Polarpriset, eller Polar Music Prize, är ett av musikbranschens mest prestigefyllda priser. Bland tidigare pristagare hittar vi namn som Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin och Bob Dylan. På en presskonferens som ägde rum i Stadshuset i Stockholm tillkännagavs imorse att 2014 års pris tillfaller en av rock’n’rollens förgrundsgestalter : Chuck Berry.
Född i St. Louis 1926 är det knappast en överdrift att kalla den snart nittioåriga sångaren och gitarristen en av de mest inflytelserika musikerna någonsin; Johnny B. Goode har influerat flera generationer av gitarrister.
”The Polar Music Prize 2014 is awarded to Chuck Berry from St. Louis, USA. The parameters of rock music were set one day in May 1955, when Chuck Berry recorded his debut single ’Maybellene’. Chuck Berry was the rock’n’roll pioneer who turned the electric guitar into the main instrument of rock music. Every riff and solo played by rock guitarists over the last 60 years contains DNA that can be traced right back to Chuck Berry. The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and a million other groups began to learn their craft by playing Chuck Berry songs. Chuck Berry is also a superb songwriter. In the course of three minutes he conjures up an image of the everyday life and dreams of a teenager, often with the focus on cars. Chuck Berry, born in 1926, was the first to drive up onto the highway and announce that we are born to run.”
I vanlig ordning utses en pristagare inom populärmusik och en inom klassisk musik, således går 2014 pris även till Peter Sellars.
”The Polar Music Prize 2014 is awarded to Peter Sellars from Pittsburgh, USA. The director Peter Sellars is a living definition of what the Polar Music Prize is all about: highlighting the music and presenting it in a new context. With his controversial productions of opera and theatre, Peter Sellars has depicted everything from war and famine to religion and globalisation. Sellars has set Mozart in the luxury of Trump Tower and in the drug trade of Spanish Harlem, turned Nixon’s visit to China into opera and set Kafka’s obsession with home cleanliness to music. Peter Sellars shows us that 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.”
Du kan se videopresentationer av både Chuck Berry och Peter Sellars här nedan: