Ragnhild Berstad

About Ragnhild Berstad

Ragnhild Berstad (b.1956, Oslo) is a Norwegian composer who works in both acoustic and electroacoustic music. She studied at the Buskerud Conservatory of Music, the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Academy of Music, where she completed her diploma in composition in 1997 with Lasse Thoresen and Olav Anton Thommessen. In autumn 1998 she was artist-in-residence at Künstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf in Germany. Her works have been performed at major international festivals, including the ISCM World Music Days in Seoul (1997), the Juilliard Focus Festival in New York (1998) and the Donaueschinger Musiktage (2021).

Berstad often uses field recordings of natural sounds as raw material. She has developed a distinctive collaboration with the glass artists Lars Kverne and Vidar Koksvik, who make glass instruments for her works on fragility and vulnerability. She describes her relationship to sound in personal terms: life has reached her through sound, and sitting still and listening to the sounds around her is like meditation.

Her work has received the Arne Nordheim Composer Prize (2008), the Edvard Prize twice (2001 and 2005) and a nomination for the Nordic Council Music Prize (2015).