Octavi Rumbau, winner of the Reina Sofia Prize
Today, March 13, 2021, the jury of the XXXVIII Reina Sofia Prize in Music Composition has announced the final verdict of this year's competition: Octavi Rumbau Masgrau is the composer of the winning work, «El Belvedere de Escher, for piano and orchestra».
The jury, made up of Alfredo Rugeles, Ernest Martínez-Izquierdo, Carlos Fontcuberta, Jesús Rueda, and presided over by Marcela Rodríguez, has analyzed all the works submitted to the competition in detail. The prize, worth € 35,000, is held annually by the Ferrer-Salat Music Foundation.
The award-winning piece will be performed for the first time next October by the RTVE Symphony Orchestra at the Teatro Monumental in Madrid, in the presence of Sergi Ferrer-Salat, chairman of the Ferrer-Salat Music Foundation.
Octavi Rumbau Masgrau is a Barcelona composer focused on the search for new sound spaces as a result of the interaction between instruments and electronics, as well as delving into the plasticity of musical time and its paradoxes.
A classical pianist, he began his composition studies with Enric Palomar, Yoshihisa Taïra and Agustí Charles. He later moved to Paris, where he studied composition at the Paris National Conservatory of Music and Dance (CNSMDP) with Frédéric Durieux, and orchestration with Denis Cohen. At the same time, he completed the annual music computing course at IRCAM (2010/2011).
He has received several awards, including the 2005 Frederic Mompou International Prize, the 2008 Dolors Calvet i Prat Composition Prize, the 2012 Colegio de España and Instituto de las Artes Escénicas y de la Música Prize, a grant for creators offered by the Phonos Foundation of the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona in 2012, and the Berliner Opernpreis 2013. In recent years he has been backed by institutions such as the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Ministry of Culture.
His works have been performed at several festivals and venues across Europe, North America, and Asia. He has been commissioned by Auditori de Barcelona, Sampler Sèries, Fundació Tàpies, ME_MMIX, BCN 216, CrossingLines, Festival d’Òpera de Butxaca, UMS’n JIP/Mixed Festival, Duo Links, Laps Ensemble, Rémi Durupt, Miguel Ángel Lorente, Víctor de la Rosa, etc. He has also collaborated, among others, with the Ensemble Multilatérale, Taller Sonoro, Ensemble Links, Spanish Brass Luur Metalls, Funktion, Lorraine National Orchestra, Balearic Islands Symphony Orchestra, Alberto Menchén, Laurent Durupt, Jan Gerdes and Philippe Spiesser. He was the guest composer at the Auditori de Barcelona for the 2017/2018 season.
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