QUEEN, HERBIE HANCOCK AND BARBARA HANNIGAN
ANNOUNCED AS 2025 POLAR MUSIC PRIZE LAUREATES
Award ceremony will take place on Tuesday 27 May in Stockholm
#polarmusicprize
Stockholm, Tuesday 18 March: Queen, Herbie Hancock and Barbara Hannigan are today announced as recipients of the 2025 Polar Music Prize. The trio will join the roll call of trailblazing artists all bestowed with the prestigious honour, which celebrates excellence in music. The Polar Music Prize ceremony takes place on Tuesday 27 May in Stockholm at the Grand Hôtel and is broadcast live in Sweden on TV4 at 8pm (CET).
For three decades, the Polar Music Prize has honoured and recognised pioneering musical legacy. The 2025 recipients will add their names to the list of innovators from contemporary and classical music, winning one of the creative realm’s most coveted modern accolades. The Polar Music Prize is presented at a ceremony in Stockholm in the presence of the Swedish Royal Family, and each Laureate will receive money of one million Swedish Krona (approx. £74,082 GBP and $93,897 USD).
On being chosen, Queen said: “We are highly and deeply honoured to be given the Polar Music Prize this year. It’s incredible, thank you so much”
Herbie Hancock said: “The Polar Music Prize is a prestigious honour, and I am both thrilled and humbled to be a recipient. The Laureates who have come before me have left an indelible mark on humanity through their profound examples of inspiration and dedication.”
Barbara Hannigan said: “I am deeply moved and humbled to receive this year’s Polar Music Prize. Thank you so much for including me among this incredible and inspiring group of Laureates.”
Marie Ledin, managing director of the Polar Music Prize, added: “It is our immense privilege to honour and award these three Laureates at the 2025 Polar Music Prize. Queen, a band synonymous with the very fabric of pop culture, have made an impact on music that spans decades, generations and genres. They are a most deserving recipient, beloved the world over.
“Herbie Hancock is a musical legend and tour de force. His music has pushed boundaries in jazz, funk soul and R&B, and we are thrilled to honour his enduring legacy. Barbara Hannigan is a presence like no other; a passionate soprano and conductor of a unique and courageous path. We are looking forward to celebrating all three recipients at this year’s event.”
Formed in 1970, Queen – Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon (who joined the band in 1971) – are one of the most enduring and compelling bands ever to have emerged from the UK. Fusing an eclectic blend of progressive rock, hard rock, heavy metal, arena pomp and pop accessibility, their music is unmistakable. It was the band’s vocal harmonies, in particular, that marked them out as such a unique proposition on the world stage. “We blended very well together,” said Taylor. “We developed our vocal sound which was very much the three voices and that was very recognisable.”
May added: “The three of us could all sing and we had one of the greatest singers in the world in Freddie, of course. I don’t think we quite knew it at the time. We were fortunate because when the three of us sang in unison within the harmony parts, it made a very distinctive tuneful sound.”
Unlike many of their peers, Queen embraced feverous audience participation, which became a calling card of their legendary live performances. May said: “It was an epiphany for us when we suddenly realised everyone was singing everything at our concerts, so we thought – why don’t we encourage it? From then on, we were a band completely interacting with our audience. It was a big step at the time to do that.”
Freddie Mercury’s prowess as a frontman, with his charisma, penchant for theatrics and incredible range, made him one of the all-time greatest rock stars. “He’s very complex, Freddie,” continued May. “A very shy person who became this very powerful person on stage, and he understood how people connect. He was a leader on stage. A leader of the people. He had an extraordinary voice.”
Together, Queen remain one of the world’s biggest-selling musical artists, with over 300 million record sales and a legacy that continues to enthral, influence and inspire.
Herbie Hancock is an icon of modern music. Across a colourful career, he has transcended limitations and genres while maintaining the throughline of his distinctive voice. On discovering his love of music at a young age, Hancock said: “My parents got me a piano when I was 7 years old. From that point on, music became my life. We got a teacher who said, ‘Let me play something for you.’ She played Chopin. It was so beautiful that I’ll never forget it. I said, ‘Can you teach me to play like that?’ She said, ‘I can try!’ That was another defining moment in my life.”
With an illustrious career spanning five decades and 14 Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year for “River: The Joni Letters”, he continues to captivate audiences across the globe. There are few artists who have had more influence on acoustic and electronic jazz and R&B than Herbie Hancock. As the immortal Miles Davis said in his autobiography, “Herbie was the stop after Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, and I haven’t heard anybody yet who has come after him.”
Grammy Award-winning soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan is renowned for creating innovative orchestral programs that combine the classic and contemporary in a dramatic and authentic manner. Having started her career as a soprano, Barbara turned her hand to conducting at age 40 at the Châtelet in Paris. Now, she balances her commitments to both, paving the way with her own inimitable style. “There’s a slight splitting of the brain,” said Hannigan. “As a singer, you need to be a little bit ahead, mainly in the centre of the timing. With conducting, you need to be further ahead. It’s like I have two different click tracks in my head at the same time.”
Barbara Hannigan is Principal Guest Conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and l’Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, and Associate Artist with the London Symphony Orchestra. In 2026, Hannigan will take the helm of Iceland Symphony Orchestra as their Chief Conductor and Artistic Director. She has had starring soprano roles on opera stages including London’s Royal Opera House, Teatro San Carlo in Naples, Paris Opera’s Palais Garnier, New York’s Lincoln Center, and the opera houses of Berlin, Hamburg and Munich. On her style as a soprano, Hannigan said: “I knew that I had a certain way of leading when I was singing. One conductor even said to me, ‘You sing like a conductor.’ I would show in the body how I was going to land notes and how the line would need to move.”
Hannigan continued: “It’s play. The word, it’s from our childhood… we ‘play’ music. There has to be this primal, joyful urge.”
The 2025 winners join a list of previous Laureates that includes the crème de la crème of music, such as Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel, Chuck Berry, Ennio Morricone, Led Zeppelin, Patti Smith, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Kronos Quartet, Joni Mitchell, Elton John, Metallica, Iggy Pop, Ravi Shankar, Renée Fleming, Miriam Makeba, Wayne Shorter, Sofia Gubaidulina, Angélique Kidjo and many more.
The Polar Music Prize awards committee is an independent, 11-member board who select the Laureates. It receives nominations from the public as well as from the International Music Council, the UNESCO-founded NGO which promotes geographical and musical diversity.
Announcement videos, publicity shots and biographies are available on the website www.polarmusicprize.org
