Experience new musical horizons as three distinguished female composers from Norway, Poland, and Iceland present innovative compositions, performed by the renowned Ensemble KNM Berlin.
The works of Monika Szpyrka, Tine Surel Lange, and Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir merge music with video and light design, creating a unique multisensory experience. The composers have backgrounds from prestigious institutions and have received multiple awards for their work. This collaborative project, supported by leading cultural funds, represents the finest in modern musical innovation and creativity.
The composer Monika Szpyrka was born in Cracow in 1993. Her interests revolve around themes of concealment, the 'acoustic microscope' and the ways in which simplicity and complexity intersect. Her works have been frequently performed in Poland and internationally. She has received numerous awards and recognistions.
Szpyrka completed soloist programme at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus under a tutor of Juliana Hodkinson, Niels Rønsholdt, and Simon Steen-Andersen. She also studied composition and music theory at the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Krakow. In 2023 she defended her doctoral thesis with distinction under the supervision of Anna Zawadzka-Gołosz at the same Academy.
Tine Surel Lange is a Norwegian composer and interdisciplinary artist, born in 1989 in Vesterålen. Her inspirations come from the Arctic landscapes, surrounding sounds, mythologies, and sound choreography. Based in Lofoten, Northern Norway, her work is rooted in organic material – with a focus on listening, space, and how connotations colour how we listen to and experience art.
Surel Lange studied composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music with an exchange semester studying digital composition at the Lithuanian Academy of Music, as well as studies in sound design and sound art at Sonic College, and studies in early music and viola da gamba at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. Her compositions and other works have been presented in various countries.
The composer Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir is born and raised in Iceland. Her “elemental style” (Steve Smith, The New Yorker) follows inner logics when approaching composition, often integrating sound and other phenomena into an indivisible whole - creating mutable, breathing, living structures through experimental performance practices and notation.
Her work has been commissioned by and/or presented by ensembles and orchestras in number of countries.
Bergrún holds a master’s degree in composition from Mills College (2017) and since 2022 she is Assistant Professor of Composition at the Iceland University of the Arts in Reykjavík, where she currently resides.