December 22

The festive season at the end of the year is here and with it comes the time to reflect a little.

 

2015 has been a hugely productive - and somewhat exhausting - year and certainly one to remember. Releasing Concerto – A Beethoven Journey, which took four years to film, was certainly a highlight. For me the screenings in Bodo in the Norwegian Arctic Circle - with my own family and Leif Ove and his family - were an absolute joy.  The reaction of the Norwegian audience that day was wonderful and not easily forgotten.  Leif Ove Andsnes’ Beethoven Journey, upon which the film is based, continues to be praised and I would like to congratulate him and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra for their latest achievement - making it into two of the Guardian’s Top 10 lists of classical concerts and operas of 2015. It is greatly deserved!  After our BBC screening their CD box set shot to the top of the classical music charts.  It couldn't happen to nicer people or better musicians.

 

I am pleased to say that EXHIBITION ON SCREEN has expanded and the series is now shown in over 40 countries! Whilst distributing Season 2, we have also almost finished Season 3 and indeed we are developing the fourth & fifth Seasons as I write.  It was such an eventful year it is hard to pick out particular moments but the ones that come to mind are the filming in galleries such as the National Gallery, London, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and above all for me personally, the many super trips to the Barnes in Philadelphia.  It's never easy and don't get me started on contracts, funding and sales but 99% of the time it's worth it for the privileged access to these (and many more) institutions.  It's that privilege we try to share with you the audience.  

 

This leads me on to the future and what we have to look forward to in 2016.  

 

We kick off the year with the international release of Goya – Visions of Flesh and Blood, an EXHIBITION ON SCREEN film which was warmly received when it premiered in the UK earlier this month. Woman & Home Magazine called the film ‘one of the art scene’s most exciting events this winter’ whilst The Guardian stated that it was ‘enjoyable, lucid and intelligent’. If you missed the opportunity to see it in the UK, Picture House cinemas will be showing it on the 22^nd February and tickets are now available at www.exhibitiononscreen.com.

 

Next comes the UK release of Renoir – Revered and Reviled, a film that offers the chance to see the world’s largest Renoir collection on the big screen. These works will never travel outside of the Barnes Foundation so this is a great opportunity to see them!  I directed this film and found Renoir's life story absolutely fascinating. Of our 12 films so far we've done two or three on the impressionists - and I love it. I love that whole period and the wonderful background to the personalities involved and the art they produced. Renoir was a key player.  

 

In March we are planning to release In Search of Chopin in Poland (which will be a fabulous experience) and we are currently also working on the next two releases for Concerto – A Beethoven Journey in Australia and New Zealand. To keep up-to-date make sure you sign-up to our newsletter.

 

The third EXHIBITION ON SCREEN film of Season 3 hits UK cinemas in April and is entitled Painting the Modern Garden – Monet to Matisse. It is based on the Royal Academy of Arts, London much anticipated exhibition which we will film in January. I have to say the exhibition (which began in Cleveland) looks incredible and it is certainly one not to miss! The film then goes worldwide.  

 

If you have missed any of the films, do ask your local cinema or art institution to show them - or visit seventh-art.com to download the film or buy the DVD.  Funding permitting, we have some huge projects in the pipeline for future seasons but we do hope everyone sees the films we've already made.  I've said it many times before but I want folk to share with us the admiration for what we as humans are capable of.   On that note,  I hope that you are enjoying our festive advent calendar, which features on our Facebook and Twitter pages and everyone here at EXHIBITION ON SCREEN and Seventh Art Productions wishes you a belated Happy Hannukkah, a Merry Christmas and a wonderful new year!

 

Until next year,

 

Phil

 

 

11th of November

Good news this morning. Following our TV broadcast of our film (CONCERTO – A BEETHOVEN JOURNEY) the CD box set of Leif Ove Andsnes’ Beethoven Journey has gone to number one in the UK charts.  That’s wonderful – above all because it means more and more people are hearing  the wonderful performances by Leif Ove and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.   The film went out on BBC4 a few days ago and received quite a  respectable audience figure.   We had limited marketing support so we were pleased to see just how many of you managed to find the film and watch it.  We were particularly delighted with the number of very positive comments that we received. As the marketplace gets more and more congested, marketing becomes even more vital.  If folk don’t know your film is on – or aren’t drawn to see it through articles or ads – you don’t stand a chance.  The question is with limited funds where do you focus your attention? Do we focus on arts journalists or social media, flyers or quarter-page ads in magazines?   It’s not uncommon for films to spend as much on the marketing as the production itself.  Can you imagine how much the latest Bond film Spectre spent?  Anyway, we do what we can.  Next up we have the cinema release to plan for in Norway, USA, Canada, Poland, Australia and New Zealand….and then more after that.  They are limited releases to independent cinemas, largely.  I actually think it’s one of the best films I’ve directed so I want people to see it! Or perhaps more importantly, hear it!   I had a whistle-stop to the USA last week and did a couple of screenings – people were absolutely knocked out by Leif Ove’s performance and character.

Of course, as ever, our main focus as a company is EXHIBITION ON SCREEN.  We had a super Season 3 launch at the National Gallery on Monday morning.  Xavier Bray the curator took our 80 guests (largely press) around the exhibition and then we showed some clips of the season ahead. Many kind words were spoken about the films and the ambition in general but words are one thing, actions another.  

GOYA – VISIONS OF FLESH AND BLOOD is the first film to be released (180 cinemas in the UK) so let’s hope that gets us off to a good start. My colleague David Bickerstaff directed it and I think he’s every bit an artist too.   It’s a super exhibition – and once again a credit to a curator (and his support at the National Gallery) to manage to get so many loans.  It’s easy to take that for granted but every painting that comes from abroad is a story of persistence.  Some have never been to the UK before and maybe won’t again.  That alone is good reason to visit the show (or see the film).  I think the film works well because we take the story well outside the gallery walls – especially to extensive and sometimes privileged filming in Spain. It’s a fascinating story & biography.

As is the film I personally have just finished about Renoir.  I won’t begin to tell you the fuss we’ve had deciding on whether the film should be RENOIR – REVERED AND REVILED or RENOIR – REVILED AND REVERED.  We’re going with the former and which ever way you cut it what it reflects is that this is an artist that provokes extreme reactions both for and against.  There has been a campaign with the childish title of #RenoirSucksAtPainting .  Childish but effective. The international coverage of this handful of people in Boston has been remarkable.  Our response is simple: it’s not for us to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t like but, before making up your mind about Renoir, watch the film.  That’s all we film-makers try to aspire to: to give you the information to come to informed decisions.

Well, that’s all for today.  I hate to boast but tomorrow I’m off to Beijing!

Don’t forget to sign-up to our newsletter to keep up to date with what new things we have in store.

14th of September

Hi everyone... 

Many of you will be only too aware how awful recent events have been in Afghanistan. Dozens of people have been brutally murdered throughout the country - and the police and army are struggling to respond. The only future is one where some kind of political accommodation is made with the Taliban but now that they have finally announced the demise of Mohammed Omar it's not entirely clear who speaks for the Taliban - if indeed anyone ever really has. It's so sad. Millions of ordinary Afghans - like Mir (from The Boy Mir) - just want to raise their families in peace but that remains a distant likelihood. That said, Mir fortunately lives rather remotely and kit would be a shock indeed were his community to be struck with the wanton and shameful violence we see elsewhere. 

Mir's problems remain entrenched in poverty, employment, education and health. But, for moment, all is well and we should have interesting news of a possible life-changing event for Mir before the end of the year. 

One final request: we are, as ever, raising funds for female teachers for Mir's village. Please donate anything you can afford to my Just Giving site here. I'm running half & full marathons to raise funds. Maybe you could too?

Great speech by Armando Iannucci

In My Opinion: Armando Iannucci: We’re all in this together

The MacTaggart Lecture at the 2015 Edinburgh International Television Festival…

STARING nervously out at you all, my future sitting in front of me, my mind goes back 15 years, when I was lassoed into a BBC brainstorming session on the Arts, and I spent the day in a brightly-painted room at the mercy of a team of professional arts brainstormers.

These were experts paid to be spontaneously positive; they had degrees in being upbeat, and had trained with some of the world’s most optimistic people.

“This is a day to let your hair down,” said the leader. “It’s all about having fun. We want to have fun.”

And then she looked straight at us. “If you’re not prepared to have fun, get out now.”

I got out, and resolved the last thing I would ever do is trap a group of talented people in a colourful room and subject them to one-sided opinion masquerading as open debate.

Until now. So, if you’re not prepared to hear why I think politicians have got the British television industry completely wrong because they peer at it through a filter of their own prejudices, and that’s a fact, then get out now.

To those staying, can I start by saying what an honour it is to be asked to give this James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture tonight, and in this its 40th year.

Looking back to 1976, we can see how far the TV landscape has changed. Then, the big classics were Thunderbirds, David Attenborough, and Poldark; let’s congratulate ourselves on how far we’ve come.

We were told television would by now have changed utterly. We were told that by people paid to know. They said viewing would decline and be replaced by mobile and laptop alternatives. And indeed, brash new entities such as Amazon and Netflix have emerged.

Bringing streaming digital pictures, – a telecommunicated sequence of visual data, or tele-vision if you will – which immerse us in dynamic new forms of storytelling, such as the one-hour drama, and provide us with revolutionary new stories, such as House of Cards.

I suppose what this really tells us is that there are eternal verities, even in television, which time will never change. We may alter and innovate how we watch, from set to laptop to tablet and, yes, unbelievably, to a watch, but we still crave to view the same things. Basically, costumes and cakes.

Ah, but wait, the experts told us, our attention span will diminish, and we’ll hop from three-minute clip to six second vine, to nanosecond blap, tiny singularities of entertainment that spell the death of long-form viewing.

Instead, we binge-watch four seasons’ worth of quality box set in one weekend, sitting through what is effectively a 48-hour TV show while our children grow hungry and cold.

So much for experts. Their guess is as good as yours, but more expensive. They proclaimed the death of the book, but did so in best-selling books. Economic experts failed to predict the banking crisis, but still cashed their cheques. Earlier in May, polling experts said there would be a hung parliament: instead of sacking themselves, they carry on like we still think they’re credible; or maybe that’s what their polling is telling them.

The truth is, nobody knows anything. And that’s because we’re all individually full of contradictions. We’re all annoyingly, deliciously, unknowable, beyond algorithmic reach, for now.

In fact, the recent General Election provides a perfect matrix of confused, contradictory information. It was the election in which the public punished the Lib Dems for not stopping the Tories and did so by voting in the Tories.

It was the election in which the party advocating the Living wage decisively lost, to a party now advocating the Living Wage. It was the one in which Nicola Sturgeon became the most popular hated politician in Britain. And it reached its climax with the leader of UKIP resigning and then rapidly unresigning in a new form of statecraft which I can only describe as Bungee Politics.

TO CONTINUE READING CLICK HERE 

14th August 2015

Midway through August….not that you’d know it looking outside of my window in Brighton as the rain pours down in buckets….  The centre of the city is dotted with small floods…Ah, summer time in England.    It is nice, however, to have a pause in the schedule and finally get back to giving everyone an update. It really has been toooooo long.  My, how we have been busy.  Yesterday we finished CONCERTO – A BEETHOVEN JOURNEY.  On and off in production for four years it is a 92’ film about one of the world’s great pianists Leif Ove Andsnes and his dedication over those past few years to playing essentially just Beethoven, above all the 5 piano concertos.  As soon as I heard the suggestion that this ‘journey’ was going to happen I asked him for permission to film from start to finish.  Little did I know just how successful the touring would be and how extraordinary the reviews of the music would be. He and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra became the absolute must-have tickets….  Thus to be on-stage and behind-stage with them has been a privilege and a thrill.  The film though is a re-evaluation of Beethoven and I think we offer a fresh and revealing new biography of arguably the greatest composer that has ever lived.  As ever, making the film is one thing, distributing another.  Our first release is the UK cinemas on September 7^th…yes, that’s 3 weeks!  Now, far be it from me to blow my own trumpet (well, maybe sometimes..) but here’s a review we just had from the highly esteemed Gramophone Magazine:

One of the highlights of the BBC Proms so far has been Leif Ove Andsnes’s Beethoven piano concerto cycle with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and if you’re suffering withdrawal symptoms from music-making of such freshness and imagination, there’s a treat in store on the horizon. Phil Grabsky’s film ‘Concerto: A Beethoven Journey’ looks at the five piano concertos in collaboration with Andsnes and the Mahler CO’s three-year series of concerts and recordings (for Sony Classical), 'The Beethoven Journey'.Andsnes proves a wonderful guide to these five extraordinary works, speaking with humility, wisdom and insight about what they mean to him and the challenges they present to the performer. He is disarmingly frank about his relationship with the works when in his twenties and how he came to terms with them. He explains what made him determined to perform them over the course of a few years, and record them. Footage from the concerts in Prague, which Sony Classical used for its CD releases, forms the backbone of the film. We also see Andsnes and Gustavo Dudamel talking about the works prior to performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  For lovers of Beethoven’s music, admirers of Leif Ove Andsnes – and his fan base has probably grown exponentially in the past few weeks – or simply lovers of high-class music documentaries, ‘Concerto’ demands to be seen. It is a wonderfully uplifting and rewarding experience.  ‘I knew this exclusive journey with Leif Ove would allow me access to great performance,’ said Grabsky, ‘but I had no idea it would be this great. These became the best reviewed concerts of the past few years and I was on stage to record them. Even more importantly the music and Leif Ove's intelligent and accessible insight creates a staggeringly interesting new biography of arguably the greatest composer of all time.’ The film will be screened throughout the UK on September 7 – for details of participating cinemas visit Seventh Art’s website.

Not bad!  The release internationally will happen between now and next Spring.  We also had two wonderful preview screenings in Norway, high up in the Arctic Circle in a city called Bodø.  Leif Ove was there with the MCO playing the full 5 concertos and we screened the film twice to a sell-out crowd in between concerts.  It was wonderful to be in Norway with Norwegians for the premiere of a film about Norway’s number one artist.   More than that, it was a great excuse to travel up from Bergen and right up the western edge of this staggeringly beautiful country. I can’t recommend it enough.

To be honest, I needed the break.  The EXHIBITION ON SCREEN mega-project is all-consuming and it was pretty exhausting right up to the US screening on 14^th July (Bastille Day) of our last film in the Season – The Impressionists and the Man who Made Them.   We are really pleased with the 5 films this season – and in some countries they are still screening them (New Zealand, Korea, Brazil to name but three).  I’d always want (and need) a bigger audience worldwide but it’s growing and 40 countries is pretty impressive.  It looks like Van Gogh (with in excess of 100,000 seats sold) will be our best but Impressionists and Rembrandt may run it a close second.  Matisse deserved to do better but being first in the season (after a bit too long of a break from the end of Season 1) didn’t help. Girl with a Pearl Earring was some people’s favourite film but maybe was hindered a little by confusion from the Scarlett Johansson film of the same name.   

Season three is underway….and there are some exciting films coming this Autumn/Fall and into 2016.  I’ve been directing a film about Renoir that we are calling ‘Renoir – the Unknown Artist’. It’s based on the extraordinary collection of Renoirs at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.  We are about two-thirds of the way through and my understanding and appreciation of Renoir has really increased.  The artwork will look super on the big screen but there’s a fascinating story that we unveil as we go.  My colleague David Bickerstaff is working on two films – Goya (based on the forthcoming exhibition at the National Gallery) and Painting the Modern Garden - Monet to Matisse (based on next year’s exhibition at the Royal Academy).   Both films are looking stunning.  Plus, plus. Plus..plenty more in the pipeline for next year and beyond. 

From time to time I even get the chance to go to galleries for fun!  I was in New York a few days ago and wandered (the very busy – who says no-one is interested in art!!) Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Simply staggering – especially if you let yourself get lost and end up in galleries you’ve never seen before.  I certainly left with lots of film ideas – I’d love for example to make a film about Islamic Art and also American (pre-20^th century) art.   I’ll never run out of subjects, that’s for sure.

One final thing: do keep an eye on our Facebook site for EXHIBITION ON SCREEN – we post a lot of art stories. They are really interesting.   And do feel free to leave comments : we respond to them all.

June 13th: Erasing women from the history of art

I just read an interesting article related to the National Gallery exhibition about Durand-Ruel and the Impressionists exhibition. I think she makes some excellent points: 

Under the title Inventing Impressionism: The Man Who Sold a Thousand Monets, the National Gallery in London recently mounted an exhibition about Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922). It’s just finished, but don’t worry if you didn’t see it, I’m about to tell you why you shouldn’t have. This is how it was presented on the website:

This spring, the National Gallery presents the UK’s first major exhibition devoted to the man who invented Impressionism, Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922). An entrepreneurial art dealer, Durand-Ruel discovered and unwaveringly supported the Impressionist painters and is now considered a founding father of the international art market as we know it today.

I would like to be somewhat picky. One man invented Impressionism? Can this be right? In what sense did a dealer invent Impressionism?

Click here to continue reading and find the original article

June 8th 2015

Check out this article from Vents on the composer of Exhibition On Screen's latest art film:

 Find the original article here

Stephen Baysted scores new Exhibition on Screen film “The Impressionists – And The Man Who Made Them”

British composer Stephen Baysted (“Matisse: Live from the Tate and MoMa”) reunites with award-winning film-maker Phil Grabsky and Seventh Art Productions (“In Search of…Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin” composer series, “Concerto – A Beethoven Journey”) to score “The Impressionists – And The Man Who Made Them,” a new documentary feature in the acclaimed ‘Exhibition On Screen‘ series of films bringing blockbuster art exhibitions from galleries around the world to the cinema, in stunning high definition. The Impressionists screens in UK cinemas nationwide from May 26.

Recorded at Air-Edel Studios in London, Baysted’s original score for The Impressionists features performances by pianist and mezzo soprano Susan Legg (“A lustrous mezzo soprano” – The Sunday Times) and soprano Louise Walsh (Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera) with additional piano by Jonathan Plowright (“One of the finest living pianists” – Gramophone Magazine). A score album will be released through Baysted’s publisher label Red Rocca on May 28.

The Impressionists – And The Man Who Made Them tells the story of art’s greatest revolutionaries in the most comprehensive film ever made about the Impressionists. With unparalleled access to the highly anticipated international exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg Paris, National Gallery London and Philadelphia Museum of Art, the film captures some of the world’s most famous paintings in stunning high definition – featuring universally loved masterpieces by Monet, Degas, Cézanne, Renoir, Pissarro and many more – as well as interweaving the incredible story of 19th century Parisian art collector Paul Durand-Ruel and the extraordinary lengths he went to make Impressionism a household name.

Describing the scoring process for this energetic and revealing film, Baysted explains, “When director Phil Grabsky and I discussed The Impressionists, he wanted a cinematic and narratively focused score and one which responded directly to the masterworks being shown on screen. We also discussed a musical style and vocabulary which was contemporaneous with the art works, so I put together a listening list for him which contained many of the most well-known works from Debussy, Faure and early Ravel, and one or two lesser known ‘Impressionist’ composers.”

“The score itself takes several of these original piano works by Claude Debussy as its starting point, and pianist and mezzo soprano Susan Legg and I constructed an entire cinematic and emotive musical landscape around them, interweaving original compositions and orchestrations along the way,” continues Baysted. “In some cases a single melodic contrapuntal line is isolated from the original and then extended, reharmonised, and expanded into a much larger scale cue to picture. In other cases, original compositions that reflect the musical language and style of the period take the viewer on a journey through the paintings and the narrative arc of the film’s main characters.”

Director Phil Grabsky commented, “The great thing about working with Stephen is that one ends up with a soundtrack that is infused with knowledge of the period but also contemporary, coherent and consistent with the film’s needs. In the cinema it helped make a good film better but, always the sign of a top composer, it was a soundtrack I found myself listening to for fun in the car.”

Renowned for his versatility, emotionally charged and expressively powerful music, Stephen Baysted’s acclaimed music scores have been enjoyed by audiences worldwide in a succession of award-winning films and video games including the UK’s recent #1 selling game Project Cars; the Royal Television Society award-winning Matisse: Live from the Tate and MoMa with director Phil Grabsky; the psychological drama Strange Factories; Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead: Assault; the international award-winning documentary Life Lines and Tim Pope’s Brandy and Pep.

Born in London, Stephen Baysted’s passion for music began during his school years singing, touring and recording with the internationally acclaimed Wandsworth School Boys’ Choir and playing clarinet in the London Schools’ Symphony Orchestra. Stephen studied music at Southampton University and at Dartington College of Arts, where he was awarded a PhD.

The Impressionists screens nationwide in UK cinemas from May 26 and in select US theatres on July 14.

Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJqCOdblha4

For screenings visit:
http://www.exhibitiononscreen.com/the-impressionists

For more information on the film:
http://www.seventh-art.com/the-impressionists-and-the-man-who-made-them/

May 1st 2015

Dear friends,

I would like to introduce you to Zahra and Nikbakh (photos below). These two Afghan women deserve our respect. You can read in their faces the dedication they demonstrate in the face of endless hurdles a deeply patriarchal society throws at them. Some of you helped a year or so ago when you made donations to help these women become teachers. You may remember I ran a couple of marathons to raise some of the funds needed to enable these two women to attend a teacher-training course. 

Mir – the protagonist of my Afghan films – went to a small school in his remote mountainous village and if it was hard for him and the other boys, it was far harder for the young girls. I couldn’t leave without trying to do something for them. It has not been easy organising this and I would never have managed it without the selfless support of Melanie Bradley at Afghan Appeal Fund and my film-maker friend Shoaib Sharifi. It took us time to find two women who were in a position to travel to the northern city of Mazar to receive training and then bring those skills back to Mir’s village. Eventually Shoaib found them: Zahra and Nikbakh. It’s just two individuals but for the young girls now growing up in the village it will be transformational.

Both women have been back from Mazar and in their holidays have begun teaching. Equally good news is that the school has built a new additional block just for girls – giving them more space and facilities. The village as a whole is delighted to have better education for its young girls which is one small demonstration that Afghan culture is not universally anti-women’s schooling. 

To remind you: parents don’t mind their daughters being educated but, as they reach their teenage years, it is culturally unacceptable for young girls to be taught by men. The school needed female teachers. Indeed, every school in Afghanistan needs female teachers. So thank you to those of you who made a donation. If we all do one small positive thing every day, it does make a difference…..

For my part, I had to pull out of the 2015 Brighton marathon as I hurt my Achilles tendon but am now in training already for the 2016 marathon. We continue to fund the teacher training – and would like to do more – so please, any donation helps, just follow the link to my Just Giving site here

February 24th in LA

Dateline Los Angeles….very flash..  I guess I came about as close as I'll ever get to the Oscars 2 nights ago...I was there to show my In Search of Chopin film on the invite of Poland's no 2 in the USA. He had a party in his house last night as they had 4 or 5 possible Polish winners...In the end they did get the big one - best foreign language film with Ida. As you can imagine they were delighted.  Personally I'm bored to death with awards shows - although, remarkably, the two big winners Birdman and Grand Budapest Hotel were great films...I'm just so glad American Sniper was snubbed. Yuk.

It's very sunny here (though I've been stuck indoors doing emails and research all day) but tonight we have our LA premiere of Chopin – better than any Oscar ceremony!  

I’m shocked when I look at the date and realize we are almost in March.  What a crazy few months it has been –  starting the release of Chopin, filming CONCERTO as well as producing five EXHIBITION ON SCREEN films. These are now done and slowly being released here, there and everywhere.  The brand is building – slower than one would like – but it’s a steady incline at least.   Audience reactions are great – as evidenced but some sell-out shows I attended on the West Coast last week – but the economics are tricky while folk continue to see cinema as cheap entertainment. No-one really questions (well, I do!) paying £80 or $120 for a rock concert or theatrical piece but cinema we expect to be about a tenth of that. I’m not saying that’s wrong but it makes life pretty hard.  Mind you, we are finally starting to get some interest from sponsors which is good news.  It really is essential we keep making films like these: my family and I made a terrible mistake recently and went to see a film called Kingsman. We thought it was a kids’ spy thriller.  Boy, were we wrong!  It is a sick, vile, humourless exploration into how violent we can make a film and still only get a 15 certificate. If you enjoy seeing folk cut in half or a church full of parishioners being slaughtered, then this is for you. But then somehow I doubt you’d be reading my blog if it were…..  And guess what, this awful film has taken over $100m already and climbing.  What a world….

[Next day]   

Back in my oh-so-different world, I had a lovely screening of IN SEARCH OF CHOPIN in (a freezing) New York this evening. The Carnegie invited their privileged members to a screening – plus a preview clip of CONCERTO – A BEETHOVEN JOURNEY. It went really well – and both looked great on the big screen.  CONCERTO looked really super – the first time I’d seen any of it projected.  Very exciting.  Right, need to pack as I have an early flight tomorrow to Philadelphia (a great town) and then home….

8th February 2014

As if Walter's death wasn't bad enough, one of the best cultural commenters and supporters that I have ever met just died in Chicago. Andrew Patner was simply a wonderful, wonderful man. I had a lovely afternoon tea with him and his partner Tom just a few weeks ago. Another sad, sad loss. Here's the announcement from Chicago. This is all so depressing.

We are mortified to learn of the death of Andrew Patner, Chicago broadcaster and music critic for the Sun-Times. His station WFMT has just issued this statement:
It is with a profound sense of sadness, sorry and shock that we must announce that our dear friend and colleague, Andrew Patner, passed away this morning after a very brief battle with a bacterial infection that overwhelmed his body. The news came to us from Tom Bachtell, Andrew’s long-time partner who said, “Our Andrew is no more.” Andrew’s voice, keen intelligence and great spirit will be sorely missed at this radio station, which was part of his professional life for many years. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Tom and to Andrew’s family. When details about services are announced we will provide them to you. Rest in peace dear friend. Your many contributions to WFMT and to this community will never be forgotten. -Steve Robinson, General Manager