The Jury of the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) announced today the Awards for 2015. Conductor Dmitrij Kitajenko, 74, is honored with our Lifetime Achievement Award. Violinist Christian Tetzlaff is Artist of the Year, young violinist Yury Revich and Belgian soprano Jodie Devos are ICMA's Young Artists of the Year. Leipzig based Accentus Music is Label of the Year. In total eight Special Awards are listed.
In the Audio and Video categories, 15 productions from 13 different labels are awarded a prize. Jury President Rémy Franck says: « We are happy that among our winners we can count again a majority of independent labels, some of them, as we know, struggling to survive in today's difficult market. The winning labels belong to eight different countries. »
Among the artists performing on the winning audio and video releases are Philippe Jaroussky, Joyce DiDonato, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Jordi Savall, Michael Tilson Thomas, Marc Albrecht, Zhu Xiao-Mei, John Holloway, Evgeni Koroliov, Frank-Peter Zimmermann, Guennadi Rojdestvensky, Unsuk Chin, Adam Fischer and Claudio Abbado whose two last recordings won an award.
Rémy Franck says: « It is our mission to promote recordings and artists responding to our high expectation in terms of artistry and musical message. The 2015 result is international and strong, showing our determination not to pick just run-of-the-mill releases but to dig deep into the recording world in order to get a very special panel. »
The Award Ceremony and Gala Concert will take place on 28 March at the Bilkent Hall, hosted by the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra.
The complete award list is available in the dedicated section of our website