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Shortlist Music Prize to return
After one-year hiatus, indie honor will be resurrected as co-founder acquires rights from his estranged former partner.
The brief-but-odd history of the Shortlist Music Prize took another turn today, as its cofounder said the annual indie award will return after a one-year hiatus, as he had acquired the rights to the name from his estranged former partner.
Sufjan Stevens'
Illinois, the 2005 New Pantheon Prize winner.
Greg Spotts, who cofounded the prize in 2001 to honor the "most adventurous and creative albums of the year" that occurred outside of mainstream music, said today that the award will return this year. The Shortlist's Web site states that the list of "listmakers" (judges) will be announced in October and the nominees for the prize will be unveiled in November.
The prize, modeled after the prestigious Mercury Prize in Britain, has previously honored albums from N.E.R.D., TV on the Radio, and Damien Rice, with the nominees and winners being chosen by a panel of artists and journalists, including Beck, Elton John, Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson of the Roots, Elijah Wood, and Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie.
Spotts said that he acquired the rights to Shortlist from Tom Sarig, with whom he created it and with whom he had a falling out that led to Sarig creating the New Pantheon Prize in 2005 to replace the Shortlist prize.
In a carefully worded statement, Spotts thanked Sarig for his contributions to peer-selected music awards, while Sarig said he appreciated Spotts' hard work during their years together and wished Spotts well in continuing the Shortlist mission.
Sarig, a former record label executive who is now a manager and label consultant, launched the New Pantheon last year, with Sujan Stevens' Illinois taking home the prize. But a planned awards ceremony in Los Angeles was initially delayed but never occurred, with Sarig citing unexplained "logistical reasons."
Spotts, who made the 2003 documentary American Jobs about outsourcing, said he was uniting the two awards and was welcoming Stevens into the family of Shortlist prize winners.
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