For over forty years, virtuoso saxophonist/composer Barbara Thompson has been Britain's most brilliant and best-known female jazz musician. Her original compositions and soaring flute and saxophone improvisations have attracted large and enthusiastic audiences beyond the confines of contemporary jazz. She has released many albums and toured regularly throughout Europe, mainly with her own band Paraphernalia. But in 1997, the same year that she received an MBE for her services to music, disaster struck. Barbara was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
Playing Against Time is a feature-length documentary about Barbara's inspiring and creative struggle with this disease, whose physical effects are particularly cruel, and visible, in the life of an improvising jazz musician.
Funded by a grant from the Wellcome Trust, the film has been made at intervals across a period of five years, beginning in 2005 with Barbara still performing with Paraphernalia on a 'farewell' European tour. After whi
