Call For Works Announced for the 2025 ISCM WNMD in Portugal

Miso Music Portugal, the Portuguese ISCM Section, has announced the official Call for Works for the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) World New Music Days 2025 in Portugal, which will take place in Lisbon and Porto from 30 May to 7 June 2025. ISCM Sections, Members, and Individual Applicants are invited to submit works for the festival. The works’ submission process will open on 15 February 2024. Submissions should be made via the relevant form available on the ISCM website no later than 11:59 p.m. CET on 25 April 2024. Works submitted after the deadline will not be considered.

The official announcement of the selected works will occur on 30 July 2024.

There are two ways for works to be submitted for consideration:

∙ Official Submissions: ISCM Sections or Member organizations will issue calls and invitations for the composers to present their works for potential inclusion in the Official Submissions.

∙ Composers can make Individual Submissions.

Further details about the 2025 Call for Works are available on the ISCM webpage devoted to the 2025 Festival.

Over the years, Miso Music Portugal has developed wide and varied activities regarding music research, education, creation, production, and programming, including the Música Viva Festival, established in 1992, which each year invites and hosts national and international composers and performers, being a platform for different talents to converge, collaborate, and create. In 2025, the Música Viva and the ISCM World New Music Festival will thus join forces, making Portugal the host of an iconic global new music event.In addition to its new music context, the ISCM World New Music Days 2025 in Portugal will also include an environmental dimension. The festival has been given the subtitle “Thirst for Change” to evoke the significant dilemma that our planet is facing. As the festival organizers explain on their website, “Water is a crucial element in this equation, especially in Portugal, where its lack and evaporation increasingly threaten the population. How can humanity tackle this pressing issue? The ISCM World New Music Days festival, with its rich history and global reach, can encourage this reflection, and the WNMD 2025 in Portugal is the perfect opportunity to dedicate space and time to the water issue and agenda. Music is not just sound and silence. It reflects the pulse of the societies, carrying our deepest concerns, fears, and aspirations. The climate crisis needs more than mere political changes or technological solutions. It requires a universal emotional understanding – a call to collective consciousness. Here, artistic and music creation can make a difference.”

The 2025 ISCM WNMD programme, respecting the representative balance of nationality, ethnicity, gender, and age, will encompass approximately 120 works performed at around 20 concerts. In addition to the global and heterogeneous new music showcase composed of the pieces selected within the Call for Works by an international jury, the festival organizers’ programming strategy is based on presenting the diversity and quality of the music created here and now in Portugal alongside various millennial music compositions from the 20th and 21st centuries and including works by various ISCM Honorary Members. The performers of all the works included in the WNMD 2025 programme will be some of the most renowned and talented Portuguese musicians – soloists, groups, ensembles, and orchestras – whose excellence and enthusiasm to be involved in the WNMD 2025 project have inspired the construction of the Call for Works.

The festival’s diverse partners, whose presence, participation, and involvement make the realization of the WNMD 2025 in Portugal possible, are: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Camerata Alma Mater, Casa da Música, Centro Cultural de Belém, Youth Choir of the University of Lisbon, Concrète [LAB] Ensemble, Ensemble MPMP, Jerónimos Monastery, Matosinhos String Quartet, MAAT Museum, Money Museum, Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra, Portuguese Chamber Orchestra, and Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble.

In addition to the new music concerts, performances, and installations, and the ISCM General Assembly, the WNMD 2025 will include various accompanying events and initiatives. There will also be an international seminar and debate dedicated to the “Water Agenda” presented by various art, geology, physics, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy experts.

For further information about the ISCM WNMD 2025, please visit Miso Music Portugal’s ISCM WNMD 2025 website or contact the festival organizer by e-mail: [email protected].