Ragnhild Berstad

Berstad started her musical career as a guitarist and music teacher. She later studied music theory at the University of Oslo and composition with Lasse Thoresen and Olav Anton Thommessen at the Norwegian State Academy of Music, where she received her diploma in 1997.

Berstad's works have seen performances at a number of festivals at home and abroad including the 1997 ISCM World Music Days in Seoul with her work Respiro, the 1999 Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival with the work Toreuma, NYC in 1998 with the work Focus! as well as the 1998 Bourges Festival for Electro-acoustic Music and the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris and Numus in Aarhus in the same year. In 2012 Berstad premiered a new orchestral work Requiem performed by the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir and Oslo Camerata at the Oslo International Church Music Festival. 2014 saw Berstad's work Cardinem performed by the Klangforum Wien at the Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival. The work was commissioned by Klangforum Wien as part of the orchestra's Giacinto Scelsi Revisited-project. The work also saw performances the same year at the Transart festival in Bolzano and at the Dresdner Festival der Zeitgenössichen Musik.

Key Berstad works include Verto for voice, cello and tape (1992), recorded on the CD Definitely Pling-Plong; Respiro for amplified clarinet and tape (1994), performed during the ISCM World Music Days 1997 in Korea; the orchestral work Krets, premiered at the festival Stavanger Specu lum (1996) by the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra; Zeugma for chamber ensemble (1997), the string quartet Toreuma (1997), premiered by the Arditti String Quartet at the 1999 Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, and emutatio (1999) for mezzo-soprano, chamber choir and chamber orchestra, commissioned for the EBU marking of the millennium. For this piece Berstad received the Edvard Prize in 2001 and in the same year she was bestowed with the Norwegian State Guarantee Income for Artists.

Ragnhild Berstad (born in Oslo in 1956) is a Norwegian contemporary composer.