Polar Music Prize
British rock royalty Queen, American jazz great Herbie Hancock and Canadian soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan are the 2025 recipients of the Polar Music Prize. The ceremony will be held on Tuesday, May 27, at the Grand Hôtel in Stockholm and is set to broadcast live in Sweden on TV4 at 8 p.m. CET.
The three surviving members of Queen – Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon – said in a joint statement: “We are highly and deeply honoured to be given the Polar Music Prize this year. It’s incredible, thank you so much.”
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Hancock, 84, said: “The Polar Music Prize is a prestigious honour, and I am both thrilled and humbled to be a recipient. The Laureates who have come before me have left an indelible mark on humanity through their profound examples of inspiration and dedication.”
Hannigan, 53, said: “I am deeply moved and humbled to receive this year’s Polar Music Prize. Thank you so much for including me among this incredible and inspiring group of Laureates.”
Hancock has worked closely with previous Polar Music Prize Laureates Joni Mitchell and Wayne Shorter. Hannigan has worked with previous Laureates Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Formed in 1970, Queen are one of the most successful bands ever to have emerged from the U.K. Bohemian Rhapsody, the 2018 biopic about the band, is the top-grossing music biopic in film history. The film received four Oscars, including best actor for Rami Malek as lead singer Freddie Mercury (who died in 1991).
Queen was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2001. Queen, shockingly, never won a competitive Grammy, and received just four nominations. But the band received a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy in 2018.
In 1987, Hancock became the first Black composer to win an Oscar for best original score for Round Midnight. (Prince had previously won best original song score for Purple Rain.) Hancock has received 14 Grammy Awards, across R&B, jazz and pop categories. His highest-profile Grammy was album of the year in 2008 for River: The Joni Letters, a tribute to Mitchell. Hancock received a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy in 2016.
At the inaugural MTV Video Awards in 1984, Hancock won five awards, more than any other artist, all for the video for his instrumental hit “Rockit.” He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2013.
Having started her career as a soprano, Hannigan turned her hand to conducting at age 40 at the Châtelet in Paris. Now, she balances both pursuits. Hannigan is principal guest conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and l’Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, and associate artist with the London Symphony Orchestra. In 2026, she will take the helm of Iceland Symphony Orchestra as their chief conductor and artistic director.
Hannigan won a Grammy in 2018: best classical solo vocal album for Crazy Girl Crazy.
Previous Polar Music Prize Laureates include Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel, Chuck Berry, Ennio Morricone, Led Zeppelin, Patti Smith, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Kronos Quartet, Elton John, Metallica, Iggy Pop, Ravi Shankar, Renée Fleming, Miriam Makeba, Sofia Gubaidulina and Angélique Kidjo.
The Polar Music Prize is presented at a ceremony in Stockholm in the presence of the Swedish royal family. Each Laureate will receive a cash award of one million Swedish Krona (approx. £74,082 GBP and $93,897 USD).
The Polar Music Prize awards committee is an independent, 11-member board who select the Laureates. It receives nominations from the public as well as from the International Music Council, a nongovernmental organization founded by UNESCO which promotes geographical and musical diversity.
The Polar Music Prize was founded in 1989 by Stig “Stikkan” Anderson, a legend in the history of Swedish popular music. Anderson was the manager, publisher and lyricist for ABBA, and played a key role in the quartet’s enormous global success. The prize was named after Anderson’s record label, Polar Music.
Nile Rodgers, the award-winning songwriter, composer, producer and guitarist and co-founder of Chic, and Esa-Pekka Salonen, world-renowned composer and conductor and the current music director for the San Francisco Symphony, received their 2024 Polar Music Prizes from the hands of King Carl XVI Gustaf at a royal ceremony held at Stockholm’s Grand Hotel on Tuesday night (May 21).
The Polar Music Prize was first presented to Paul McCartney and the Baltic States in 1992 after it was founded and funded by Stig “Stikkan” Anderson, manager of ABBA and a songwriter in his own right, as well as a music publisher and label owner.
Rodgers spoke from the heart when accepting his award from the king. “I know that music changes lives,” Rodgers told the audience of over 300 guests. “I’ve been told, ‘Artists are the gatekeepers of truth.’ I am honored to be here tonight in such distinguished company. Congratulations to the outstanding Esa-Pekka Salonen and all the past recipients of the Polar Music Prize. To have been acknowledged in the same way as Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin, Chuck Berry, Joni Mitchell, Ennio Morricone and so many more of my heroes is a dream come true.
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“I would like to give a very special thanks to the Polar Music Prize for recognizing so many artists of color, and to the people of Sweden for welcoming us with open arms, from Eric Dolphy and Miles Davis to Jimi Hendrix, way before most people did. I say this from the bottom of my heart: We are family.”
Speeches aside, it was a full night of music as Swedish artists performed the music of the two Laureates. Among the many Rodgers hits heard during the ceremony and banquet were “We Are Family,” “Le Freak,” “Get Lucky,” “Good Times,” “I’m Coming Out,” “Material Girl,” “Let’s Dance,” “Spacer” and “Everybody Dance.” Salonen’s music was represented by many classical pieces and a stunning rendition of “Innan Kärleken Kom” (“Before Love Came”) sung by Eva Dahlgren, who wrote the lyrics for a 1995 album. Salonen was the conductor on the track. Dahlgren, a nine-time Swedish Grammys winner, received a standing ovation after her performance.
Near the end of the royal banquet, Polar Music Prize managing director Marie Ledin, the daughter of the late Stig Anderson, told the assembled guests of her personal connections to the two Laureates.
“When I was younger, I loved dancing,” she said. “Every weekend I would dress up, and my friends and I would hit the dance floors and in all the clubs, night after night, the DJs played the irresistible music of Chic and Sister Sledge – songs that made us move and are to this day a memorable part of my younger days.”
Then Ledin reached back for another memory. “In 1995 I had the privilege of sitting in Berwaldhallen [a concert hall in Stockholm] to hear a young but brilliant conductor rehearse the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. I clearly remember how he suddenly stopped the orchestra as he apparently noticed one wrong note in the score. I was astonished. How was that possible? Not only to hear that tiny mistake but then to bring the whole 70-piece orchestra to a halt in an instant. I was impressed. Of course, that conductor was our Laureate, Esa-Pekka Salonen.”
Rodgers and Salonen join a long list of Laureates who have been awarded the Prize over the last 32 years, including Bruce Springsteen, Emmylou Harris, B. B. King, Burt Bacharach, Sting, Renée Fleming, Elton John, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, Quincy Jones, Yo-Yo Ma, Max Martin, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Angélique Kidjo, Patti Smith, Wayne Shorter, Björk, Metallica, Diane Warren, Ray Charles, Ravi Shankar, Chris Blackwell, Dizzy Gillespie, Miriam Makeba, Iggy Pop, Grandmaster Flash, Yousou N’Dour, Gilberto Gil, Sonny Rollins and Isaac Stern.
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