Albums by a pair of Vancouver Island musicians are in contention for this year’s Polaris Music Prize.
Forty acts and their recent recordings were named Thursday to the Polaris long list, which will be whittled down once more before the winner is announced Sept. 23 in Toronto.
Among the list-makers are recordings by former University of Victoria student Hannah Georgas (for the album Hannah Georgas) and Zaki Ibrahim (for the album Every Opposite). Ibrahim is a graduate of Nanaimo’s Wellington Secondary School.
Other long-list notables include A Tribe Called Red (Nation II Nation), the Besnard Lakes (Until In Excess), Godspeed You! Black Emperor (‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!), Hayden (Us Alone), Corb Lund (Cabin Fever), Metric (Synthetica), METZ (METZ), Purity Ring (Shrines), and Tegan and Sara (Heartthrob).
The next Polaris announcement is July 16, when organizers will reveal the 10 albums competing for the grand prize of $30,000.
The Polaris Music Prize is judged by a nationwide panel of experts — which includes the Times Colonist’s Mike Devlin — whose votes are based solely on artistic merit, without consideration of genre or record sales.
Devlin was one of 10 grand jurors who awarded the prize to Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs in 2011.