Sound of the Year Awards

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Sound of the Year Awards

Sound of the Year Awards SOTYA celebrates sound in all forms from all corners of the world. Winners announced 11.05.23

06/02/2025

JUDGE ANNOUNCEMENT

We are excited to welcome Kirsty Whalley who will be re-joining our judging panel this year

Kirsty Whalley is an accomplished scoring mixer with an extensive list of projects to her name, including recent high-profile works such as Gladiator, Deadpool and Wolverine, Chicken Run 2, Barbie, and American Fiction. Passionate about exploring and innovating in the world of immersive audio recording and mixing, she was recognized with the MPG Award for Dolby Atmos Mixer of the Year in 2024. Kirsty is most at home in her unique mix room, Such Sweet Thunder, which she co-designed and runs with her mix partner, Peter Cobbin.

What excites you most about the power of sound?

I love it when the power of sound is revealed by an artist who hears possibility in something raw and ordinary. The shaping of noise and apparent chaos into something meaningful and musical, capable of telling stories and evoking emotions or memories, is truly magical.

01/02/2025

1 month to go before the submission deadline!

This year we’re back with new partners, media collaborators, categories and prizes for our biggest and most ambitious awards yet.

The winner of each category will receive a basicUcho high-quality omni-directional microphone, courtesy of LOM , a minimalistic mount made by Radius windshields | Closed Group and a Bubblebee Industries windkiller.

The winner of the Sound of the Year category will also receive the Weaver by Fieldtone – a handheld audio sampler that takes any sound and immediately produces rhythmical loops and textures.

Submit by 28th February: https://www.soundoftheyearawards.com/

30/01/2025

JUDGE ANNOUNCEMENT

We are excited to welcome Christian Ching from Natural History Museum, London who will be re-joining our judging panel this year

What excites you most about the power of sound?

For a large part of the shift over 4.5 billion years, it was a lot of geological rumbling and volcanos, and later sloshing of our primordial soup. Since then, the shifting and proliferation of geographies, ecosystems, and species, all contributed towards the many unique and complex acoustic environments that we have evolved alongside.

Today, we inhabit an acoustic environment radically different from any period since. And while we live in this now, interesting, if not somewhat scary time, I believe in the ability of sound in our thought, through our music, design, or science, to benefit people, and the planet.

28/01/2025

JUDGE ANNOUNCEMENT

We are excited to welcome Tony Gayle who will be re-joining our judging panel this year

Tony is a leading UK sound designer. He received an Olivier Award in 2023 for Best Sound Design for the RSC’s, My Neighbour Totoro.

What excites you most about the power of sound?

For me, Sound is uniquely emotive and provocative to everyone that has the privilege to experience it. Listening to sounds is a shared experience yet wonderfully individual. That is power.

22/01/2025

Children’s Category: How To Guide in partnership with Sound and Music

This year we are inviting children to create a graphic score and submit their own 60-second soundscape exploring the theme My Big Adventure. Don’t miss this opportunity to try new ways of making music in the classroom and at home!

Submit your soundscape and graphic score before 28th February 2025 to enter the awards.

For those hoping to find out more about how to incorporate the project into your learning, how to record the sounds and upload, or generally looking for more ideas then watch our “How To” guide created by previous winner and teacher Mark Williamson

https://www.soundoftheyearawards.com/childrens-category-how-to

15/01/2025

JUDGE ANNOUNCEMENT

We are excited to welcome Jez Riley French who will be re-joining our judging panel this year

Focusing on sound as both material and subject, Jez’s work uses a variety of formats to explore place, sounds outside of our attention and our response to located elements and experience. Threads and traces coexist, mapping passion, self trust, community and sensory, intuitive response.

What excites you most about the power of sound?

Whether listening to a single sound, an entire locale or situation, it's constantly shifting, never repeating. We are always simply beginning to listen.

Photos: Pheobe riley Law

14/01/2025

JUDGE ANNOUNCEMENT

We are excited to welcome Annie Jamieson who will be joining our judging panel this year

Annie Jamieson is a historian of science and technology, and has been Curator of Sound Technologies at the National Science and Media Museum for eight years. Her research interests include the use of sound in museums, the history of PA systems, and understandings and management of hearing risk in the sound and music industries.

What excites you most about the power of sound?

I think that sound is such an integral and yet often unacknowledged part of our lives – we are surrounded by sound but we ignore or block out most of it. When it does come to our attention though, whether hearing our favourite music, noticing the sounds of nature, or being disturbed by nuisance noise, it provokes such strong emotions, for better or worse.

09/01/2025

JUDGE ANNOUNCEMENT

We are excited to welcome Milo Thesiger-Meacham Resonance 104.4fm who will be joining our judging panel this year

Milo Thesiger-Meacham is an artist, composer, performer, broadcaster and Creative Director of the community arts radio stations Resonance FM and Resonance Extra. He was recently shortlisted for the Prototype Prize and has new publications with Tenement Press and World Service. He has worked on solo and group projects for Tate Modern, The V&A Museum, the Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow, London and Paris Fashion Weeks, the European Poetry Festival and Waste Paper Opera, among others.

What excites you most about the power of sound?

I’m excited by sound’s potential as a middleman between an environment and human identity. A single noise can become a powerful signifier of deeper forces – natural or man-made – inducing emotions, anxieties and fantasies about our place in the world.

11/12/2024

Sound of the City

In this new category, we are partnering with Cities and Memory to celebrate the sounds that define your city and offer a platform to document the ways that cities are changing around the world.

What are the soundmarks that are distinct to where you live? Are there sounds that are unique to your location or that help identify the quirks of daily life? From wildlife, to transport, to businesses or music we want to hear it all!�

At a time when cities are growing, landscapes are changing, and we are seeing the impacts of climate change and conflict destroy the fabric of the cities we live in, we are keen to provide space for people to document sounds that might be disappearing, or the changing sounds that might be consuming cities at the moment.

Submit: https://forms.gle/jdDxc9zx71VCzuvD9
Deadline: 28.02.25

10/12/2024

Most Unpleasant Sound

In this category we are partnering with the Hearing Conservation Association to celebrate unpleasant sounds. This can vary from personal gripes to the more generally accepted unpleasant sounds that exist around us!

Previous submissions have included the sounds of bins, tinnitus, screeching animals, sirens etc�

Submit: https://forms.gle/kUkHDWcLvRg9MvBJ6
Deadline: 28.02.25

09/12/2024

Disappearing Sound: A Sound Worth Saving

Every year, sounds are fading away into the background and slipping from our memories.

In this category we are looking to capture and raise awareness of the sounds that we may be losing. This could include objects and machines, wildlife but it could also include rituals, languages, music and traditions.

We want you to be as inventive as possible and are looking to use this category to bring back to life and help to preserve some of the beautiful and extraordinary sounds that may be disappearing. �

Submit: https://forms.gle/pqTDXHHEh7rtnSuSA
Deadline: 28.02.25

06/12/2024

Best Sound Innovation!

In this category we are partnering with National Science and Media Museum to spotlight new ways of working with sound technologies, practices, programmes and instruments. Prompts to consider: How is technology changing? How does it contribute to our relationship with sound? What is this doing to our ability to create and record sounds?

Previous category winners include interactive sound sculptures, large digital instruments, subterranean installations and mobile apps.

Submit here: https://forms.gle/zLEiW3YX5FF13urk7
Deadline: 28.02.25

05/12/2024

This year we are very excited to be partnering with EarthDay.org for our Best Natural Sound category

In this category we are looking to celebrate the sounds around us. From the small sounds found in micro-habitats to the vast sound of glaciers, anything that can be found in our natural environment is eligible!

Submit here: https://forms.gle/L6hCqvmBhjjPwUbSA

03/12/2024

What are the sounds that have defined 2024? What are the moments, places, and events that we will remember? Are there objects, inventions, or machines that made an impact this year / contributed to our listening this year?

In our Sound of the Year category we are encouraging you to be creative and to submit sounds and sound recordings that celebrate 2024.

Deadline: 28.02.25
Submit here: www.soundoftheyearawards.com

01/12/2024

Submissions are now open!

Categories this year include:

* Sound of the Year
* Children’s Category in collaboration with Sound and Music
* Disappearing Sound
* Best Natural Sound in collaboration with EarthDay.org
* Sound of the City
* Best Sound Innovation in collaboration with National Science and Media Museum
* Composed with Sound in collaboration with Accidental Records
* Best Imagined Sound in collaboration with National Poetry Library
* Most Unpleasant Sound

Submissions forms available on the site: https://www.soundoftheyearawards.com/

Deadline: 28.02.25

28/11/2024

We are thrilled to announce that the Sound of the Year Awards is returning for another year!

Submissions open this Sunday, 1st December

We're back with new partners, media collaborators, categories and prizes for our biggest and most ambitious awards yet...

09/07/2024

The Sound of the Year 2023

This year, our winning submission was Danil Repin’s “Message to Homeland’; the haunting sound of an empty swing in a playground.

Although we had a range of brilliant submissions, for the jurors, this sound really brought home the importance of recognising and amplifying the impact that wars and genocides are having on communities around the world, from Palestine, to Sudan, to Congo and Ukraine. Through sound, this submission brings into focus the fervent call for humanity, solidarity and action.

The symbolism of the swing was also pertinent in a time where we are seeing the innocence of children, childhood and their dreams across the globe being eradicated by the horrors of war, settler colonialism and climate change.

As we move through 2024 and look ahead, we urge you to use sound to capture and re- imagine a different 2025 and years ahead.

Danil writes, “The recording was made on 12 August 2023 in the Udmurt Republic, Mozhga city, using a Zoom H5 portable recorder with XYZ attachment and a Korg CM300 contact microphone. The recording is of an ordinary courtyard in a Russian province with a population of no more than 40,000.

I recorded the sound of a swing which, due to the specific acoustics of the courtyard, turns into a violin-like sound and creates not only a soundscape of my hometown, but also a musical melody.

For me, this recording represents the sound of my year, because it reflects all the worries that have plagued me over the past year. A complicated relationship with the place of one's birth is a problem for many Russians, including me.

It is always hatred, anger mixed with warmth and love. The war with Ukraine has only intensified this, adding a sense of humiliation, loneliness and emptiness. The sound of a swing, reflected from small apartments and transformed into a violin-like sound, is a statement about the pain that haunts not only me, but also my generation, but also about the irrational belief in love in a world that is being destroyed every year.”

Head to https://www.soundoftheyearawards.com/ to listen to all the winning submissions from this year.

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Children’s Category: How To Guide in partnership with Sound and Music This year we are inviting children to create a graphic score and submit their own 60-second soundscape exploring the theme My Big Adventure. Don’t miss this opportunity to try new ways of making music in the classroom and at home! Submit your soundscape and graphic score before 28th February 2025 to enter the awards. For those hoping to find out more about how to incorporate the project into your learning, how to record the sounds and upload, or generally looking for more ideas then watch our “How To” guide created by previous winner and teacher Mark Williamson https://www.soundoftheyearawards.com/childrens-category-how-to

Children’s Category: How To Guide in partnership with @soundandmusicuk This year we are inviting children to create a graphic score and submit their own 60-second soundscape exploring the theme My Big Adventure. Don’t miss this opportunity to try new ways of making music in the classroom and at home! Submit your soundscape and graphic score before 28th February 2025 to enter the awards. For those hoping to find out more about how to incorporate the project into your learning, how to record the sounds and upload, or generally looking for more ideas then watch our “How To” guide created by previous winner and teacher Mark Williamson @spaceshipmark https://www.soundoftheyearawards.com/childrens-category-how-to #ks2 #ks3 #primaryeducation #teachersofinstagram #musicteacher #primarymusicleaders #primaryteacher #teachmusictochildren #teachmusic

The Sound of the Year Awards are returning for another year, and we are looking forward to celebrating the sounds that depict and celebrate 2024. This year with back with new categories, partners and prizes for our biggest awards yet. Submissions open this Sunday, 1st December

The Sound of the Year 2023 This year, our winning submission was Danil Repin’s “Message to Homeland’; the haunting sound of an empty swing in a playground. Although we had a range of brilliant submissions, for the jurors, this sound really brought home the importance of recognising and amplifying the impact that wars and genocides are having on communities around the world, from Palestine, to Sudan, to Congo and Ukraine. Through sound, this submission brings into focus the fervent call for humanity, solidarity and action. The symbolism of the swing was also pertinent in a time where we are seeing the innocence of children, childhood and their dreams across the globe being eradicated by the horrors of war, settler colonialism and climate change. As we move through 2024 and look ahead, we urge you to use sound to capture and re- imagine a different 2025 and years ahead. Danil writes, “The recording was made on 12 August 2023 in the Udmurt Republic, Mozhga city, using a Zoom H5 portable recorder with XYZ attachment and a Korg CM300 contact microphone. The recording is of an ordinary courtyard in a Russian province with a population of no more than 40,000. I recorded the sound of a swing which, due to the specific acoustics of the courtyard, turns into a violin-like sound and creates not only a soundscape of my hometown, but also a musical melody. For me, this recording represents the sound of my year, because it reflects all the worries that have plagued me over the past year. A complicated relationship with the place of one's birth is a problem for many Russians, including me. It is always hatred, anger mixed with warmth and love. The war with Ukraine has only intensified this, adding a sense of humiliation, loneliness and emptiness. The sound of a swing, reflected from small apartments and transformed into a violin-like sound, is a statement about the pain that haunts not only me, but also my generation, but also about the irrational belief in l

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