This award is title sponsored by our ceremony sponsor, PRS for Music. It celebrates exceptional songwriters and composers who have shaped British cultural life and excelled in their field.
Awards PRS for Music Outstanding Contribution to British Music
PRS for Music Outstanding Contribution to British Music The Outstanding Contribution To British Music Ivor Novello Award does exactly what it says on the tin. It has, after all, previously been received by the likes of David Bowie, Ray Davies and Kate Bush. It takes a special kind of songwriter and composer to follow in footsteps like that and they don’t come much more special than Anne Dudley. Indeed, over a 35-year career, she has proved so astonishingly versatile and contributed such stellar work across a range of genres and disciplines that it’s occasionally been difficult to believe there’s only one of her. This is someone who started out as a member of avant-garde pop group Art Of Noise (alongside Trevor Horn) and also contributed – as session musician, co-writer, arranger and producer – to classic recordings by the likes of ABC, Tom Jones, Elton John and Seal. Yet she has been equally prolific on the classical side of things, becoming the BBC Concert Orchestra’s Composer In Association in 2002. She has worked on projects that range from eclectic (a pantomime version of Cinderella in collaboration with Stephen Fry and Kevin Spacey) to electric (she was the musical director of the BBC Electric Proms’ 30th anniversary take on Saturday Night Fever). Even against such a CV, her film scores stand out. Praised by no less a connoisseur than Paul Verhoeven for her adaptability, her range has been astounding, taking in movies as incomparable as American History X, The Crying Game, The Full Monty and Verhoeven’s own Black Book. On television, her work has soundtracked everything from Jeeves And Wooster to Poldark. Such creativity has resulted in her becoming one of the few people to have won a BRIT Award, an Oscar and a Grammy. That she should now add this Ivor to her mantelpiece collection confirms her as a truly unique British talent.
The 2017 Ivor Novello Awards 31
