The list of winners of the €20,000 Forberg-Schneider-Stiftung’s Belmont Prize for contemporary music is an interesting one. The 2018 winner is Irish – Eamonn Quinn, founder of the Louth Contemporary Music Society (LCMS). He is, as the Forberg-Schneider Foundation’s press release puts it, “the first backstage laureate”. He has not been singled out as a performer or a creator of music, but as a programmer, “a sophisticated explorer and communicator with a burning passion for contemporary music”. Appropriately enough, the festival (in which the daytime events are free) kicks off with the formal presentation of the Belmont Prize.

Source: The Irish Times March 28, 2018 04:07 UTC