During the AGORA awards ceremony for the 65th Thessaloniki Film Festival, held in Warehouse C, the newly established TSSO Award was presented to John Konsolakis. The award was decided by a committee led by Simos Papanas, Artistic Director of TSSO, and included members Antonis Sousamoglou and Miltos Logiadis. This unique award offers a young composer from the participants the opportunity to record their next cinematic composition with TSSO.
The committee's reasoning was analyzed by Antonis Sousamoglou, the exarch of TSSO and one of its members: “This unique award for Symphonic-Cinematic music that was established this year by TSSO within the framework of TIFF, aims to promote the creation of cinematic compositions for symphonic orchestra. In contrast to the other awards, is the only one worldwide specialized in symphonic cinematic music and provides the winner with the infrastructure for a professional recording of the symphonic part of the next film’s soundtrack. This year, the prize is being awarded on a pilot basis to a Greek composer participant in the ‘Meet The Future’, while from 2025 the goal is to become international and awarded to participating films in the section ‘AGORA Works In Progress’ of TIFF. Is important to mention that in a recording of this nature a significant cost is involved and thus composers are usually discouraged from hiring a symphony orchestra. TSSO will offer human resources, spaces, technical equipment, and additionally up to 20,000 euros for various additional costs of the recording process. We are pleased to announce that the TSSO 2024 award for Symphonic cinematic music is awarded to John Konsolakis!”