Director tops awards list along with John Luther Adams, Lisa Batiashvili and Christine Goerke.

The opera and theatre director Peter Sellars has won the Artist of the Year Award for classical music magazine Musical America. The win completes an excellent year for Sellars who won the prestigious Polar Prize back in May and whose staging of Bach’s St. John Passion with the Berlin Philharmonic is the orchestra’s second release on their new in-house label.

In order to accommodate a director winning the top award, Musical America renamed the category Artist of the Year instead of the usual Musician of the Year. Sellars most recent successes in the States have included his staging of the St. Matthew Passion and his collaboration with Gustavo Dudamel in LA on John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary.

John Luther Adams was named as Composer of the Year, which is a nice follow up to his Pulitzer Prize win for Become Ocean earlier in the year. Gianandrea Noseda, who toured North America with his Teatro Reggio Torino, was named Conductor of the Year while Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili carried off Instrumentalist of the Year.

Another popular winner was Wagnerian soprano Christine Goerke, last seen as a stunning Elektra with the Sydney Symphony orchestra back in February, as Vocalist of the Year.

The awards will be presented at a ceremony in New York on December 11.