Windstar to Celebrate Latin Music Honorees

Susana Baca
(Credit Alianza Francesa)

(Press Release) MIAMI (AUGUST 7, 2025) — The Latin Recording Academy® announced today that Susana Baca, Enrique Bunbury, Ivan Lins, Pandora and Olga Tañón will receive this year's Lifetime Achievement Award, as part of its annual Special Awards Presentation. Additionally, Eric Schilling will receive the Trustees Award. The first recipient of the Latin Music Educator Award will also be recognized during the ceremony.

“It is an immense privilege to honor these musical legends—who continue redefining our Latin music and heritage—as well as our inaugural Latin Music Educator Award recipient,” said Manuel Abud, CEO of The Latin Recording Academy. “We look forward to celebrating them all as part of our 26th Annual Latin GRAMMY® Week festivities.”

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The Lifetime Achievement Award is presented to performers who have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to Latin music and its communities. The Trustees Award is bestowed on individuals who have made significant contributions to Latin music during their careers in ways other than performance. Both distinctions are voted on by The Latin Recording Academy's Board of Trustees.
 
The Latin Music Educator Award is a new distinction, in partnership with the Latin GRAMMY Cultural Foundation®, that recognizes one exceptional educator from the global music community who is making a significant impact by incorporating Latin music into their curriculum. Additionally, the recipient’s school music program will receive a $10,000 instrument donation to support continued music education.
 
The honorees will be celebrated during a private event, presented for the second consecutive year by Windstar Cruises, on Sunday, Nov. 9, 2025, in Las Vegas. 
 
2025 Lifetime Achievement Award Honorees:
 
Susana Baca (Peru)
Throughout a distinguished career that spans decades, Susana Baca has investigated, cherished and safeguarded the once forgotten traditions of Afro-Peruvian music. A luminous performer — and three-time Latin GRAMMY winner and GRAMMY nominee — she belongs in the same exclusive group of folk songstresses as Mercedes Sosa and Violeta Parra. Born in 1944, Susana Esther Baca de la Colina grew up in Lima, surrounded by music. She initially worked as a schoolteacher, then began traveling across the Peruvian coastline with her husband, Ricardo Pereira, studying the country’s Black culture. By the mid-‘90s, her exquisite recording of the Chabuca Granda gem “María Landó” had established her as a global diva, igniting a growing interest in the Afro-Peruvian genre. In 2020, Baca demonstrated the purity of her vision with A Capella, a stunning solo session. She continues touring and recording to this day.
 
Enrique Bunbury (Spain)
Pioneering, musically omnivorous and intensely poetic, Enrique Bunbury is not only one of the most visionary rock stars ever to emerge from Spain, but also a 21st century master when it comes to crafting transcendent songs in the Spanish language. Born in Zaragoza in 1967, Enrique Ortiz de Landázuri Izarduy gained fame between the late ‘80s and the early ‘90s as the vocalist for the band Héroes del Silencio. But it was his solo output — beginning with classic albums like 1999’s Pequeño and 2002’s Flamingos — that found him developing a wondrous sound nourished by the reckless passion of Latin American folklore and the chiaroscuro shades of cabaret music. A live performer of hypnotic bravado, the Latin GRAMMY winner has continued to expand his stark aesthetic on memorable LPs like 2023’s Greta Garbo and 2025’s Cuentas Pendientes.
 
Ivan Lins (Brazil)
The creator of such timeless Brazilian anthems as “Madalena” and “Começar de Novo,” Ivan Lins is a keyboardist and singer/songwriter of staggering harmonic imagination and melodic genius — a Rio de Janeiro native who began his career under the spell of bossa nova, but quickly took flight and developed a deeply personal, cosmopolitan musical language of his own. Born in 1945, Ivan Guimarães Lins first gained exposure in Brazil during the late ‘60s. Gradually, his songs bewitched several generations of American jazz stars, from Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan to Quincy Jones and Michael Bublé. With over 800 compositions to his credit, the prolific Lins has been releasing new records from the ‘70s to the present. He is a two-time GRAMMY nominee and has won multiple Latin GRAMMYs, including Album Of The Year in 2005 for Cantando Histórias, a soulful retrospective live session.  
 
 
Pandora (Mexico)
The landscape of Latin pop was forever transformed in 1985 when Mexican vocal trio Pandora released “Cómo Te Va Mi Amor,” the first of many international hit singles. It wasn’t only the song’s opening sax line, supple backbeat and sweet keyboard lines that captured the public’s imagination. There was also an air of hope and everlasting romance in the vocalizing of the band’s stars: sisters Isabel and Mayte Lascurain, and Fernanda Meade. Pandora’s now-legendary, self-titled debut was only the beginning. The GRAMMY nominees have collaborated with such musical legends as Armando Manzanero and Frank Sinatra, Julie Andrews and Luis Miguel. In 2019, Más Pandora Que Nunca expanded the trio’s repertoire with a number of stellar duets. Still going strong, Pandora is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year with Pandora 40, a new compilation album of their greatest hits from the last four decades, along with an autobiographical tome detailing their personal and professional trajectory.
 
Olga Tañón (Puerto Rico)
One listen of the 1994 mega-hit “Es Mentiroso” is enough to appreciate the inordinate amounts of attitude and swing that Puerto Rican singer Olga Tañón has brought to merengue — a genre that at the time was predominantly male and confined to the Dominican Republic. But Tañón is much more than a merengue superstar. She has experimented with a multitude of styles, lending her gutsy voice to bachata, salsa and Latin pop. Olga Teresa Tañón Ortiz was born in San Juan in 1967, and kicked off her career as a member of tropical group Chantelle before experiencing massive success on her own. From the vibrant urbano tropical fusion of 2017’s “La Gran Fiesta” to the feverish groove of 2021’s “Mi Forma De Ser,” the multiple Latin GRAMMY and GRAMMY winner continues to shine as a beacon of contemporary merengue music.
 
2025 Trustees Award Honoree:
 
Eric Schilling (United States)
The recipient of 12 Latin GRAMMYs and eight GRAMMYs, Eric Schilling is a visionary audio engineer who has shaped and transformed the sound of Latin recordings over the last quarter century. He began his career as a teenager, taping live radio broadcasts by rock legends in the San Francisco Bay area, where he was mentored by Motown veteran Bob Ohlsson. Moving to Florida proved serendipitous, as Schilling established a long-standing creative partnership with Gloria and Emilio Estefan, becoming their engineer of choice on classic albums such as Mi Tierra and 90 Millas. Schilling has also added a sumptuous sheen of audio magic to quintessential 21st century LPs by Shakira, Alejandro Sanz, Thalía, Juan Luis Guerra, Cachao and many others. An expert in engineering major broadcast events, he has also won 8 Emmy Awards for Outstanding Sound Mixing.
 
Alex Hadad will serve as executive producer of the event, working under the direction of The Latin Recording Academy’s production team led by Ayleen Figueras.


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