New podcast series: Meet the best composers from the Nordics

In the new podcast series, you’ll meet the 12 composers nominated for this year’s Nordic Council Music Prize. Each of the twelve episodes offers a fascinating look in to one of the nominated works and how it came to be, as well as an intimate and personal portrait of the composer behind it. 

“Creating art out of something so horrible like the end of the world, I could make it sound like a high-pitched note or like [an explosion] or like a crazy drone, but I also like making it somehow beautiful,” says Sóley Stefánsdóttir, nominated by Iceland for the album Mother Melancholia (2021).

Listen to all the episodes in the series on your preferred podcast app:

This year’s nominees represent a wide range of genres from world music and opera, to electronic music and ethnomusic. There is a keen emphasis on the voice, with works composed for choir, vocal ensembles, soloists and opera, addressing themes such as diversity, the future of humanity, happiness, and melancholy. Meet this year’s nominees in conversation with podcast host Andrew Mellor and listen to excerpts from the nominated works. 

“Delving into the minds and sounds of these formidable musicians has been a joy. Here are twelve artists who make music out of a deep need to express themselves and make sense of the world around them. Whether avant-garde opera, electronic dance music or a reinvention of deep-rooted folk traditions, the works nominated for this year's Nordic Council Music Prize are united by conviction and quality. Every single one opens up its own world, and it was a privilege to meet their creators and delve even further into those worlds,” says Andrew Mellor, journalist, critic and podcast host of this new series.

Andrew Mellor is a journalist and critic. He has written about architecture, design, music and cultural policy for publications around the world. He is also a critic for Gramophone and The Financial Times and is author of The Northern Silence: Journeys in Nordic Music and Culture (Yale).

The podcast series has been produced in collaboration with Ane Skak and Niels Bjørn from Immersive Stories.

First awarded in 1965, the Nordic Council Music Prize celebrates musical creativity and performance at the highest artistic level. The prize is awarded on alternate years to individual musicians or groups and – as in this year – to a piece of music by a living composer.    

The winner of the 2022 Nordic Council Music Prize, together with the winners of the other Nordic Council prizes, will be announced on 1 November in Helsinki.