The annual awards, which were revived last year after a hiatus of more than a decade, were presented in three categories, Music, Image, and Printed Word, for the second time.
Beczała, an acclaimed tenor, was announced the winner in the Music category at a ceremony in Warsaw on Monday night amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Piotr Beczała. Image: Screenshot by Polish Radio
Meanwhile, film director and screenwriter Mirosław Bork picked up the prize for best Image, and historian Andrzej Nowak won in the Printed Word category.
Each of the three winners earned a statuette and a cash prize of PLN 100,000 (EUR 22,300, USD 26,300).
Polish Radio sponsored the award in the Music category.
Meanwhile, public television broadcaster TVP took care of selecting the winner in the Image category, and the state news agency PAP was in charge of the Printed Word award.
This year's nominees in the Music category included conductor Łukasz Borowicz, a former artistic director of the Polish Radio Orchestra; singer and composer Stan Borys; jazz saxophonist Zbigniew Namysłowski; and singer-songwriter Grzegorz Markowski, lead vocalist of the popular band Perfect.
The originator of Poland’s Public Media Awards, Krzysztof Czabański, who heads a watchdog body known as the National Media Council, has said the annual awards are “a form of state patronage of the arts.”
This year’s awards were additionally an effort to “lend a helping hand” to Polish culture at a time of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Czabański.
Krzysztof Czabański, head of Poland's National Media Council and the originator of the annual Public Media Awards. Photo: PAP/Tytus Żmijewski
(gs/pk)
Source: IAR, PAP, TVP
Click on the audio player above for a report by Radio Poland's Elżbieta Krajewska.