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.
Jazz, Rock, Pop
Sophie Hunger
»Finde mich (Find Me)«. The title of the song from the German-English album Hallucinations describes the work of Swiss artist Sophie Hunger with surprising precision. For years she has been an almost ghost-like presence in a broad range of music industry categories: pop, rock, indie, singer-songwriter. She is never dull. When she sings quiet ballads in Swiss German, such as »D’Red« from her second studio album 1983, she touches our hearts with economical urgency, startling in its directness. The Bern-born singer, songwriter and film composer is a careful observer of human conditions. She plays guitar and piano; she is a columnist and an author. Since 2008, she has released eight albums: hypnotic, independent and outrageous in turn. Her live performances are extraordinary. Despite all her inventiveness, she provides us with familiar references that we can grasp, such as chanson or electronic space-pop sounds. She once left her native mountains for the USA, but soon returned. Thank you, Sophie! For the annual committee: Petra Rieß
Jazz, Rock, Pop
Wolfgang Niedecken
Wolfgang Niedecken writes and composes his poetic songs in his everyday dialect, Kölsch, focussing on people, their relationships, thoughts and feelings. He is an authentic ambassador for his home town and its musical language. Like few others, he is able to present big topics in small, personal stories, expressing them in honest language. Rather than avoiding problematic topics in his songs, the songwriter addresses them in a nuanced manner, but with a clear stance. His great social commitment, as in »Arsch huh« or various aid projects in Africa, is inextricably linked with his musical work. Wolfgang Niedecken is a living legend, not only for the people of Cologne. A down-to-earth person and outstanding musician. For the annual committee: Sabrina Palm
Producer
Patrik Landolt
It all began at the Taktlos Festival in Zurich in 1984, with a concert recording by pianist Irène Schweizer for which no label could be found. Patrik Landolt – initially a philosophy student and event organiser, then a journalist – took matters into his own hands and released the recording two years later. It marked the launch of Intakt Records, an internationally-respected forum for contemporary improvised music. Patrik Landolt ran the label for 36 years until January 2022, initially on a voluntary basis and then as head of a creative team that never lost sight of artistic independence. Numerous artists from Zurich to Berlin and New York have benefited from his enthusiasm for music without stylistic boundaries, from the freedom of aesthetics, which Intakt, as a label run in a similar way to a publishing house, has continued to promote with great commitment to this day. Without Patrik Landolt, this institution of contemporary jazz would never have come into being, grown and flourished. It is his passion that has made so much great art possible. For the annual committee: Ralf Dombrowski