"The Polar Music Prize 2010 is being awarded to Icelandic artist Björk. With her deeply personal music and lyrics, her precise arrangements and her unique voice, Björk has already made an indelible mark on pop music and modern culture at large, despite her relative youth. No other artist moves so freely between avant-garde and pop. With her albums and videos, Björk has taken avant-garde to the top of the charts. She has also always embraced technological advances, combining computers with ancient sounds. Björk has introduced an arctic temperament to popular music and shown how passionate and explosive it can be. Björk is an untameable force of nature, an artist who marches to nobody’s tune but her own."
Read Biography »

"The Polar Music Prize 2010 is being awarded to Italian composer, arranger and conductor Ennio Morricone. Ennio Morricone’s congenial compositions and arrangements lift our existence to another plane, making the mundane feel like dramatic scenes in full Cinemascope. When, in 1964, Ennio Morricone scored the soundtrack for the Western “A Fistful of Dollars” (“Per un pugno di dollari”), budgetary constraints prevented him from using a full orchestra. Instead, he built up a brand new kind of music that set the tone for half a century of film music, but also influenced and inspired a number of musicians in the spheres of pop, rock and classical music."
Read Biography »