Congratulations to Corie Rose Soumah on being named winner of the 2025 Cortona Prize for her piece States of Intermeshing: xi. Épilogue. This work will be performed by the Cortona Collective during the 2025 Sessions, being held July 20 - August 1, 2025 in Ede, Netherland at the Akoesticum facility.
Our runner up this year is Tomasz Skweres with Sieben Affekte, and honorable mention goes to Matthew Schultheis for Omniscience.
Photo Credit: Landon Speers
Corie Rose Soumah is a Canadian composer (QC) currently based in New York. She is interested in shaping fractured and reconstructed sound components through hyper-collages and visceral physical gestures. Her approach is characterized by a keen interest in the interweaving of multiple aesthetic and sonic elements from the perspective of Afro-diasporic geologies. She explores these textures through the overlay of different acoustic mediums as well as electronic and analog technologies. Recent and upcoming collaborations include ensembles such as the International Contemporary Ensemble, Longleash, Quasar, Hypercube, Ekmeles, Paramirabo, pinknoise, Sixtrum, Contemporary Insight, New Music Concerts, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM) and Wet Ink. She is currently pursuing a Doctoral degree in composition at Columbia University (US). She completed a BMus degree in composition from the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal (CAD). Her mentors include Zosha Di Castri, George Lewis, Marcos Balter, Georg Frederich Haas, Annie Gosfield, Michel Tétreault, Nicolas Gilbert and Jimmie Leblanc.
Photo Credit: Unison Studio
Tomasz Skweres (*1984) is a Polish composer and cellist, living for many years in Vienna, Austria and Regensburg, Germany. He studied at the University of Music in Vienna - Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien.
In the last years the orchestral compositions play the most important role in his work As a composer. He has received commissions from the RSO Wien (Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna), Stuttgarter Kammerorchester in Germany, the Regensburg Philharmonic Orchestra in Germany, the Niederbayerische Philharmonie in Germany, the Leopoldiunum Orchestra in Wrocław in Poland and the Hastings Philharmonics from England. In addition, he composed works commissioned by renowned festivals, including Wien Modern, Warsaw Autumn, Musica Polonica Nova and for numerous chamber ensembles, such as the Polish Apollon Musagetes Quartett, Contemporary Music Orchestra (Poland), Austrian Ensemble ÖENM (Österreichisches Ensemble für Neue Musik) and Duo Aliada.
Tomasz Skweres is a laureate of more then ten international composition competitions, in 2019 Tomasz Skweres received the 2nd prize at the "Zemlinsky Prize" - one of the largest international composition competitions.
The artistic work of Tomasz Skweres has been supported many times by numerous scholarships, including those of the Austrian Ministry of Culture, the Herbert von Karajan Foundation, and awards such as the Publicity Prize of the Austrian AKM, Förderpreis der Stadt Wien (a prize of the city of Vienna in the field of Composition) and the Theodor Körner Preis of the President of Austria . Skweres' works are published by the Doblinger publishing house in Vienna and Sikorski Music Publisher in Hamburg, albums with his compositions have been released by DUX, Genuin, Col Legno, Hännsler Classics and Orlando Records.
Skweres is the Principal cellist of the Regensburg Philharmonic Orchestra and an active interpreter in the field of contemporary music – as soloist and chamber musician – regularly performing at renowned international festivals.
The music of American composer Matthew Schultheis (b. 1997) is driven by a love of visual art and literature, a preference for dramatic, rich, sometimes opulent textures, and a fascination with the connections performers and listeners make between deeply familiar and newly-heard pieces. Born in the Washington, D.C. area and based in New York City,
Matthew is currently a C. V. Starr Doctoral Fellow at The Juilliard School, having completed his master's degree there in 2022. He has studied with Matthias Pintscher since 2020. He earned his BM in composition, additionally studying piano full-time, at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
Matthew has collaborated with the Tokyo Symphony and Juilliard Orchestras; Ensemble intercontemporain; the Attacca, Mivos, JACK, and Hausmann Quartets; the new music ensembles of Indiana University and the University of Chicago, ECCE Ensemble, and New York Virtuoso Singers. He has participated in summer festivals at Bowdoin (twice), Brevard, New Music On the Point, SUNY-Purchase (with the National Youth Orchestra) BU’s Tanglewood Institute, and the EAMA–Nadia Boulanger Institute. Upcoming projects include works for string quartet and countertenor (Bach Virtuosi Festival), solo viola (Sam Kelder), BlackBox Ensemble, and the NYC Brass Choir. In August 2024, he made his orchestral conducting debut with the Tonkünstler Orchestra as part of the Grafenegg Festival’s “Ink Still Wet” workshop.
Matthew’s music has received three consecutive BMI Student Composer Awards and additional honors from ASCAP, the Society of Composers, Inc., the Music Teachers National Association, and the IU composition department. His first two works for orchestra, Columbia, In Old Age (2020) and Governing Forces (2023), received awards from Juilliard.
