Sounds of Now Vienna 2025
Sounds of Now Vienna 2025
Composition masterclasses
in the heart of Europe
14 - 25 July 2025
University of Music and
Performing Arts Vienna, Austria
Deadline to apply - 28 February 2025
There is no application fee
SONV is a festival dedicated to the creation and performance of new music. Here, aspiring composers can hone their craft and meet new colleagues in one of the world’s most prominent capitals of contemporary music.
Composition Master Classes in the Heart of Vienna
Join us next summer of 2025 for an intense two weeks of individual lessons, presentations, and seminars with our renowned international faculty, and concerts featuring a roster of world-class resident ensembles and soloists.
14-25 July 2025
University of Music and Performing Arts • Vienna, Austria
A hands-on dive into the creative process
Participating composers will write a new work for one of our resident ensembles or soloists, who will actively workshop and rehearse the pieces with each composer and offer practical feedback.
Share your music with the world
Each work will receive a performance in one of the festival’s concerts. All concerts will be documented in high-quality audio and video recordings, which will be made available to the participating composers.
Artists & Ensembles In Residence
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Mivos Quartet
“One of America’s most daring and ferocious new-music ensembles” (The Chicago Reader), the Mivos Quartet is devoted to performing works of contemporary composers and presenting diverse new music to international audiences.
Mivos has performed to critical acclaim on prestigious series such as Edinburgh International Festival (UK), Noon to Midnight (USA), Lucerne Festival (CH), Jazz at Lincoln Center (USA), the New York Phil Biennial (USA), Wien Modern (AT), the Darmstadt Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (DE), rainy days festival (LU), Asphalt Festival (DE), HellHOT! New Music Festival (Hong Kong), Shanghai New Music Week (CN), Música de Agora na Bahia (Brazil), Aldeburgh Music (UK), and Lo Spririto della musica di Venezia (IT).
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Ensemble Platypus
Ensemble Platypus sets out to question the aesthetic and cultural boundaries of music. For ten years, the ensemble has been planting the seeds of rigorous musical doubt on stages at Wien Modern, Reaktor Wien, Arnold Schönberg Center, Wiener Konzerthaus, Imago Dei (Krems), Klangspuren Festival, London Ear Festival, Forum Neue Musik Wallis, Bienal do Música Hoje in Curitiba, Brazil, and numerous concerts in Argentina, Czech Republic, Great Britain, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Turkey, Ukraine, and several other countries.
The musical focus that determines the ensemble's intensive rehearsal and concert activities is working in the field of tension between different types of music and approaches to collective musicmaking.
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loadbang
New York City-based new music chamber group Loadbang is building a new kind of music for mixed ensemble of trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice. Since their founding in 2008, they have been praised as ‘cultivated’ by The New Yorker, ‘an extra-cool new music group’ by the Baltimore Sun, and ‘inventive’ by the New York Times. They have recently performed at Miller Theater, Rothko Chapel, Ostrava Days (Czech Republic), China-ASEAN Music Week (China), Shanghai Symphony Hall (China), Visiones Sonoras Festival (Morelia, Mexico), and the Musikverein (Vienna, Austria). Loadbang has premiered more than 500 works, written by members of the ensemble, emerging artists, and today's leading composers.
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Joel Diegert
American saxophonist Joel Diegert is an internationally successful artist known for his work with experimental electronic music and as a founding member of the ensemble Five Sax.
Joel has been invited to perform in over 25 countries around the world, including the Gasteig Munich, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the National Concert Hall Taipei, the Konzerthaus and the Musikverein in Vienna, as well as music festivals such as the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Ludwigsburg Festival and Summerwinds Münsterland. He has performed with renowned ensembles for contemporary music, such as Musikfabrik (Cologne), Quasars (Bratislava) and Phace (Vienna).
Joel is a winner of the NASA Classical Music Competition in 2005, a prize winner of the Jean-Marie Londeix Competition in 2011 and a prize winner of the Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition in 2011.
Joel proudly performs with Selmer Paris and D'addario products.
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Ian Pace
Ian Pace is a pianist of long-established reputation, specializing in the farthest reaches of musical modernism and transcendental virtuosity, as well as a writer and musicologist focusing on issues of performance, music and society and the avant-garde. His main teacher, and a major influence upon his work, was the Hungarian pianist György Sándor, a student of Bartók.
His absolutely vast repertoire of all periods focuses particularly upon music of the 20th and 21st Century. Ian has played in 23 countries and at most major European venues and festivals, including Festival D’Automne in Paris, IRCAM, Ars Musica in Brussels, Wien Modern, and Warsaw Autumn. He has played with orchestras including the Orchestre de Paris under Christoph Eschenbach (with whom he premiered and recorded Pascal Dusapin’s piano concerto À Quia), SWR-Orchestra Stuttgart under Rupert Huber, and the Dortmund Philharmonic under Bernhard Kontarsky. Many of his recitals and recordings have been broadcast, by British, French, Belgian, Dutch, German, Swiss, Austrian, Italian, Polish and Australian Radio. He has recorded numerous CD’s on the Metier/Divine Art, Mode, NMC, Black Box, Albedo, Stradivarius and Naive labels, which have been received with great critical acclaim.
Composition Faculty
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Víctor Báez
Born in Mexico City, Víctor Báez studied composition at the Vienna Conservatory and at the University of Music and Performing Arts (mdw Wien). A Fulbright scholar, his awards include over ten annual commissions from the Austrian Ministry of Arts, Education and Culture for the creation of new works, the 2017 "Musik im Bild" prize for an orchestral work, and the 2021 "Tesselat Call for Scores" in all categories.
His music has been performed at festivals such as Wien Modern, Klangspuren Schwaz, Ostrava Days for New Music, OME Phoenix, Crosstown Arts Memphis, and the Manuel Enriquez International Forum for New Music in Mexico, by ensembles such as Yarn/Wire, Ekmeles, Contemporaneous, Blueshift, Ónix, the Webern Symphony Orchestra, Makrokosmos and more. His film music has been heard in festivals such as San Sebastián-Donostia, Guadalajara, Dubai, and Havana, among others.
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Adrián Artacho
Adrián Artacho is a composer with a focus on experimental and electroacoustic music. Born in Málaga (Spain), he has lived in Vienna since 2007. Artacho currently works as artistic researcher at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, where he also teaches transmedia performance at the newly created Contemporary Arts Practice Master (CAP). In the year 2022, Artacho was the recipient of the National Composition Grant by the State of Austria.
Besides, Artacho is very active in science communication, developing different projects for the University of Vienna since 2017, including the Sounds of Matter composition competition.
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Daniel Oliver Moser
An Austrian composer and violist, Moser’s works have been commissioned and performed by numerous acclaimed artists and ensembles in concerts and festivals worldwide. He performs internationally with a focus on contemporary music and is a member of Quasars Ensemble (Bratislava) and Ensemble Zeitfluss (Graz). Portrait concerts focusing on his music have been performed at the Austrian National Library, at the Slovak RTV 2019, and at MusicOlomouc 2023.
He has taught Harmony, Composition and Analysis at the Music and Arts Private University Vienna and from 2020 to 2022 held a temporary Professorship for Composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, where he continues to teach as a Senior Lecturer for Music Theory.
Featured Guest Composer Faculty
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Oscar Bianchi
"From a very refined harmonic ear, Bianchi has the very modern ability to dramatize musical forms through mastery of texture, in its thousand details. "(Jean-Luc Plouvier).
His music has been performed by outstanding orchestras and soloists such as the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, DSO, Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, London Sinfonietta, Ictus, Asko-Schoenberg, JACK, Diotima, Arditti, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Remix, Nieuw Ensemble, l’Itineraire, Contrechamps, ICE, Alarm Will Sound, Sabine Meyer, David Grimal, Pablo Heras-Casado, Markus Poschner, Jonathan Stockhammer, KNM Berlin, Phoenix, Collegium Novum Zürich.
Upcoming projects include new works for the Lucerne Festival, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Musikfabrik, Accroche Note, and Ensemble Modern. Oscar Bianchi was a guest of the DAAD Künstlerprogramm Berlin, Villa Massimo Rome, Palazzo Barbarigo della Terrazza Venice, Pro-Helvetia in Warsaw and Johannesburg, the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. He has been awarded numerous prizes, such as the 2005 Gaudeamus first Prize and the 2014 Grand Prix de la SACEM.
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Dai Fujikura
Dai Fujikura is a composer based in London, UK. Born in 1977 in Osaka, Japan, Dai was fifteen when he moved to the UK and then studied under Sir. George Benjamin.
In recent years, his activities have been diverse. His opera, “A Dream of Armageddon,” based on a short story by H.G. Wells, which draws attention to the threat of totalitarianism, had its world premiere at the New National Theatre Tokyo in 2020. The opera was selected as the "Best of the Year" by numerous music magazines. In the same year, his Fourth Piano Concerto (Akiko's Piano), inspired by a piano owned by a woman who was a victim of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, had its world premiere. This was the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing and was released by Sony Music.
Following that year, “Entwine” was performed by the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, and Hong Kong Sinfonietta. The Orchestre National de Bretagne and the New York Philharmonic are also scheduled to perform it in 2024.
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Lukas Ligeti
Drawing upon influences including Downtown New York experimentalism, contemporary composition, jazz, and traditional music from Africa, Lukas Ligeti has developed a unique voice as a composer and improvisor.
Lukas Ligeti studied composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, Austria, his city of birth. He was a visiting scholar at Stanford University and subsequently lived in New York City from 1998 until 2015.
Lukas received the CalArts Alpert Award in Music in 2010. He has also been awarded two Composition Fellowships by the New York Foundation for the Arts and two yearlong Austrian State Grants in composition, among other awards. His music is featured on CDs on col legno, Tzadik, Cantaloupe, Intuition, Innova, Leo, and other record labels, and he is an endorser of Vic Firth drumsticks.
With performances at major venues and festivals worldwide, his compositions have been commissioned among others by Bang on a Can, Kronos Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, Ensemble Modern, the American Composers Orchestra, MDR Orchestra (Germany), Håkan Hardenberger and Colin Currie, the Vienna Festwochen, Radio France, and choreographer Karole Armitage. His music has also been performed by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lyon, Tonkünstler Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, etc.
Location & Facilities
The University of Music and Performing Arts (mdw Wien) is one of the world’s largest and most renowned universities dedicated to the study of music, performing arts, and film. Its sprawling main campus, which houses the Composition department, welcomes over 3000 students every year, and features state-of-the-art teaching, practice, and performance facilities. The city of Vienna itself is a worldwide cultural powerhouse with year-round offerings. The university campus is within walking distance of two of the most important international musical venues: the Musikverein and the Wiener Konzerthaus.
Program Outline
The festival program aims to motivate each participant to engage intensely with their own music and reflect on their creative process.
During the first week, the focus is placed mostly on seminars and presentations, as participants attend faculty lectures, present about their own work, and receive one-on-one lessons. At the same time, each participant will have opportunities to revise and finalize their works, in close collaboration with the performers. Each ensemble and soloist will have their own unique approach towards collaborating with their composers.
During the first and second weeks, participants will also attend rehearsals and readings of their works, which will be programmed in one of the concerts taking place during the final week. Every participant will receive at least four individual lessons with core faculty, at least one masterclass session with a member of our featured guest faculty, and high-quality audio/video documentation of their performance.
Active participants will be housed in double occupancy rooms in a hotel within walking distance of the university campus. Tuition fees include breakfast and lunch on weekdays during both weeks. All meals outside this plan must be purchased at the participant’s own expense.
Lodging & Board
Tuition & Fees
All lessons, masterclasses, seminars, and presentations.
Access to practice, instruction, and rehearsal facilities at mdw Wien.
Rehearsal and performance of your work by the festival’s artists and ensembles.
Lodging for the entire duration of the festival in a double occupancy hotel room. Participants should plan to check in on Sunday, 13 July and check out on Saturday, 26 July.
Breakfast and lunch during weekdays for the two full weeks.
High-quality audio and video documentation of your performance.
There is no fee to apply.
A limited number of merit-based scholarships is available and will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Accepted applicants must secure their spot, independently of scholarship status, by paying a non-refundable deposit of €850 by 28 March, 2025. The deposit will be deducted from the full tuition amount, which is due on 16 May, 2025.
Tuition for active participants at SONV 2025 is €3650. It includes the following:
Tuition for auditors at SONV 2025 is €950. It includes the following:
Access to all lessons, masterclasses, seminars, and presentations as listener
Access to practice, instruction, and rehearsal facilities at mdw Wien
Lunch during weekdays for the two full weeks
There is no fee to apply.
Auditors are responsible for securing their accommodation throughout the duration of the festival.
A limited number of merit-based scholarships is available to active participants and will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Accepted active applicants must secure their spot, independently of scholarship status, by paying a non-refundable deposit of €850 by 28 March, 2025. The deposit will be deducted from the full tuition amount, which is due on 16 May, 2025.
For auditors, the full participation fee of €950 is due on 28 March, 2025. This fee becomes non-refundable after 16 May, 2025.
How to Apply
To apply, click the "Apply Now" button and complete the online form. Application is open to all composers, regardless of nationality or professional status. Applicants must be 18 years of age or older as of July 14, 2025.
At Sounds of Now Vienna, we firmly believe that charging application fees is a predatory and unjustifiable practice. Accordingly, we will never charge a fee to apply.
All applicants will need to provide the following:
Name
Contact information
Date of Birth
Country of residence
Link to a resume or C.V.
Links to two work samples (scores) with accompanying recordings
A brief paragraph describing their artistic practice and interests
If you have questions, please contact us.
Accepted participants will be asked to compose a new piece for a given instrumentation and submit a complete draft of this work by 1 June, 2025. These compositions will be workshopped, revised as needed, and performed during one of the festival’s concerts.