The Polar Music Prize 2015

The 2015 Laureates are the Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie and American artist Emmylou Harris. 

  • 2015 Polar Music Prize Laureate, 13-time Grammy winner Emmylou Harris. Photo: Veronique Rolland
  • The Polar Music Prize 2015 has been awarded to percussionist Evelyn Glennie and 13-time Grammy Award winner Emmylou Harris.

  • Evelyn Glennie from Aberdeen, Scotland. Photo: Jim Callaghen
  • Evelyn Glennie, from Aberdeen, Scotland, who has been deaf since the age of 12, has a mission to teach the world to listen. From her citation for the Polar Music Prize: She has widened our understanding of what music is and shown us that listening is only partly to do with our ears. Everyone, whatever their physical circumstances, can perceive and perform music, can feel and convey good vibrations. We all have our own, individual tone.

  • Evelyn Glennie, leading virtuoso percussionist and 2015 Polar Music Prize Laureate. Photo: Jim Callaghen
  • Emmylou Harris from Birmingham, Alabama for her five-decade career as a vocal artist. The music of Emmylou Harris contains the history and topography of the entire American continent. Her voice follows the contours of the American landscape, from the highest peaks to the endless prairie. Weather, soil and colour, it can all be perceived in her music.

  • Both laureates will attend the gala ceremony and receive their prizes from King Carl XVI on June 9 in Stockholm’s Concert Hall.

  • The Polar Music Prize was founded in 1989 by the late Stig Anderson, the publisher, lyricist and manager of ABBA. The prize, which has been awarded since 1992, when it went to former Beatle Paul McCartney, has also been won by Dizzy Gillespie, Elton John, Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, Keith Jarrett, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan and Italian composer Ennio Morricone. Last year it went to Rock legend Chuck Berry and opera and theater director Peter Sellars, both from the U.S.

  • For more info, see http://polarmusicprize.org