The 2025 Lion awards for Music

The American composer and performer Meredith Monk is the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of Biennale Musica 2025, an interdisciplinary artist whose influence extends from new experimental music to contemporary classical, from electronics to Jazz and pop, inspiring generations of artists. The Silver Lion has been awarded to Chuquimamani-Condori, an American of Bolivian origin, a visionary voice in contemporary experimental music.

The decision was made by the Board of Directors of La Biennale di Venezia at the recommendation of Caterina Barbieri, director of the Music Department.

The ceremony to award the Golden Lion and Silver Lion will take place during the 69^th International Festival of Contemporary Music (11 > 25 October).

As the motivation for the award states, “Meredith Monk has revolutionised music and the performing arts with an approach that has expanded the potential of the human voice, transforming it into a vehicle for unprecedented sonic exploration. The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Music acknowledges her remarkable and enduring impact on the contemporary music scene, her unique artistic vision and constant commitment to research into sound. Through her compositions and performances, Meredith Monk has demonstrated an unwavering capacity for innovation, transforming music into an immersive ritual experience. Her music exists in the same space that The Star Within proposes to explore: a sonic cosmogony, a vibration that runs through us connecting us with the other, a deep echo in which listening becomes transformation. Her wordless incantations and ability to build entire sonic worlds from the simplest gestures give rise to a dialogue between matter and spirit, between presence and transcendence. Her work cannot be confined within historical categories, but opens up a living universe of sound, in constant evolution, which appears both archaic and radically innovative at the same time”.

Born in New York in 1942, following her studies at Sarah Lawrence College, Meredith Monk became a leading figure of the New York experimental scene of the 1960s, developing an extended vocal technique and interdisciplinary aesthetic which have redefined contemporary performance. The founder of The House (1968) and of the Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble (1978), she has created works that blend music, theatre, dance and cinema, pushing the boundaries of the arts. Her most significant works include Dolmen Music (1981), which marked a turning point in vocal music, and Atlas (1991), a three-part opera commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera. Another visionary work is Vessel: an opera epic (1971), for an ensemble of 75 voices, electronic organ, dulcimer and accordion, consolidating Monk’s reputation as a pioneer of site-specific art. Her cycle Songs of Ascension (2008) represents one of the pinnacles of her musical research, combining voice, sonic architecture and spirituality in a composition that explores elevation in music. The work, conceived for an eight-story tower designed by visual artist Ann Hamilton, brings together a string quartet, wind instruments, percussions and chorus.

In Venice Meredith Monk was invited to Biennale Teatro and Musica in 1975 and 1976, the famous editions directed by Luca Ronconi, with Education of the Girlchild: an opera and Quarry: an opera in three movements, two of the works that revealed her to the entire world.
Biennale Musica 2025 will host a special performance by Meredith Monk at the Teatro Malibran, with an ample programme of works spanning the entirety of her working life, sung by her and members of her Vocal Ensemble. The festival will also showcase other dimensions of her multifaceted creative career through film, installation and discourse.

“For the innovative contribution to contemporary music, the multidisciplinary artistic experimentation and participation in a wider cultural discourse, connecting music to themes of identity and history, La Biennale awards the Silver Lion to Chuqimamani-Condori”.
“A multidisciplinary artist and musician of Bolivian origin – reads the motivation for the award – Chuquimamani–Condori, whose project is also known as Elysia Crampton Chuquimia, is a visionary voice in contemporary experimental music. Their work redefines the boundaries of electronic composition, interweaving the folk sounds of the native Aymara tradition with digital technologies and the club culture. Rooted in the Aymara cosmology and decolonial philosophy, their music stands as an act of resistance to linear conventions of time and western musical structures. With a career that extends across two decades, Chuquimamani-Condori has developed an innovative approach to sound through the use of sampling, polyrhythmic structures, futuristic melodic synth and complex personal narratives. Their aesthetic of sound, which blends folk and the hyper-contemporary, is distinguished by the construction of maximalist layers that reflect their cultural legacy and queer identity. Their artistic research is not only decolonial practice, but also a form of cultural resistance and queer politics, that can open new aesthetic and conceptual paths on themes of identity, diaspora and decolonisation. Chuquimamani-Condori’s music does not just reflect existing traditions, it re-elaborates the potential of sound as a means of historical storytelling, identity and transformation”.

For Biennale Musica 2025, Chuquimamani-Condori will present a project commissioned by the festival which will echo the “water ceremonies” of the past and present. A musical procession of small boats will travel through the canals of Venice, culminating in a live concert by Los Thuthanaka, the duo consisting of the artist and their brother Joshua Chuquimia Crampton, in front of the Isolotto dell’Arsenale.

In the past the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Music has been awarded to Goffredo Petrassi (1994), Luciano Berio (1995), Friedrich Cerha (2006), Giacomo Manzoni (2007), Helmut Lachenmann (2008), György Kurtág (2009), Wolfgang Rihm (2010), Peter Eötvös (2011), Pierre Boulez (2012), Sofija Gubajdulina (2013), Steve Reich (2014), Georges Aperghis (2015), Salvatore Sciarrino (2016), Tan Dun (2017), Keith Jarrett (2018), George Benjamin (2019), Luis De Pablo (2020), Kaija Saariaho (2021), Giorgio Battistelli (2022), Brian Eno (2023), and Rebecca Saunders (2024).

The Silver Lion in the past has been awarded to Vittorio Montalti and Francesca Verunelli (2010), RepertorioZero (2011), Quartetto Prometeo (2012), Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’Arte (2013), Ryo Murakami (2016), Dai Fujikura (2017), Sebastian Rivas (2018), Matteo Franceschini (2019), Raphaël Cendo (2020), Neue Vocalsolisten (2021), Ars Ludi (2022), Miller Puckette (2023), and Ensemble Modern (2024).

Meredith Monk (1942, New York) – Meredith Monk is a composer, singer, and creator of new opera and music-theatre works, films and installations. Recognized as one of the most unique and influential artists of our time, she is a pioneer in what is now called “extended vocal technique” and “interdisciplinary performance”. Her groundbreaking exploration of the voice as an instrument, as an eloquent language in and of itself, expands the boundaries of musical composition, creating landscapes of sound that unearth feelings, energies, and memories for which there are no words. Over the last six decades Monk has received numerous awards and honors including a MacArthur Fellowship, Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters from the Republic of France, induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, and a National Medal of Arts.
In 1965, Monk began her innovative exploration of the voice as a multifaceted instrument, composing solo pieces for unaccompanied voice and voice and keyboard. In 1978, she founded Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble. In addition to her numerous vocal works, Monk has created vital new repertoire for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and solo instruments, with recent commissions from the San Francisco Symphony and Carnegie Hall where she held the 2014-15 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair. Monk has recorded with the ECM New Series label since 1981 and was recently honoured with a 13-disc box set of her work, Meredith Monk: The Recordings, in celebration of her 80th birthday. Her music can also be heard in films by such directors as Terrence Malick, Jean-Luc Godard, David Byrne, and the Coen Brothers. Selected scores of her work are available through Boosey & Hawkes.
From the Fall of 2023 to the Spring of 2024, Meredith Monk. Calling, her first European retrospective exhibition, was realized as a collaboration between Oude Kerk Amsterdam with Hartwig Art Foundation, and Haus der Kunst München. Monk is currently celebrating her sixtieth performance season which began with sold-out performances at the Park Avenue Armory of her newest work, Indra’s Net, the third part of a trilogy exploring our relationship with the natural world. The artist continues with a host of events centred in New York City through May 2025.

Chuquimamani-Condori (1985, California)
Chuquimamani-Condori is affiliated with the Pakajaqi nation and was born in 1985 in the Inland Empire region of California. They began their musical career under the pseudonyms E+E and Elysia Crampton, creating digital sound collages that combine Andean musical forms with experimental electronic rhythms. They then evolved their artistic practice, integrating Aymara ceremonial traditions with contemporary performative methodologies. Their more recent works include Q’iwanakaxa/Q’iwsanakaxa Utjxiwa, presented at MoMA PS1 in New York: a collaboration with their brother Joshua Chuquimia Crampton that merges sound, music and images to honour their ancestors and reflect upon the themes of resistance and cultural identity. Their influence extends from underground electronic music to contemporary composition and sonic art, consolidating their voice as one of the most relevant and innovative of their generation.
One of their most recent albums is DJ E (2023). Other works include: Rayo Mix (2022), Across the Policed World: A Transnocturnal Huayño (2022), Amaru’s Tongue: Daughter (2021), in collaboration with Joshua Chuquimia Crampton. They continue to work with AIM SoCal, the American Indian Movement Southern California (founded in 1968).
They participated in the 60th International Art Exhibition (2024) in the Bolivian Pavilion.