Thursday 2 April 2009

Can't let the week go past without a brief mention of Maurice Jarre. His music was a major part of my musical development, as my gran's favourite tune on the piano was Lara's Theme from Doctor Zhivago ('Somewhere My Love'), which she played in the style of Liberace. Not to mention his son Jean-Michel's first albums coming out when I was about 10. I met Jarre senior at the Flanders Film Festival in 2003 with Tommy Pearson, where Jarre was being given the Lifetime Achievement Award, and he gave us a long interview for the BBC programme we were making, remembering enormous amounts of detail from work he'd done many decades previously. The award was presented by Jeanne Moreau, who was 75 at the time: she stood on stage, looked him right in the eye and told him in front of a couple of thousand people how wonderful he was, in French, for about five minutes. Tommy and I were sitting in front of him and could just about tell how exciting this must have been ... every red-blooded male in the room was simultaneously mesmerised and extremely jealous.

Next Thursday, Stu Brown is doing his Raymond Scott Project thing at the Panopticon in Glasgow - entry is by donation. It's a real treat to hear the RSQ tunes played live with great panache, and the surroundings couldn't be better - be there if you can, 7pm. (Sadly, I can't, but I did hear them last time.)