COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP):
CELLIST YO-YO Ma yesterday won the 2006 Sonning Music Prize, Denmark's top music award. He will receive 500,000 kroner - about euro67,000 or US$80,000 - in prize money during a concert in Copenhagen on Dec. 10, 2006.
Ma's career "has always been marked by his everlasting search for new ways to communicate with the audience and his ambition for artistic growth and renewal," the committee said in its citation.
ANNUAL AWARD
The prize, named after Leonie Sonning, has been awarded annually since 1959 to an internationally renowned composer, musician, conductor or singer. Sonning, who died in 1970, was the widow of Danish editor Carl Johan Sonning.
Born in Paris to Chinese parents, Ma began to study the cello with his father at age 4 and moved with his parents to New York shortly after. He graduated from Harvard University in 1976.
He is the second cellist to receive the prize, after Mstislav Rostropovich in 1981.
Previous winners include Igor Stravinsy, Leonard Bernstein and Anne-Sophie Mutter, among
others. Jazz musicians also have received the award, including Miles Davis and Keith Jarett.
British conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner won the 2005 award.
