The Daily Roxette

Roxette has received the Government's Honorary Award for Swedish Music Exports.

Different variants of the Honorary Award for Swedish music exports have since 2006 been awarded to someone in the music industry who have made longstanding efforts to promote and spread Swedish music abroad and helped to spread a positive image of Sweden, says the Swedish government's site.

The jury's motivation: "This year's honorary award winner celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2011 with one of the biggest tours a Swedish band has ever undertaken. The big world tour that began in Russia in February 2011 - and which will extend well into this year - exceeds the forecast of one million tickets for the group's performances on four continents. The group has sold over 50 million albums plus another 20 million singles, and created some of music history's greatest hits: "It Must Have Been Love," "Joyride," "The Look," "Listen to Your Heart" and "Dressed for Success" - just to name a few. After ABBA Roxette is Sweden's most successful band of all time on the international music scene."

Per tells The Daily Roxette that they are very proud: "A mighty fine prize to get! Fun to be appreciated and recognized in our mother country as well."

You can now vote for Roxette as "Best Live Act" for the Rockbjörnen, the famous Swedish pop music awards given out by Aftonbladet.

Aftonbladet's Rockbjörnen page

MALMÖ – Christoffer Lundquist, lead guitarist for Roxette and a multi-talented musician, composer, and producer, was honored this evening with the first Sir George Martin Music Award at a gala event held here in Sweden's third largest city.  Sir George Martin himself, 85, best known as the producer for all but one of The Beatles albums, was in attendance and appeared on stage to personally congratulate Christoffer.

The program, which was a mix of music highlighting the careers of both Christoffer and Sir George, included perfomances by Helena Josefsson, Miriam Aïda, Michael Saxell (with Jalle Lorensson on harmonica), Cecilia Nordlund, Edda Magnason and Peter von Poehl. The stage band and orchestra was under the direction of Joakim Hallin. Lisa Wall of Sveriges Radio served as emcee for the event.

Helena, known to our readers for singing backup during the current Roxette Charm School tour, sang an energetic version of her own song "Nån Annanstans, Nån Annan Gång" ("Some Other Place, Some Other Time") that was dedicated to Christoffer, and later helped out during a medley of music from the James Bond films that Sir George was involved with.

During a video documentary that highlighted Christoffer's career, clips of a television interview with Per Gessle were shown where Per speaks of the role Christoffer and Clarence Öfwerman play as producers. 

The prize, which is for 100,000 Swedish kronor, is sponsored by Sparbanken Öresund and is expected to be awarded annually to a person involved with music who is active in Skåne, the southernmost region in Sweden.

Among those in attendance were Magnus Börjeson, bass guitar player in the Roxette band and Helena's husband, Martinique, who performed as the opening act during Per's Party Crasher tour. 

Ticket sales for Roxette's fall leg of the world tour are selling well in Germany. According to the music business magazine Musikmarkt.de , Roxette is #3 on the German ticket charts. This list is based on sales figures by the biggest local ticket vendor, eventim.de, and its partners. The first two positions are being held by German-speaking artists, so Roxette is basically the best selling international artist at the moment.

Furthermore, as the Association of the German Music Industry (Bundesverband Musikindustrie) revealed on their website, Roxette's Hits album has sold more than 100,000 copies and has therefore been certified gold.

"tryffel2" on Roxette's official forum contributed to this article. 

Christoffer Lundquist's solo album, Through the Window, that took him about 12 years to complete, will be released by Warner Music Sweden on May 4, just two days after Christoffer is set to receive the Sir George Martin Award at a gala event in Malmö.

In the interview that accompanied our news article announcing the award, Christoffer talked about all the instruments that he's learned to play. The evidence of this is that on this album – except for the drums – he plays all the instruments (on separate tracks that have been mixed together).

Click on the "read more" link below for additional details about Christoffer, his connection with Per Gessle and Roxette, and the album.

The following video is a medley of some of the songs that will be included:

Christoffer Lundquist, a multi-talented musician, composer, producer and lead guitarist for Roxette, will receive the Sir George Martin Award when it is presented for the first time ever at a gala event on May 2 in Malmö, Sweden. The award comes with an impressive 100,000 kronor stipend, which converts to about $15,700 USD or €11,300 EUR.

Martin, knighted by Queen Elizabeth and often cited as the fifth member of The Beatles, is best known as the producer of their recordings at the Abbey Road studios in London. He himself was honored last April with an honorary doctorate degree from Lund University and its Malmö Academy of Music. Sverker Svensson, head of the academy and a member of the award’s governing board, told The Daily Roxette in a telephone interview that it was in conjunction with the bestowing of this degree that Staffan Olander, a retired banker and close friend of Martin, came up with the idea of creating an endowed award. He arranged for his former colleagues at Öresund Savings Bank to sponsor the award and it was determined that it would be presented annually to a producer, composer, arranger, conductor or musician who either lives in Skåne (the southernmost province in Sweden) or has worked on his or her musical endeavors there. 

Christoffer, as many readers of The Daily Roxette already know, runs his own studio – the Aerosol Grey Machine Studio – in the remote village of Vollsjö.  Svensson said that "one of the reasons Christoffer was selected for this honor was that with a great passion, he made his studio into a Scanian version of Abbey Road."  Christoffer has produced hundreds of records there with both Swedish and international artists. Besides Roxette and Per Gessle (for his solo projects), a few of the other names he's worked with include Ed Harcourt, Bo Bice, Wilmer X, Diamond Rio and, of course, the other members of the band Brainpool.