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Taylor Eigsti wins second Grammy
Menlo Park-raised pianist Taylor Eigsti has won his second Grammy Award. He took home the statue for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album “Plot Armor” at the 67th annual Grammy Awards ceremony on Feb. 2. Eigsti also won in the category three years ago for his 2021 album “Tree Falls.”
The personnel for “Plot Armor” included trumpeter Terence Blanchard, vocalists Lisa Fischer, Becca Stevens and Gretchen Parlato, saxophonists Ben Wendel and Dayna Stephens and guitarist Julian Lage. The album, which is Eigsti’s ninth, was released last spring.
Eigsti, who was a child prodigy, is a graduate of Woodside Priory High School and an alumnus of Community School of Music and Arts in Mountain View. He also studied at Stanford Jazz Workshop and often returns there in the summer to teach and to perform as part of the Stanford Jazz Festival.
UNAFF call for entries
The United Nations Association Film Festival (UNAFF) has announced a call for entries for its 2025 festival. The 28th annual festival will take place Oct. 16-26 at venues in Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, Stanford University and San Francisco.
The documentary film festival highlights films that explore human rights issues, and the theme of this year’s festival is “Messages for the Future.” The theme “continues our devotion to human rights with an emphasis on our common destiny and issues fostering it, or standing in its way,” according to the festival announcement. The regular submission deadline is May 15.
Though UNAFF is not affiliated with the United Nations, it was directly inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948. Stanford University educator Jasmina Bojic founded and continues to lead the festival. She is also the director of Stanford Arts’ Camera as Witness program, which uses documentary film as a tool to help illuminate important topics, particularly human rights.
The festival accepts both short and feature-length documentaries, with no limit on runtime or on the year that the film was produced. Filmmakers can submit rough-cuts or works-in-progress, but are advised to submit work that’s as close as possible to the final cut, according to festival guidelines.
The festival also recently announced that two of the films shown during the 2024 festival are nominated for Oscars this year: “Death By Numbers” and “Sugarcane.”
For more information about the festival or how to submit a film, visit unaff.org/2025/submission.html.
Peninsula-raised director’s film garners multiple Oscar nominations
The movie musical “Wicked,” helmed by Palo Alto-born director Jon M. Chu, is up for 10 Academy Awards, including best picture. The nominations were announced in late January.
The film, adapted from the Broadway musical of the same name by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, is a reimagining of the “Wizard of Oz” told through the friendship of two witches, Elphaba, who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda the Good Witch. The musical itself was loosely based on the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel, “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.”
“Wicked” star Cynthia Erivo is nominated for best actress as Elphaba and Ariana Grande is nominated for best supporting actress as Glinda. Film editing, production design, costume design, original score, and visual effects are among the film’s other nominations.
Chu is also the director of “Wicked: For Good,” the second film in the two-part adaptation of the “Wicked” musical. The film is due out later this year. Chu grew up in Los Altos, where he attended Pinewood School. His family owns longtime Peninsula restaurant Chef Chu’s.
The 97th Academy Awards will take place Sunday, March 2.
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