[Festivals Stories] Krakow Film Music Festival

Krakow Film Music Festival (FMF) is one of the most important festivals in the world of film music. Performed by leading musicians and orchestras, the festival provides a unique concert experience. Facing the challenges of the pandemic in 2020, we launched a brand-new cycle named LIVE from Studio in which musicians from all around the world played straight from their homes and recording studios to help everyone #StayAtHome and make their time during lockdown more bearable with some of the best film music performed live.

What makes these online concerts truly exquisite is that the musicians and composers did it solely out of the need to share their art as they simply felt like they belong to the festival family. The materials are available on Facebook and also our very own, newly established (and the first in Poland) municipal VOD platform - PLAY KRAKÓW dedicated to culture.

The series of concerts featured, among others: Sonya Belousova & Giona Ostinelli: presenting music from the Netflix TV series The Witcher, Polish singer Marcin Jajkiewicz singing hits from Disney films with his daughters, a performance by Pop Culture Band from our friends at the FIMUCITÃ festival in Tenerife, Atli Örvarsson from Iceland, Jean-Michel Bernard with his spy dog Onion and Åukasz Targosz accompanied by the Let's Play Together Orchestra, founded by the composer himself and performing from their homes around the world. The ensemble brought together over 100 amateurs and professionals including the world-famous Tina Guo on cello.

To keep the festival alive in 2021 we had the opportunity to talk about how the film industry worked during the pandemic: its shape at the time, what kind of new film projects were going to see the light of day in the upcoming months and years, as well as the situation of the concert and film market, symphony orchestras and recording studios. We wanted to find out about the impact of the crisis on artists' creativity, we called Los Angeles, Tenerife, London, Prague, Ghent, Rome and Berlin to meet representatives of local film music festivals.

We invited Hildur Guðnadóttir, Academy Award-winning composer, the author of music to Joker, Maggie Rodford - music agent and producer with countless titles in her resumé who worked on Paddington 2, as well as psychologists and PR specialists from Hollywood and ASCAP and BMI representatives.

We've also prepared an online premiere of one of the most mystical concerts in the festival's long history - the Cinema Chorale programme, featuring pieces from memorable cinematic hits. The concert recorded in the depths of the Wieliczka Salt Mine was first on the PLAY KRAKÓW available in a special audio version - in addition to the traditional stereo soundtrack, we provide a binaural mix of ambisonic recording (for headphone listening).

More information: www.vod.teatrszekspirowski.pl

(General Editor: Simon Mundy)