James Galway has a very big birthday this year and BBC4 has just screened a new documentary directed by Brendan Byrne about his life and work, entitled Being James Galway. It went out last night, is repeated on Friday on BBC4 at 8pm, and is also available on the BBC iPlayer, here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0555wj1/being-james-galway
Interest declared: yours truly was called upon as a talking head. But really the best things about it are the substantial quantity of musical performances; the historical footage, including film of Galway playing with the Berlin Philharmonic, and under Leonard Bernstein; the Belfast-born flautist's own inimitable personality and humour; and a beautiful familiar voice-over, whom I recognised but couldn't identify. Turns out it's Jeremy Irons...
