Newly established music award for female artists and songwriters:
(Oslo, September 12, 2024) Artist and songwriter Fay Wildhagen will be awarded the newly established Anne Grete Preus Prize, which consists of 100,000 kroner and a trophy. The prize will be awarded to an outstanding female artist and songwriter annually, and was established at the request of Anne Grete Preus herself. TONO will administer the prize, select winners and present it.
/ 12/09/2024 / Willy MartinsenBefore one of Norway's greatest artists and songwriters, Anne Grete Preus, passed away on August 25, 2019, she asked her friend and manager Rune Lem (Live Nation) to establish a fund with her future TONO and Gramo earnings. The fund was to be used, according to Anne Grete's wishes, as funds to establish a music award that would go to outstanding female artists and songwriters.
– Anne Grete had a strong commitment to women in music. We are pleased that we can now put her will into practice and announce the establishment of the Anne Grete Preus Award. We hope and believe that it will be an important award in music Norway, which will have great significance for women in music as Anne Grete wanted, says Rune Lem, Anne Grete Preus's former manager.
The funds for the Anne Grete Preus Prize come from Preus's TONO and Gramo earnings, as well as the profits from the sale of her guitar collection. There are funds to award the prize for 15-20 years.
Rune Lem and Anne Grete Preus' brother, Hans Ragnar Preus, contacted TONO in the summer of 2023 with a request to see if the organization wanted to take responsibility for the award.
– Anne Grete Preus was one of Norway's greatest and most important artists and songwriters for several decades. There is a need for this award, and we are very proud that we have been allowed to administer it, says Karl Vestli, CEO of TONO.
It will be TONO's EDVARD jury that will select the winners in the years to come, and TONO will also be responsible for the awards. This first year, however, it is not the EDVARD jury that has chosen the winner. Anne Grete Preus made it a condition for the establishment of the award that the first winner should be Fay Wildhagen.
– I feel honored and deeply grateful for this recognition of someone I held in such high regard, both as an artist and a person. A truly great and moving day, says Fay Wildhagen.
By arrangement with by:Larm, the award was presented to Fay Wildhagen by Rune Lem during the opening of this year's festival on Thursday, October 12th.
The Anne Grete Preus Prize was established at Anne Grete Preus' own request. It was established in 2024, and consists of 100,000 kroner, which is awarded annually to a female songwriter and artist who creates her own music and lyrics within the popular music landscape in the broadest sense. The recipient must be established and have some releases behind them, but still be willing to develop further. The winner must have clear artistic ambitions to move popular music away from the purely commercial, and strengthen personal and artistic popular music. The goal of the prize is to inspire music artists to continuously work on developing themselves further.
TONO was founded in 1928 and is a non-profit cooperative owned and managed by authors (composers and lyricists) and music publishers, and on their behalf manages the economic copyrights in the music they have created. TONO grants permission for the use of protected music, for example on radio, TV, the internet, concerts and cinemas for a fee, and transfers its financial results each year to the rights holders in music that has been played publicly. TONO has more than 42,000 members in Norway, but also works for millions of authors and music publishers from around the world. TONO gives music creators an economic basis to be able to create new music, and collects and simplifies the licensing of protected music to music users.
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