Borealis Young Composer

Music & culture

Jun 19

Who: Borealis

What: A mentoring program for and with young composers

Where: Bergen, Norway

Project period: 2024/2025

Web: Borealis Ung Komponist

About the organization:

Borealis is Norway's biggest festival of contemporary music outside of Oslo. It celebrates genres crossing music and art, and takes place over 5 days each March in Bergen, Norway. The festival presents concerts, installations, performances, lectures, film screenings and radio broadcasts at concert venues of all sizes across the city – from art galleries and cultural arenas to surprising places you may not have visited before.

Borealis is a place for adventurous listeners, celebrating music that doesn’t fit neatly into any boxes. We present new projects from Norway and around the world that push the boundaries of what music is and how we listen. As an organization, we are here all year round, thinking about how we can create experiences and spaces that reflect the society we live in, whilst trying to contribute to the society we want to see. For us this means working hard to present gender balance in our programming and giving space for many different expressions of excellence. It means thinking not just about who is on stage, but about who feels excluded from our audience.

About the project

Borealis Ung Komponist is a mentoring program for and with young composers. The program aims to add new voices to the contemporary music field by providing development opportunities and expertise to the new generation of Norwegian composers.

Borealis Ung Komponist adds a multifaceted creative energy to the music scene and draws attention to Bergen and Western Norway. It supports and collaborates with local ensembles that focus on newly written contemporary music. Four gatherings with workshops are held ahead of the festival where the participants have the opportunity to work in close collaboration with a local ensemble and with support from three different mentors.

The works are performed at the festival which takes place in March each year. In addition, Borealis collaborate with several organizers in the area to ensure more performances of the works. Hardanger music festival and Kunsthuset Kabuso have previously presented the works of Borealis Ung Komponist participants as part of their programs. In this way, a larger audience is reached at the same time as the composers, the ensemble and the pieces are allowed to develop even more