Oram Awards 2020

Named after electronic music pioneer and Radiophonic Workshop founder Daphne Oram, the Oram Awards celebrate the role of women in the world of music and sound, and the six winners for 2020 have just been announced. They are:

• Composer and performer Loula Yorke, who in addition to creating her own electronic music also runs synth-building workshops under the Atari Punk Girls banner.
• Nicole Raymond, aka NikNak, an experimental musician and turntablist whose debut album, Bashi, is inspired by her travels in Turkey and is due to go on sale on 22nd November.
• Poulomi Desai, whose latest projects include performances on the optical Oramics synthesizer, in which sound shapes were derived from global data about pandemics, migration and financial markets.
• Una Lee, a sound designer and spoken-word artist whose upcoming album Songs To Stay Awake To aims to blur the boundaries between poetry and song.
• Sound and media artist Vicky Clarke, whose experiments in sound sculpture and DIY electronics explore the nature of the relationship between human and machine.
• Singer and sound artist Yifeat Ziv, whose many disciplines include research into the human voice, acoustic ecology and electronic music.

This year's presentation event has unfortunately been cancelled because of Covid-19, but in lieu of a ceremony, all six winners will be showcased on BBC Radio 3's Unclassified programme, airing every Thursday starting November 5th. They will also be awarded grants to help further their art, courtesy of Oram Awards organisers PRS For Music.

To find out more about the awards and this year's winners, watch the video below.