Chanson du Jour: Theme from “The Shape of Water”

I always say that to compose is to think. Playing is good, it’s useful, but it’s how your intellect puts the ideas together that will bring hands to write or to play. So, it’s really a combination of many things; hearing sounds, hearing layers of counterpoints, of chords.

We were talking about water…I must admit—it was completely unconscious, but the melody I wrote for the opening scene is actually made of waves. I did not do that on purpose, but by being completely immersed in this love and these water elements, I wrote a melody that plays arpeggios like waves.

I could have written another melody that’s not playing waves. That’s why it’s important, before you compose, that your intellect work, and combine with your instinctive emotions that come from watching the film.
– Composer Alexandre Desplat / Deadline

Riding the Floods in Paris

Why Nice is Europe’s greatest city in winter

Anthony Peregrine, our Nice expert, offers a guide to the best things to see and do in the city this winter

Warmth, limpid light, wine, sparkling sea… Nice is wonderful in winter, as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been discovering. The couple embarked on a romantic New Year getaway to the French city – with reports suggesting they flew out on a BA flight on Sunday (and even opted for economy class).

To visit Nice in winter is to honour the traditions of rich and noble Britons. Our aristocratic forebears frequented the place through to April, and reinstating the practice seems entirely sensible. Here’s the Med without the summer squeeze, if a little nippy at the edges. One may eat outside at lunch, but it will probably be woollies by nightfall. No matter. France’s fifth city, throbbing with museums and galleries, also has the restaurants, bars and clubs to see you through cool nights [ . . . ]

More at source: Why Nice is Europe’s greatest city in winter