Honorary Awards

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

Ute Kleeberg

A quarter of a century ago, the pop-musicalization of the world had progressed so far that hardly any songs were sung in kindergartens anymore, but they were sung in casting shows instead. New words were needed, and there was talk of »Education«. Ute Kleeberg stepped into this tricky situation with a revolutionary idea: she told the children old fairy tales again. And at the points where a window could be opened into the realm of the imagination, she played them all kinds of rare, romantic chamber music pieces. Together with her husband, the clarinetist Uwe Stoffel, she founded the Edition See-Igel. More than forty children’s audiobooks have been produced since then, with first-class narrators and enchanting music, professionally recorded, all of the finest quality. Some of the stories invented by Ute Kleeberg herself have long since become classics, such as »Sternenstaub« (1995). Others she brings back out of obscurity, or she carefully rewrites familiar stories, such as »Das tapfere Schneiderlein« (2020). Language and music intertwine so easily and naturally, as though it was the simplest thing in the world. Often these stories were awarded. Now, finally: the PdSK Honorary Award for the entire edition. For the annual committee: Eleonore Büning

Alberto Basso

If there is someone who has refuted Igor Stravinsky’s much-quoted bon mot that Antonio Vivaldi is »a boring man who composed the same concert six hundred times«, it is the musicologist Alberto Basso, born in Turin in 1931. The Vivaldi edition he initiated and supervised for »Naïve« began in 2001 with an album with Concerti da camera and now comprises fifty-eight episodes – and it is far from over: one of the largest publishing projects in record history. The plan is to record all of Vivaldi’s approximately 450 works, the manuscripts of which are now in the National Library of Turin: operas and church music, arias, cantatas, sonatas, symphonies – and of course countless concerti, none of which are the same. With every new CD release of the edition, the wealth of this repertoire amazes the listener, and Basso’s passion and competence guarantee top-class interpretations and scientific accuracy – a life’s work! For the annual committee: Michael Stegemann

Eva Mair-Holmes

If in 2018 a hip and local compilation appears with the Bavarian capital Munich as its focus, one shouldn’t be worried: everything that the Trikont label published bears witness to cosmopolitan outlook and local pride alike. Internationalism is paired with Roots-research and makes Trikonts range grow with each new publication into a liberal world cultural heritage in a class of its own. Eva Mair-Holmes runs the publishing house and music label, the company being a continuation of what began as a collective in the sixties, after her partner and husband Achim Bergmann died in March in 2018. With conviction, fearlessness, and experience, she guarantees the preservation of an influential assortment between the Bavarian Alm and Caribbean beaches, between the mining of historical gold and contemporary innovation, documented on numerous compilation albums that are among the highlights of editorial publishing work. Trikont is one of the oldest indie labels in the world, the company motto »Our own Voice« a beacon of German music culture. For its quality and continued existence stands Eva Mair-Holmes. For the annual committee: Christine Heise

Palazzetto Bru Zane

Rolf W. Stoll

Simon Perry

Peter Finger

Burkhard Schmilgun

Mark Obert-Thorn

Reiner E. Moritz

Harald Quendler

Klaus L. Neumann und Barbara Schwendowius

Bruno Monsaingeon

Richard Weize und Bear Family

Andreas Spreer

Stefan Winter

Robert von Bahr (Label BIS)

Siegfried Loch (WEA/ACT)

Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm

Matthias Winckelmann

Klaus Heymann

Werner X. Uehlinger

Wolf Erichson

Carl E. Jefferson

Jürgen E. Schmidt (Preiser)

Jost Gebers