Germany’s TONALi Award Names 2024 Winner

The Berlin-based ensemble DieOrdnungDerDinge has won the award and €25,000

Granted annually, the €25,000 TONALi Award “Courage for Utopia” has this year been awarded to the Berlin-based DieOrdnungDerDinge music theater ensemble, which will receive the award on June 30, 2024, at the opening of the TONALi Festival Open-Air on the TONALi Campus. 

TONALi is an international cultural and educational initiative from Hamburg, Germany — its Courage for Utopia award honors “the courage to embrace utopia” with a special prize for musical and social innovations, plus those that show new paths for classical music and cultural life. 

Additionally, the prize includes a TONALi residency, which contains the curation of an Elbphilharmonie concert or the artistic support of the TONALi project “Art Conservation Area.” As the prize winner, DieOrdnungDerDinge will also be performing on July 6, 2024, as part of TONALi Festival’s final concert in the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.

Founded in 2011, DieOrdnungDerDinge develops highly visual and playful forms of concert and musical theater. The group comprises pianist and composer Iñigo Giner Miranda, violinist Vera Kardos, and cellist Cathrin Romeis.

The group is known for its innovative and experimental productions of music, which usually deal with current scientific, philosophical, or social issues. Through approachable and humorous formats, the group is dedicated to creating a shared space of experience with audiences of different generations. Notably, during the lockdown period, the group developed new digital formats that made contemporary music more accessible to a wider audience.

“We would like to thank you very much for the award! It is a great joy for us, a great honor and, last but not least, a great opportunity!” DieOrdnungDerDinge stated in the press release. “For many years we have been working on formats on the borderline between musical theater and concerts, formats “between all chairs” that are often not so easy to explain. We still aim to reach a broad, diverse audience. An appreciation and recognition of this very concern therefore means even more to us. We are really looking forward to next year and the upcoming collaboration!”