Academy Second Modernism - global visibility of womxn composers

_{Photo: Sofia Jernberg (c) Jon Edergren}

The Akademie Zweite Moderne (Second Modernism Academy) was founded in 2024 as part of the Vienna Festival | Free Republic of Vienna, an initiative that promotes gender equality in music culture and aims to change centuries-old inequality. (Equality & Diversity in Global Repertoire Report by Donne, Women in Music #DonneReport2022)

Feminist, global, and for everyone: The academy's goal is to increase the proportion of works by female composers in the concert and music theater sectors, expand the traditional canon, and create a committed system of partner institutions around the world. The result is a female, global, diverse composition and performance network!

To this end, the Academy of Second Modernism is inviting 50 internationally influential female composers from around the world to Vienna until 2028.

As in previous years, this year's composers Klangforum Wien in two concerts with Klangforum Wien in 2026. The theme of this year's annual summit meeting of the academy is "Considering Appropriation."

* Women and/or trans, inter*, non-binary persons

Composers* 2026: ‍

Elaine Mitchener, Bára Gísladóttir, Tania León, Ailís Ní Ríain, Nyokabi Kariũki, Imsu Choi, Sofia Jernberg, Katarina Gryvul, Nicole Lizée, Keiko Abe, Anna Korsun

Womxn composers 2025: Nyokabi Kariũki, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Hannah Kendall, Jamie Man, Chaya Czernowin, Katharina Ernst, Sara Glojnarić, Lucia Ronchetti, Cassie Kinoshi

‍Women composers* 2024: Du Yun (composer, performer, activist from Shanghai/China), Bushra El-Turk (British-Lebanese composer for concert, theater, film and live art performances), Shasha Chen (composer, multimedia artist and performer from China), Dilay Doğanay (composer from Izmir/Turkey), Mirela Ivičević (composer from Split/Croatia and co-founder of the Black Page Orchestra), Marina Lukashevich (composer and sound engineer from Belarus), Monthati Masebe (compos:in, researcher and pioneer of non-binary representation from South Africa), Brigitta Muntendorf (German-Austrian composer in the field of tension between analog and digital forms of expression), Feliz Anne Reyes Macahis (Filipino composer), Aida Shirazi (Iranian composer and performer of (electro-) acoustic music)

The Academy of Second Modernism is a project of the Vienna Festival in cooperation with ORF Radiokulturhaus and Ö1.

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