The legendary producer and progressive musician Brian Eno will receive the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in its music honours this year. The consummate artist and restless creative began his journey as the synth player for Roxy Music in the early 1970s but went on to produce seminal albums for the likes of David Bowie, Talking Heads, U2, Coldplay and more.
Throughout his solo career, Eno has surfed on the cutting edge of electronic music innovation, coining the term “ambient music” while offering some of the essential works of the genre.
He will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award this year for “his “research into the quality, beauty and diffusion of digital sound and for his conception of the acoustic space as a compositional instrument,” according to press materials.
Eno will pick up his award at a ceremony scheduled for October 22nd at the arts festival in Venice. Eno is also set to take part in a conversation with the revered music critic Tom Service during his visit. “Brian Eno’s compositions have been conceived in terms of a generative process that evolves in a potentially infinite time dimension, foreshadowing many of today’s compositional trends linked to digital sound,” composer Lucia Ronchetti wrote in a statement as part of the Biennale’s announcement.
The festival will also feature a video art installation titled Nothing Can Ever Be The Same. The video, which Eno is the subject of, is set to premiere on October 22nd in tandem with the award reception.
Elsewhere, Eno has recently released a clip from his famous 2021 performance at the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. For the unique concert, Eno was joined by his brother, Roger. A film presenting the full concert is set to be screened in UK cinemas for one night only on March 2nd, 2023.
Watch the recently released clip below, in which the Eno brothers perform ‘Celeste’.
