Ealing Music and Film Festival

Following its huge success in 2013, Ealing Music & Film Valentine Festival returns in 2014 to light up February’s dark days with a programme to celebrate the rich and varied music, film and dance heritage of one of London’s most culturally enriched boroughs.

The Festival will take place in and around the centre of Ealing from Wednesday 12 to Sunday 16 February 2014 and one of its key focuses will be on young performers. The Ealing Youth Orchestra will be performing Handel’s Royal Fireworks Music exactly as Handel wrote it and two of the soloists, not much older than the players from the Ealing Youth Orchestra and yet already tipped for international stardom, are the cellist Michael Petrov who studies at the Guildhall School of Music, and the truly breathtaking, Alena Baeva: from Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan.

This year’s Festival will be celebrating dance, not least because Margot Fonteyn, the most famous dancer England has ever produced, was brought up in Ealing. Her international dancing career spanned an incredible 55 years and her life was as dramatic as many of the roles she made her own. There will be talks from great dancers and choreographers including the one-time prima ballerina of the Royal Ballet, Dame Beryl Grey, and Dame Gillian Lynne, who devised Cats and the choreography for Phantom of the Opera. The amazing Ealing young person’s dance organisation, Twisters, will be giving a demonstration of their incredible talent.

The Ealing Symphony Orchestra will be performing ballet music, including Romeo and Juliet and a little known ballet called Horoscope written specifically for Margot and Pete Townshend will be giving a talk about his own life.

The excellent film slate continues the theme with one of the BFI’s top ten British films of all time, the Oscar winning The Red Shoes from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and Tony Palmer’s Margot. There will also be a screening in association with the Classic Cinema Club Ealing of the Ealing Studios-made satirical comedy The Man in the White Suit starring Alec Guinness. The Studios will once again be throwing open its doors to the public for tours.

There will also be two fascinating exhibitions Blues & Birth of British Rock Music and Ealing Studios – A Story In Pictures, both of which are free of charge to visit.

There will be also be live blues each night at the Ealing Club, a celebration of Alec Guinness with a one man show by Trevor Littledale named ‘Two Halves of Guinness’ and the closing night of the Festival will feature a Raga Jam with some extraordinary sitar players.