem, a painting, an experience or a weather phenomenon.
“It’s always a wild experience to hear one’s music being interpreted in a new way by a musician. I spend a really long time recording my music. I like that the score becomes a kind of secret communication between composer and musician. Although I can sit and fiddle with it for hours to find the right way to notate the music, I cannot lock the music into a specific interpretation. The term will always depend on who plays it. It’s a great gift to experience as a composer.”
In the interview, Matias Vestergård Hansen’s ensemble piece Six Elegies (2016-2019) for 10 musicians is put forward. The piece can be described as a tense, moving work in which ear-tweaking colours underpin a profound overarching dramaturgy. View the score here.
Matias Vestergård Hansen · Léonie Sonning Talent Prize / Millimeter Produktion
The money that comes with Léonie Sonning’s Music Prize will be used to attend a composition course in Darmstadt and to write the work Korte breve fra en lang rejse for the Debut Concert at the Royal Danish Academy of Music which will take place in the spring of 2022.
Additionally, guitarist Jonas Egholm also received the Leonie Sonning Talent Prize. Egholm recorded Educate·S series for guitar, which was released by Dacapo Records April 1st. Listen to Educate·S Pieces for Guitar · View score · Watch the Léonie Sonning Talent Prize interview with Jonas Egholm