Honorary Awards
The annual committee of the PdSK awards Honorary Awards in the form of certificates to outstanding personalities who, as interpreters, artists, or producers, have made a noteworthy contribution to the recording of music on audio and video mediums.
Producer
Manfred Eicher
Not many Europeans exist who can claim to have helped shape the course of jazz – this great music of black America. Perhaps Manfred Eicher is the only one. With ECM, his record company, founded in the early seventies, he produced hundreds of recordings and managed to shape a unique aesthetic and attitude: a chamber music-style sound, a certain kind of cover design, signs of his love for the artists. Eicher is everything for the music: the producer, co-thinker, traveling salesman, impresario. The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Tomasz Stańko – this mix of artists on ECM is held together by Eicher’s taste. All this also applies to the exquisite classical music recordings, old and new, which he has been producing for many years. He gave Steve Reich and Arvo Pärta a home, all of which only underscores the world-embracing curiosity of this renaissance man of sounds. For the annual committee: Tobias Rapp
Since it is not yet possible to foresee when we will finally be able to celebrate and honor our award winner live, the official laudatio for Manfred Eicher is being read on YouTube.
Classical Music
William Christie
When he was admitted to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, he inherited the seat and vote from Marcel Marceau. Soon after, he officially became the »World Ambassador of French Culture«. This shows how far An American in Paris can get if he wholeheartedly devotes himself to reanimation of the Grande Nation’s lost treasures. Lully’s »Atys« was the first tragédie lyrique to be put back on the agenda by William Christie with his ensemble Les Arts Florissants. Works by Rameau, Charpentier, Mondonville, Campra, Delalande and others followed. More than seventy reference recordings have been made in this way, some with excursions to other European countries, to Mozart or Purcell, Handel or Monteverdi. Christie’s versatility as a harpsichordist and conductor is at least as exemplary as his rigor as a music teacher is legendary. He founded a thriving foundation called »Le Jardin des Voix«, especially for young singers. What is less well known is that when Christie left his American homeland around fifty years ago, not least to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War, he first joined an experimental ensemble in London and played music of the 20th century. A true polyhistor: he discovers the present in the old and the tradition in the new. To this day, William Christie puts on more than 100 performances a year. For the annual committee: Christian Kröber
Since it is not yet possible to foresee when we will finally be able to celebrate and honor our award winner live, the official laudatio for William Christie is being read on YouTube.
Jazz, Rock, Pop
Peter Brötzmann
He is one of the great free spirits of German jazz. Peter Brötzmann, saxophonist, bandleader, and composer, is a one-of-a-kind character: starting out as a visual artist, he has never fit into just a single category. He broke with many conventions but was never unreconciliable. Provocative, unpolished, but also highly sensitive – he has gone his own way for decades and has turned people’s listening habits upside down more than once, with his martial work »Machine Gun« from 1968, for example, or with his highly energetic performances at festivals all over the world. Like only a few German jazz musicians, he was able to assert himself for decades in the motherland of jazz, the USA, and not the least set standards in large-scale avant-garde jazz with his well-known »Chicago« ensembles. Peter Brötzmann is a gesamtkunstwerk that more than deserves the honorary award from the PdSK. For the annual committee: Matthias Wegner
Since it is not yet possible to foresee when we will finally be able to celebrate and honor our award winner live, the official laudatio for Peter Brötzmann is being read on YouTube.
The Honorary Award was presented live to Peter Brötzmann on 4th November 2022 as part of a concert in Berlin.