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The 2025 Polar Music Prize is awarded to American pianist and jazz musician Herbie Hancock. The title of his autobiography Possibilities is fitting for a musician who has always focused on musical development and finding new ways of moving forward. While growing up Herbie Hancock was influenced by Mozart as much as Oscar Peterson. At college he studied both electrical engineering and musical composition. As a musician, he united these worlds by making the leap to electric piano and synthesizers. As a composer, he has written timeless standards such as Watermelon Man and Cantaloupe Island, and for decades has worked closely with Polar Music Prize Laureates Joni Mitchell and Wayne Shorter. As a musician, he has influenced the development of R&B, funk and hip-hop with visionary albums such as Head Hunters and the MTV hit Rockit. Herbie Hancock is a jazz scientist.
The 2025 Polar Music Prize is awarded to the British rock group Queen. With the foundation in hard rock, Queen have developed a distinctive and instantly recognizable sound that no one else can emulate. Furious energy and muscular playing are combined with intricate virtuoso harmony singing from drummer Roger Taylor, guitarist Brian May and, of course, singer Freddie Mercury, one of the most charismatic front figures in the history of music, with a voice that spanned four octaves. What helped to make Queen a unique band in music history was four equally strong songwriters, including bassist John Deacon, who all wrote their own number one hits, and constantly spurred each other on to take artistic risks. Half a century after they made their recordings, Queen’s songs are still heard everywhere and appeal to new generations of listeners. Queen were not exaggerating when they sang We are the Champions.
The 2025 Polar Music Prize is awarded to Canadian soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan. Her exceptional musicality and courage make her one of the world’s foremost interpreters of contemporary classical music. She has worked with and earned the praise of former Polar Prize Laureates such as Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti and Esa-Pekka Salonen, as well as an array of the world’s most eminent directors, conductors, orchestras, composers and choreographers. Always prepared to push the boundaries, she has a unique talent for broadening the listener’s horizons with the music she chooses to program, perform and record. While Barbara Hannigan built her career as a magnetic soprano, her intense musicianship and charisma eventually led to invitations to try her hand at orchestral conducting. Since then, she has become an acclaimed maestro who is admired for combining old and new music in her unique concert programs. Whenever she conducts and sings at the same time, it is an experience no one forgets. It’s little wonder that the name at the top of the wish list of so many composers, is Barbara Hannigan.