Finnish composer Kaija Sarriaho became the first woman to win $100,000 for the School of Music’s biennial award for outstanding achievement in music composition. In addition to the cash prize, the winner of the Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition will have a piece performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and will receive a residency at the School of Music.
Ellen Schantz, School of Music director of communications and marketing, said the Nemmers Prize can be compared to a lifetime achievement award.
“This is the second-largest composition prize in the world for professional composers,” she said. “We’re talking about the upper, upper tier of composers worldwide.”
Saariaho was born in Helsinki in 1952. She studied at the Sibelius Academy with modernist composer Paavo Heininen. In 1982, she studied at the Institute for Acoustic Research in Paris, where she has lived ever since.
The composer’s residencies at the School of Music will last four to five days, Schantz said. Exact plans on what Saariaho will do during her residency are still being discussed. Past winners have spoken to students and have given private composition lessons.
Music Dean Toni-Marie Montgomery said students, faculty and community members will benefit from Saariaho’s residency.
“Almost every major symphony orchestra in the United States has performed her work,” she said. “It’s somewhat of a rare treat to have this composer who is both nationally and internationally renowned be here.”
Music Prof. Lee Hyla, who specializes in composition, said students were eager to learn from Saariaho.
“It will be the perfect opportunity for the students,” Hyla said. “She’s a major figure in modern composition, and she’s a great teacher.”
The Nemmers Prize was established in fall 2004. Past winners include John Adams, famous for his opera “Nixon in China,” and Oliver Knussen, who has an upcoming residency May 12.
NU awards two other biennial Nemmers prizes in the fields of economics and mathematics.
Nominations for the award come from all over the world. An anonymous three-member selection committee comprised of prominent scholars in the field of composition selects the winner, Schantz said.
Saariaho’s ability to reinterpret avant garde music techniques made her stand out in this year’s field of nominees, Schantz said.
The selection committee cited Saariaho for transforming these pre-existing techniques into “a world of luminous, shifting color and emotional depth, mirroring the human experience.”
Saariaho was also named 2008 Composer of the Year by Musical America, a performing arts publication. Musical America’s honor is one of the nation’s more prominent composition awards, Schantz said.
“Of composition awards, she’s probably won all there is to win,” she said. “I’ve never seen anybody so productive. It’s quite astonishing. She’s a very, very intense woman and very impressive as well.”
Saariaho is currently working on an orchestral composition for the Berlin Philharmonic, which will be conducted by Simon Rattle upon its completion.
