“Wherever there is Pat, there is laughter, and his laugh can be heard across several counties,” said Imelda Staunton on Sunday at the Royal Albert Hall concert of film music by the great Scottish composer Patrick Doyle. The BAFTA-winning actress (“Vera Drake”) was one of several performers and filmmakers there to celebrate Doyle’s music from the movies and raise money for leukemia research.
They all spoke as much about his spirit as his music. Robbie Coltrane said: “Pat Doyle is probably the funniest man I’ve ever met in my life.” Director Mike Newell (“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”) called him a “phenomenal little wizard.” Judi Dench said that his score for Kenneth Branagh’s “Henry V” spoke to “all those who fear the loss of hope.”
Doyle thanked his family and friends for seeing him through his own illness. “I have been blessed by inheriting the gift for music from my father and mother,” he said. “I am the luckiest man alive.” Here’s how my review of the concert Patrick Doyle: Music from the Movies begins in The Hollywood Reporter:
LONDON — Scottish film composer Patrick Doyle’s charity fundraiser had more than average resonance as the man who scored most of Kenneth Branagh’s films and such others as “Sense and Sensibility,” “Indochine,” and “Carlito’s Way” has successfully battled leukemia.
The concert was directed by Branagh and featured many of the actors and filmmakers associated with films featuring Doyle’s music including Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Robbie Coltrane, Richard E. Grant, Judi Dench, Mike Newell and Regis Wargnier. Belgium’s Dirk Brosse led the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in almost three hours of sumptuous themes that play as well in the concert hall as they do in the motion pictures.
Read the full review, and here’s a story about Patrick Doyle, more about the composer and his soundtracks, and info on leukemia research