Sarah Nemtsov, Shiori Usui and Steffen Wick are the winners of the composer competition RicordiLab. A total of 217 composers from 45 different countries applied. Selected works by the winners will now be published and internationally promoted by Ricordi Berlin for an initial period of three years. 


Associated partners
Works of the winners will be performed by the associated partners of RicordiLab
Basel Sinfonietta
Southbank Centre
Staatstheater Cottbus
Impuls Festival



Media partner
RicordiLab is supported by the media partner VAN, the Berlin-based international online magazine for classical music.




Advisory Board
Ricordi Berlin was consulted by an advisory board of internationally renowned experts consisting of: 
Kristjan Järvi (conductor)
Liza Lim (composer)
Gillian Moore (Director of Music des Southbank Centre in London) 
Dr. Clemens Trautmann (President, Deutschen Grammophon)





Sarah Nemtsov was born in 1980 in Oldenburg and lives in Berlin. She studied composition with Nigel Osborne, Johannes Schöllhorn and Walter Zimmermann. Her music is regularly performed at international festivals such as Donaueschinger Musiktage, Bregenz Festival, Münchener Biennale, Holland Festival, Wien Modern and Festival Musica. Sarah Nemtsov works closely with the most renowned European ensembles for contemporary music. Literature plays an important role as a source of inspiration; it serves her as a conceptual stimulation for her own constant innovation. Often in the combination and contrast of audio and visual moments, at the borders of music theater, she explores new forms of musical presence.





Born in Japan 1981, Shiori Usui is a BBC Proms commissioned composer and improviser based in Edinburgh, UK. Shiori has been a recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award 2012, Civitella Ranieri Music Fellowship and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Cove Park composer’s residency (2012). Shiori has produced works in radical instrumental music, and has worked with motion capturing sensors and biophysical technology. Many of her compositions are inspired by the sounds of the human body, the deep sea, and many other weird and wonderful organisms living on Earth. Shiori also works as an improvising musician in the UK and abroad as a vocalist and pianist.

Born in 1981, Steffen Wick is part of a young generation of composers that play virtuously across genre boundaries. He combines classical and contemporary elements and molds them into a modern, poetic tone language of his own. He studied composition with Caspar Johannes Walter and Moritz Eggert and received many awards including the residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and the residency at Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia. His works are performed, among others, at the Bregenzer Festspiele, Musikverein Vienna, Radialsystem V and Konzerthaus Berlin and are interpreted by ensembles such as the Eight Cellists of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Henschel Quartet and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra.