Welcome and bienvenue to the Polaris Music Prize 2009 blog!

Bonjour mes amis. How are you, my friends?

Liisa Ladouceur at the controls of the new 2009 Polaris blog. I’m a proud member of our Board of Directors, wrangler of our esteemed jury and, as of today, the girl who gets to keep you in the loop of our goings-on at Polaris HQ. Alors, allons-y…

We’ve been quietly working away to bring you the 4th annual Polaris Music Prize — securing our jury, our sponsors, our dates — all to a soundtrack of fantastic new Canadian records (yes, we still have record players) which we know will make it a particularly exciting and challenging task for our jury members to choose from on their ballots this year.

We are quite delighted to make our first public announcements today. First, to welcome our new presenting sponsor, SIRIUS Satellite Radio Canada, who have been supporting us since 2007 and this year will do even more to bring great Canadian music to the people.

Next, to announce the important dates on the Polaris calendar: September 21 for our Gala event here in Toronto, where we’ll sing and dance and drink and revel in Wolf Parade lore and award one artist the $20,000 prize. But first, June 15, when we’ll reveal the Long List of the 40 titles receiving the most votes on the first round of balloting. Then on July 7 at a press conference at the Drake Hotel we’ll trumpet the Polaris Short List — the 10 albums our 190-member jury selected as worthy of your utmost attention this year, one of which will be declared winner at the Gala I mentioned way back at the start of this paragraph.

In short, there’s a whole lot of shakin’ going on. We invite you to follow along here on our shwanky new site, with a special welcome to our new and returning jury members. More soon, stay tuned.