Conductor Jose Abreu, Peter Gabriel win Swedish music prize
Last Updated: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 | 10:00 AM ET
CBC News
British singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel and Venezuelan composer-conductor Jose Antonio Abreu are the latest winners of Sweden's prestigious Polar Music Prize.
Organizers announced the duo as the 2009 recipients of the annual musical honour, which includes a one million kroner prize (about $143,000 Cdn), in Stockholm on Tuesday.
The prize committee hailed Gabriel, the former Genesis frontman and world-renowned musician, for "ground-breaking, outward-looking and boundary-busting artistry."
The 59-year-old artist and human rights activist has "not only had a significant influence on the development of popular music, he has redefined the very concept," the committee said in its citation.
Venezuela's musical educator
Abreu, a composer, conductor, former politician, economist, children's right's activist and founder of the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, is best known as the mastermind behind Venezuela's famed El Sistema educational music network.
The countrywide program built on myriad smaller, regional ensembles that teach music to more than 300,000 Venezuelan children from all backgrounds, with the most promising pupils then chosen to participate in the country's National Youth Orchestra.
Abreu has also helped create youth and children's orchestras and choirs worldwide.
His work "shows us what is possible when music is made the common ground and thereby part of people's everyday lives," the Polar Prize committee said.
Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf will present both Gabriel and Abreu with their awards at a gala in Stockholm on August 31.
Established in 1989 by Stig Anderson, manager of Swedish pop group ABBA, the Polar Music Prize is the country's best-known musical honour and celebrates the contributions of one pop and one classical music figure every year.
Past recipients have included Pink Floyd, Renée Fleming, Joni Mitchell, Paul McCartney, Dizzy Gillespie, Pierre Boulez, Bruce Springsteen and Mstislav Rostropovitch.
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