Oram Awards announces 2024 winners, celebrating women, trans, non-binary and gender expansive musicians

The 2024 Oram Awards winners have been announced, celebrating the most innovative women, trans, non-binary and gender expansive experimental artists, composers, and instrument designers. 

Now in its eighth year, the five winners come from across the UK. Each has been given a £1,000 development bursary and access to the Oram Awards Mentoring Program.

The competition, which runs in partnership with The Radiophonic Institute and PRS Foundation, is also collaborating with Sheffield’s No Bounds Festival. All awarded artists are set to perform at the renowned electronic music weekender next month. 

Winners include British-Finnish composer and performer Hanna Tuulikki, who uses hybrid approaches to music, combining vocal improvisation, voice-processing, composition and manipulated field recordings to tell “stories about reworlding in times of biospheric crisis”. 

Liverpool-based Lola De La Mata‘s work exploring the acts of listening and hearing, conditions such as tinnitus and aural diversity, chronic illness and classical music etiquette, and also won out. Meanwhile xname, AKA Eleonora Oreggia, was also successful for their REBUS project — a novel music machine played by plucking electromagnetic waves.

Elsewhere, The Silver Field, moniker of East Midlands musician Coral Rose Kindred-Boothby, caught the attention of judges. The project uses modular synthesis and built instruments to create soundscapes from voices. The fifth winner, Dali de Saint Paul, is a Bristol vocalist known for improvised work challenging “linguistic and spatial borders.”

“I am proud to see the spread of exceptional talent across this year’s Oram Award winners, who have all demonstrated an exciting range of innovative practices,” said Beka Bee, Grants Coordinator, PRS Foundation.

“It is essential we continue to champion the voices of women and gender diverse music creators, and I am delighted to be working with the Oram Awards team to amplify the voices of a further five outstanding winners,” they continued. 

Past winners have included Ewa Justka, Loraine James, Klein, Venus Ex Machina, Francine Perry aka La Leif, and No Home.