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Alan
Hall
Feature maker Piers Plowright writes:
For
me, radio
producers
are composers:
they take
words and
sounds and
make music
out of them
- the best
of them, that
is. Alan Hall
is one of
the very best
and has several
awards to
prove it.
Whether he's
working in
popular radio
with brilliant
portraits
of Stevie
Wonder or
The Beatles,
or in his
impressionistic
features,
such as Knoxville:
Summer of
1995, an Alan
Hall production
has a stylishness
and a musical
excitement
that's
unmissable.
And, even
more importantly,
he never loses
the humanity
of his subjects.
For example
in a portrait,
on which I
had the pleasure
of working
with him,
of the Chicago
blues pianist
Jimmy Yancey,
At the Window,
or in a recent
reflection
on the pain
of losing
children,
Kindertotenlied.
Or, most impressively
of all, his
2004 Sony
Gold winning,
Lance Corporal
Baronowski's
Vietnam, a
documentary
about a family
tragedy set
against the
larger tragedy
of American
involvement
in Vietnam.
All these
programmes
do more than
engage the
ear; they
stir the heart
and fill the
imagination.
October 2004
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