Elton John is about to add one more honor in a career full of them. The pop and rock icon will receive the 2025 Glenn Gould Prize, awarded biennially to honor the legacy of pianist Glenn Gould. The only prior rock-adjacent winner was the late Leonard Cohen, who received the award in 2011. Other winners include Yo-Yo Ma, Philip Glass, and Oscar Peterson. John is the 15th person to be honored with the prize.
“After spending decades admiring the virtuosity of Glenn Gould’s work, I am awestruck and honored to receive this award,” John said in a statement. Former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell, this year’s jury chair for the Glenn Gould Prize, issued her own statement: “In selecting our Laureate, Elton John, we chose to honor someone who has great artistic accomplishments, but whose life and whose art has been translated into something much greater than just performance or the consumption of music and things they’ve created.”
Glenn Gould Prize laureates receive a CDN$100,000 cash award. They also select a younger artist to receive the CDN$25,000 Glenn Gould Protégé Prize. John’s pick for the Protégé Prize has yet to be revealed.
Some of John’s other lifetime achievement awards include the Kennedy Center Honors, the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, a Grammy Legend Award, the Johnny Mercer Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and membership in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Gould, a Toronto native, was one of the most celebrated classical pianists of the 20th century, especially acclaimed for his interpretations of Johann Sebastian Bach’s piano compositions. John is one of the most successful popular musicians of all time, with a decades-spanning run of hits and high-grossing tours, as well as a long legacy of philanthropic work.