Winner of the Nordic Council Music Prize 2018

The Nordic Council Music Prize 2018 goes to Nils Henrik Asheim for his work Muohta, it has just been announced at the award ceremony for the five Nordic Council prizes in Oslo Opera House. Asheim has been awarded the prize for Muohta, a work that is at once acutely contemporary yet conscious of its history.

The jury said:

The 2018 Nordic Council Music Prize goes to a piece of music that is at once acutely contemporary yet conscious of its history. Our very first instrument, the human voice, is central to the piece whose sound world cautiously integrates language. Listeners are invited into a different experience of time, into a series of atmospheres or states which sometimes engender a sense of risk and unease. The piece is in 18 sections, each inspired by a word in the Sámi language related to snow, as described in Inger Marie Gaup Eira’s PhD thesis “Muohttaga jávohis giella - The Silent Language of Snow”. Some words describe snow directly, others its impact on everyday human life – for example, ulahat means “an over-snowed winter trail which is barely visible”. Nils Henrik Asheim’s Muohta, for choir and string orchestra, depicts slow changes that are barely visible or perceptible to human senses. When the piece was performed for the first time – along with Joseph Haydn’s The Seasons in Oslo in 2017 – the composer noted that the context had inspired him to attempt a step away from concepts of progress based on controlling nature, and instead engage with an indigenous experience of living with nature.

Throughout his career as a composer, organist and curator, Asheim (born 1960) has shown a remarkable ability to open up art music to a range of other genres and potential new audiences.