Nile Rodgers, the award-winning songwriter, composer, producer and guitarist and co-founder of Chic, and Esa-Pekka Salonen, world-renowned composer and conductor and the current music director for the San Francisco Symphony, received their 2024 Polar Music Prizes from the hands of King Carl XVI Gustaf at a royal ceremony held at Stockholm’s Grand Hotel on Tuesday night (May 21).
The Polar Music Prize was first presented to Paul McCartney and the Baltic States in 1992 after it was founded and funded by Stig “Stikkan” Anderson, manager of ABBA and a songwriter in his own right, as well as a music publisher and label owner.
Rodgers spoke from the heart when accepting his award from the king. “I know that music changes lives,” Rodgers told the audience of over 300 guests. “I’ve been told, ‘Artists are the gatekeepers of truth.’ I am honored to be here tonight in such distinguished company. Congratulations to the outstanding Esa-Pekka Salonen and all the past recipients of the Polar Music Prize. To have been acknowledged in the same way as Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin, Chuck Berry, Joni Mitchell, Ennio Morricone and so many more of my heroes is a dream come true.
“I would like to give a very special thanks to the Polar Music Prize for recognizing so many artists of color, and to the people of Sweden for welcoming us with open arms, from Eric Dolphy and Miles Davis to Jimi Hendrix, way before most people did. I say this from the bottom of my heart: We are family.”
Speeches aside, it was a full night of music as Swedish artists performed the music of the two Laureates. Among the many Rodgers hits heard during the ceremony and banquet were “We Are Family,” “Le Freak,” “Get Lucky,” “Good Times,” “I’m Coming Out,” “Material Girl,” “Let’s Dance,” “Spacer” and “Everybody Dance.” Salonen’s music was represented by many classical pieces and a stunning rendition of “Innan Kärleken Kom” (“Before Love Came”) sung by Eva Dahlgren, who wrote the lyrics for a 1995 album. Salonen was the conductor on the track. Dahlgren, a nine-time Swedish Grammys winner, received a standing ovation after her performance.
Near the end of the royal banquet, Polar Music Prize managing director Marie Ledin, the daughter of the late Stig Anderson, told the assembled guests of her personal connections to the two Laureates.
“When I was younger, I loved dancing,” she said. “Every weekend I would dress up, and my friends and I would hit the dance floors and in all the clubs, night after night, the DJs played the irresistible music of Chic and Sister Sledge – songs that made us move and are to this day a memorable part of my younger days.”
Then Ledin reached back for another memory. “In 1995 I had the privilege of sitting in Berwaldhallen [a concert hall in Stockholm] to hear a young but brilliant conductor rehearse the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. I clearly remember how he suddenly stopped the orchestra as he apparently noticed one wrong note in the score. I was astonished. How was that possible? Not only to hear that tiny mistake but then to bring the whole 70-piece orchestra to a halt in an instant. I was impressed. Of course, that conductor was our Laureate, Esa-Pekka Salonen.”
Rodgers and Salonen join a long list of Laureates who have been awarded the Prize over the last 32 years, including Bruce Springsteen, Emmylou Harris, B. B. King, Burt Bacharach, Sting, Renée Fleming, Elton John, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, Quincy Jones, Yo-Yo Ma, Max Martin, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Angélique Kidjo, Patti Smith, Wayne Shorter, Björk, Metallica, Diane Warren, Ray Charles, Ravi Shankar, Chris Blackwell, Dizzy Gillespie, Miriam Makeba, Iggy Pop, Grandmaster Flash, Yousou N’Dour, Gilberto Gil, Sonny Rollins and Isaac Stern.
