Nile Rodgers of disco group Chic, classical music innovator Esa-Pekka Salonen win Polar Music Prize

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Nile Rodgers, American songwriter and co-founder of the 1970s influential disco band Chic and esteemed Finnish classical music composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen have won the 2024 Polar Music Prize, a Swedish music award.The award panel said Tuesday of the American musician who is a guitarist, composer and producer that “there are few in history, if any, who have composed dance music as sophisticated and subtly arranged as Nile Rodgers” who “turned disco and funk into an art” with his group Chic and songs like “Le Freak”. Currently acting as the music director of the San Francisco Symphony and Conductor Laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen “is an innovator” within the classical music scene, the award panel said.