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Polar Music Prize awarded to Chuck Berry and Peter Sellars – Metro US

Polar Music Prize awarded to Chuck Berry and Peter Sellars

Rock ‘n’ roll legend Chuck Berry and American opera director Peter Sellars are the winners of the Polar Music Prize.

Every year the prize committee bestows the honor upon two musicians, traditionally it has been one classical musician and one rock musician. By singling out people from these two seemingly disparate genres it elevates the rock form and proves that as the committee said, “classical music is not about dusty sheet music and metronomic precision, but that
classical music, with its violent power and complexity, has fundamentally always been
and will continue to be a way of reflecting and depicting the world.”

As for Berry, the man practically invented rock ‘n’ roll. At the age of 87, he’s been rocking for more than 60 years.

“Every riff and solo played by rock guitarists over the last 60 years contains DNA that can be traced right back to Chuck Berry,” said the committee.

The award was founded by late ABBA manager Stig Anderson and on Aug. 26, Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustafhe will award the laureates 1 million kronor ($154,000) at a ceremony in Stockholm.

PREVIOUS LAUREATES
2013 Kaija Saariaho and Yossou N’Dour
2012 Yo-Yo Ma and Paul Simon
2011 Kronos Quartet and Patti Smith
2010 Ennio Morricone and Björk
2009 José Antonio Abreu & El Sistema and Peter Gabriel
2008 Renée Fleming and Pink Floyd
2007 Steve Reich and Sonny Rollins
2006 Valery Gergiev and Led Zeppelin
2005 Gilberto Gil and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
2004 B.B. King and György Ligeti
2003 Keith Jarrett
2002 Sofia Gubaidulina and Miriam Makeba
2001 Burt Bacharach, Robert Moog and Karlheinz Stockhausen
2000 Bob Dylan and Isaac Stern
1999 Stevie Wonder and Iannis Xenakis
1998 Ray Charles and Ravi Shankar
1997 Eric Ericson and Bruce Springsteen
1996 Pierre Boulez and Joni Mitchell
1995 Sir Elton John and Mstislav Rostropovich
1994 Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Quincy Jones
1993 Dizzy Gillespie and Witold Lutoslawski
1992 Sir Paul McCartney and The Baltic States