“Forward Into Light” Nominated for Prestigious Opus Klassik Award
PRESS RELEASE
June 2, 2026
Opus Klassik, Germany’s prestigious juried classical music prize, announced nominees for the 2026 awards, with a New Classic Award nomination for Metropolis Ensemble’s 2026 studio album, Forward Into Light, by Sarah Kirkland Snider.
Berlin, Germany— On October 9, 2026, the Association for the Promotion of Classical Music will award the OPUS KLASSIK, the prize for exceptional musical achievements in the field of classical music.
OPUS KLASSIK is Germany’s most important award for classical music and is organized by the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Klassischen Musik, a non-profit company. The selection of award recipients in currently 30 categories is carried out by an independent jury of eleven experts from the music and media industries.
Metropolis Ensemble’s 2026 studio album, Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Forward Into Light, received a short-list nomination:
New Classic / Neo Classic Prize:
Forward Into Light (Kirkland Snider, Sarah / Metropolis Ensemble)
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Forward Into Light is composer Sarah Kirkland Snider’s fifth full-length album and her first all-orchestral LP. Recorded by the GRAMMY-nominated Metropolis Ensemble under Andrew Cyr and produced by multi-GRAMMY-winner Silas Brown overseeing an award-winning team that included Mike Tierney and Charles Mueller, the album features four major orchestral works spanning themes of perseverance, memory, and renewal.
Jon Sobel from Blog Critics praised Forward Into Light as fantastical: “Snider is as innovative as many of her contemporaries... The new album reveals Snider as, among other things, a master orchestral colorist. In ‘Forward into Light’ (the piece) [Snider] creates vidid images, some natural, some fantastical, out of the everyday instruments of the orchestra.”
Pwyll ap Siôn from Gramophone raved: “Forward Into Light, teems with creative ideas... Imaginatively and dynamically orchestrated... Harpist Noël Wan is in sparkling form throughout... All four works are performed with clarity, focus and precision by the Metropolis Ensemble under the direction of Andrew Cyr, whose orchestra has for over a decade established itself as one of the leading purveyors of the so-called neo-minimalist, post-tonal, indie classical style sometimes associated with Snider, Timo Andres, William Brittelle and others. Recommended.”
OPUS KLASSIK, with 26 categories, recognizes outstanding recordings from a diverse pool of artists from around the world. Previous recipients include celebrated artists such as Lang Lang, John Williams, Berliner Philharmoniker, and Joyce DiDonato. This year’s awards ceremony will be held on October 9, 2026 in Berlin.
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Since 2010, Metropolis Ensemble collaborated on numerous albums, including the Grammy-nominated Avner Dorman’s Concertos (2010) and the Juno Award-winning Vivian Fung’s Dreamscapes (2012). Each recording brings together innovative studios and genre-defying independent expert musicians to employ an ambitious and highly-technical approach to studio production that is rare in an industry that favors swift release of live recordings.
