Woke up around 7:30a, finished packing, and after a nice relaxing breakfast, I was taken to the Krakow Airport. The airport had absolutely no souvenir-type things at all. Kinda lame, in that respect! The 1.5 hour long flight was pretty uneventful, I managed to cat-nap a little bit, and we landed in Frankfurt around 12:30p. I had an hour to kill before boarding my next flight, but that apparently turned into three hours, when it turns out my flight was …
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – Live to Picture
The big finale for the festival was the third and last concert – a screening of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, with live music accompaniment for the entire film. This has been done before – Shore has been doing it for the trilogy starting a few years ago, but I never had the opportunity to see it in this manner. The huge orchestra, choir, boys choir, and soloists delivered a tour-de-force performance over the four …
Final Cocktail Reception
At 5pm, we went over to the Virtuoso Restaurant, location of the press conference from Thursday afternoon. There we had a special cocktail reception to celebrate the closing of the festival, and while Howard Shore wasn’t able to make it (he was resting up before the big night!), it was still a fun and casual affair. The food was mainly finger-food, but would easily suffice to serve as a last meal for the evening. They had a nice selection …
Walking Around Old Krakow
After sleeping in for a bit, I got a leisurely breakfast and then checked email and wrote the past few blog posts. A group of us then met up at 12:30p for a walking tour of Old Krakow. The weather was phenomenal – partly cloudy, high 60s/low 70s, and a nice spring breeze. We went through the Market Square, saw the trumpeter of Krakow, headed north to the old Florian Gate, then back down and around to the old Jagiellonian …
Shigeru Umebayashi Concert / Festival Banquet
We were picked up at the hotel a little after 8pm (we made sure to get to the lobby early this time – didn’t want to miss our ride again!), and we were taken back to the Steelworks for the Shigeru Umebayashi concert. Since last night was so cold, we all had prepared to bundle up – but it was such a mild evening that it was warm in the venue, and my sweatshirt and jacket sat on the chair …
The Jewish Quarter
The weather was delightful now, party sunny and in the high 60s, and it didn’t look like it would rain, so I just went out without a jacket. I walked the 1.5km from the hotel to the Jewish Quarter, in the Kazimierz district of Krakow. Heading there was a bit like walking backwards in time, with the architecture virtually unchanged since the 19th Century, and the eastern European Soviet-bloc styled streetcars certainly added to the vibe. I walked around and …
Alvernia Studios
Built only about 2 years ago, the Alvernia Studios is the dreamchild of Stanislaw Tyczynski, the man who founded RMF Radio in Poland. At its core, it’s a state-of-the-art production and post-production facility, with the most bizarre design scheme of any studio. Ever. The drive there took about an hour; we went the back-roads way, through the rather scenic Polish countryside. The weather had cleared up a bit, and while there were still patches of rain, it was turning out …
An Early Morning / Third Panel
Even though I finally made it to sleep around 2:30am, for some bizarre reason I woke up at 6am and couldn’t get back to sleep. So I dragged myself out of bed at 6:30, and wrote up all those blog posts that you have probably just read. Breakfast today was more of the same as yesterday, except that I decided to go for some eggs. Apparently they make a nice little round “two fried eggs and bacon” plate that was …
Second Panel / Tan Dun Concert / Late Night Reception
The second panel, “Promoting Film Music” was to be hosted by Doug Adams, but unfortunately he was sick and unable to make the trip to Poland. Nancy Knutsen stepped in, and the panel was a bit freeform, with the topics ranging from soundtrack publicity, to websites, to music festivals and concerts. The last half hour was especially interesting,when one of the gentlemen in the audience got into a rather heated debate (all in Polish) with a few members of the …
Press Conference / Lunch at Da Pietro
The press conference was held at above a restaurant called Virtuoso, in a private room which also had some coffee/tea/drinks and nibbles. That was good, since it was already 12:30p and there was no set plan for lunch. They also had these little vodka-infused chocolates which were oh-so-good. The room was very crowded, with lots of Polish press, and was in 80% Polish, and maybe 15% English. (Umebayashi replied to the questions in Japanese, with the aid of a Polish-Japanese …
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