Award winner meLê yamomo is a composer, researcher, theatre maker and assistant professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the UvA. As a researcher, he is affiliated with the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA).

The foundation Trillende Lucht awards the prize once every two years to composers 'whose music reveals a world of its own or those for whom such a world is clearly in the making.'

From the jury report

'yamomo uses text, sound and image compositionally to create works that offer new ways of framing our idea of art. Complex issues relating to colonialism are addressed through the sonic archive, resulting in works that are poetic, poignant, sometimes humorous and always profound.

His creation of artistic and sonic bridges allow us as audience members to transverse between a cognitive understanding to something experienced on other levels of our being. This is not a surface investigation but one that generously offers the audience an opportunity for expanded insight, one that asks us to look beyond the easy notion that the West is the onlycentre of new thought and experience.'