Report

Stephen Talbot tunes in to world music

Should Stephen Talbot be worried? He left PBS’s Frontline World, where he was a series editor and senior producer, to form Talbot Players and create and develop original media properties, including a new globe-trotting television series about world music dubbed Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders. For Talbot, it’s the kind of fantasy project he has been wanting to do for a long time. When we sat down in North Beach’s Cafe Zoetrope recently to discuss the project, Talbot had a pilot just about wrapped up and was getting ready to submit it to the heads at PBS.

topics: bay area, documentary, music, public television, tv, world cinema

First-person

Funder as supplicant

As a program officer at The San Francisco Foundation, I say “No” to artists and arts organizations daily. I try to soften the blow, detailing the reality of limited resources and an overabundance of projects, seldom discussing quality or appropriateness, thinking I am kinder in vagueness.

I also write personal essays and make films. Last year, a dream project, three years in the making, was realized when I produced and co-directed a concert documentary, Janis Ian: Live From Grand Center, with KETC/PBS in St. Louis. The program features the legendary Grammy Award-winning artist performing 15 songs from her 40-year career—augmented with archival footage, including Leonard Bernstein introducing her at age 15 to a national audience singing "Society’s Child" and a 1975 performance of "At Seventeen."

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, documentary film, funding, gay lesbian cinema, music, performance, producers, public television