Jury announced: Tony Visconti, BOY, Shirley Manson, Emily Haines and Huw Stephens are the judges of ANCHOR 2017

At an international press conference held on 7 June during the Reeperbahn Festival’s New York Edition at A2IM Indie Week, top producer and ANCHOR jury chairman Tony Visconti introduced the jury members for ANCHOR 2017: pop duo BOY, Valeska Steiner and Sonja Glass, who conquered the charts in the US, Japan, and elsewhere with their international hit “Little Numbers”; Shirley Manson, lead singer of the alternative rock band Garbage; Canadian indie-rock vocalist Emily Haines, creative force behind indie-rock band Metric and musical collective Broken Social Scene; and BBC Introducing presenter Huw Stephens. All will be at Reeperbahn Festival 2017 to judge the ANCHOR competition entries. Visconti was also a jury member for ANCHOR 2016 he believes it is his responsibility to be actively involved in a competition like the ANCHOR; he’s looking for artists with a unique selling point, who counter the current music-industry tendency to mainly give preference to artists and bands that sound like other successful artists and bands. Metric lead singer Emily Haines agreed, adding “Nowadays you can fake everything. What you can’t fake is a fantastic performance.”

Last year Swedish singer-songwriter Albin Lee Meldau won the first-ever ANCHOR – Reeperbahn Festival International Music Award.