I was lucky enough to be at the official kickoff of the 10th annual Festiwal Muzyki Filmowej W Krakowie ; and then attend the full festival which ran from May 17-23.

Held yearly in beautiful Krakow,Poland- this is a festival for film music lovers as well as industry and artistic people involved in the ever-changing and growing field of film music.

With an excellent staff and volunteer team and the generous support of RMF Classic , this is a great place to immerse yourself in the world of sounds from the cinema and to get  insightfull commentary from the big names in film scoring ;as well as many up and coming composers.

Featuring a full slate of workshops in addition to talks and concerts this is a go to mecca for the film music enthusiast.

Definitely check out their website for video, pics, information, and a very cool link to listen to the new compilation CD released on Varese Sarabande: FMF 2017

Press Conference-Host:Magdalena Wojewoda-in attendance were:Robert Piaskowski,  Abel Kornzeniowski,Trevor Morris, and Robert Townson.

Interview w: Jan AP Kaczmarek: go straight to the audio link for an interview w the composer about his music career and the Transatlantyk Festival:

FMF Interview 17-05-117

Opening Night Concert w Abel Korzeniowski- a sold out concert hall at the ICC enjoys a fantastic concert featuring the composers film and television music.

Some Q and A time w Trevor Morris: head to the audio link for a lengthy conversation w composer Morris about his music for film, TV, and video games:

FMF Interview-20-05-17

Q and A w Klaus Doldinger and Jean-Michel Bernard- the audio is poor,but a great talk by the composers as well as a cool impromptu jam at the end-audio link is here:  Doldinger + Bernard talk film music and jam some jazz near the end

Thoughtful words from Giorgio Moroder- hiatus since the mid-90’s-spent time doing art, photography,a piano concert, and he renovated  car-recently he has been back doing DJ work and has scored a series called: Queen Of The South-started doing film music in the 70’s after he was bought to the attention of Alan Parker, this was after he produced Donna Summers: I Need Love.-He scored Parker’s hit film Midnight Express, winning an Oscar for Best original Score in 1977-he talked a bit about the film Metropolis and his struggle to modernize it w new music and a restored print-by the time they could track all the footage down it had been 2 years and the result already seemed dated when it was finally released-it was the first digital sound presentation-says he is not a great keyboard player-never toured much-started as the first DJ in Germany in 1969 and has now come full circle to do live DJ shows(including the outdoor one in Krakow at FMF)-it is fun he says-he says he must have mixed over 1 thousand songs in the studio over the years-says the new digital technology is great-for 2k you can have a good set-up w a laptop-” it’s a democracy of music now”-talked about his hits written for Top Gun-said they recorded a demo w The Motels lead singer which ended up being re-recorded w Berlin for the big hit “Take My Breath Away”-talked about Scarface-now a cult classic-very high expectations when it was produced-Moroder did the Main Theme and 5 songs-cast and crew screening ended in complete silence-the critics hated it & helped kill it-when it came out on video it was a great success especially in the African-American community-big cult movie-Jay Z wanted to redo the songs w some rap and Beyonce-Universal wanted to but DePalma said no-so an album inspired by Scarface came out-Moroder would write more music for it and re-record some stuff if he could-he said 30 out of 100 songs he did were “good” and 10 did well at the charts…to see pictures of his performance at FMF 2017 go to the FMF website at: FMF 2017

All Is Film Music + Titanic shows pack the house at Tauron Arena-  there is a lot of interest in film music here in Poland as is evidenced by two packed houses at the 17,000 seat Tauron Arena in Krakow

Standing room only to hear Howard Shore: Shore says he lives in a wooded area in the countryside and this setting really helped him connect with the Lord Of The Rings storyline-this is where he writes and he records mostly in Europe-he starts writing with a pencil and paper then he progresses to digital technology-he studied clarinet and leaned the importance of writing with a pencil-says he doesn’t compose on a computer-he says he writes “away from the film”- he views it once, then writes roughly 45 mins of music after improvising and dreaming about the film-writes more about the “idea” of the film and not so much about the images-writing from the heart-then come orchestration- In Silence Of The Lambs he concentrated his writing on the character played by Jodi Foster rather than the monster character of Anthony Hopkins-In 86  he scored The Fly for David Cronenberg w no electronics-afterwards he started  developing his “Opera Technique with Electronics”– for Signs Of Life (89) he used electonic sound with mechanical and underwater sounds and noise and these played the music he had written-this unsettleded the score when mixed with the orchestrated recording- he talked about the challenge of the 13 minute main title sequence for Hugo (2011)-and mentioned a recent film Denial (2016) shot in Poland- Lord Of The Rings– Peter Jackson flew him over to see what they were doing-everything was made by hand for the film-it was a huge challenge for him-he was 9,000 miles away and NZ still only had 56k dial-up internet service-logistical nightmare w over 4 hours of music- he doest have a “team”-he orchestrates, writes, and conducts-wrote for 230 musicians+orchestra+choir+vocalists-he developed a “technique” to control all this-so he took 1 year for each LOR score to write, orchestrate, produce and develop extended versions-he wrote 12 hours of music which took 3 years and 9 months all in…longest production in film history as the films were all shot together and then The Hobbit began..a great talk by Howard Shore!!