FEM pin 2025 for the International Ensemble Modern Academy
The Internationale Ensemble Modern Akademie e.V. (IEMA) will receive the FEM pin 2025 of the Fachgruppe E-Musik (FEM+) in the German Composers' Association. The award will be presented on Friday, October 17, 2025, at 3 pm in the Spiegelsaal of the Museum Art.Plus in Donaueschingen - as part of the Donaueschinger Musiktage. The laudatory speech will be given by Lena Krause, Managing Director of FREO - Freie Ensembles und Orchester in Deutschland e.V.
With this award, FEM+ recognizes IEMA's special commitment to the promotion and communication of contemporary music and its sustainable educational work. For over 20 years, the IEMA, as the training center of the Ensemble Modern, has combined artistic practice, education and mediation in a program that appeals to young musicians worldwide.
At the heart of the Academy is the Master's degree program International Ensemble Modern Academy - Contemporary Music Performance(MA IEMA CoMP), which IEMA offers together with the HfMDK Frankfurt.
The one-year course is aimed at instrumentalists, conductors, composers and sound directors and teaches contemporary playing techniques, interpretation practice and repertoire knowledge. The students form a fixed formation as an IEMA ensemble for one year, work closely with members of the Ensemble Modern and regularly meet renowned composers and conductors.
»We are particularly pleased to receive this award from the German Composers' Association: IEMA has been contributing to the diversity and vibrancy of today's ensemble landscape - from which composers in particular also benefit - for over 20 years. As part of its academy, Ensemble Modern has always been committed to passing on its enthusiasm for contemporary music to the next generation of professionals and at the same time attracting a wider audience and schoolchildren to new music in a direct and accessible way. None of this would be possible without a strong network of funding institutions such as the Kunststiftung NRW, the GVL, the Crespo Foundation and the KfW Stiftung, as well as cooperation partners such as the HfMDK Frankfurt, the Ulysses Platform and the Landesmusikakademie Niedersachsen.«Christiane Engelbrecht, Managing Director of IEMA
Previous recipients of the FEM pin of honor are: Gerhart Baum (2015), Frank Kämpfer and Theo Geißler (2016), the concert series Unerhörte Musik (2017), Younghi Pagh-Paan (2018), Carin Levine (2019), Lotte Thaler (2020), Lothar Zagrosek (2021), Jeunesses Musicales for the national competition Jugend komponiert (2022), the Archiv Frau und Musik (2023) and Astrid Schmeling (2024).
