Paul Festa, Violinist

Paul Festa's award-winning film "Apparition of the Eternal Church" - hailed by the Chicago Sun-Times as "perhaps the finest film ever made on how people experience music, and one of the best-crafted and moving documentaries in a very long time" - has screened at venues including Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, London's Barbican Centre, and the Library of Congress. He is the author of OH MY GOD: Messiaen in the Ear of the Unbeliever, an adaptation of that film. His essays appear in three Best Sex Writing editions, in Nerve: The First Ten Years, and online in The Daily Beast, Salon, and other publications. He gave the US, Boston, New York, San Francisco, LA and, in the Coolidge Auditorium on the "Betts" Stradivarius, DC premieres of Messiaen's Fantaisie. As violinist and actor he has appeared with the Stephen Pelton Dance Theater and the North Bay Shakespeare Company. He is the official historian of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco. Residencies include the MacDowell Colony, the City of Paris / Centre des Récollets, and ODC Theater in San Francisco. He lives with his husband James and their dog Ziggy in San Francisco, where he was born and raised.

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