Karl Marx's penultimate journey was as a corpse in a coffin being trundled up the very steep hill of Highgate to what should have been his last resting place - a three-guinea plot in Highgate's East Cemetery - in March 1883, buried alongside his wife Jenny von Westphalen. The next year a memorial procession to his grave was turned away, but ever since then the Socialist world and the curious began to beat a path to his gravesite. But then, in 1954, they dug Karl Marx up and turned him into an ic...
Nov 18, 2017•28 min
'Hey man, you're living my dream...!' The cry rings out once, twice a day from people who catch sight of the shanty boat as it wends its way down the back waters of the USA. Hand built out of reclaimed redwood by artist, anarchist, and surprisingly practical river boat captain Wes Modes - his aura is that of a modern day Huck Finn, his shipmates are friends and lovers and 'Good dog Hazel' is always on the couch, on guard, or under the table. In a rich tapestry of watery atmosphere, frustration, ...
Nov 11, 2017•30 min
'The old pagan gods, when ousted by Christianity, took refuge in the rivers, where they still dwell' - Old English saying David Bramwell has a fascination and fear of water. He grew up by a water tower, close to the heart of Doncaster: a place of mystery and wonder to him, the highest building in the area, almost a kind of temple. 'We have wandered too far from some vital totem, something central to us that we must find our way back to, following a hair of meaning' - Alan Moore With deep thought...
Mar 25, 2017•29 min
Alice Oswald's radio poem Rain was commissioned by Radio 3 in 2016 as part of the 70th anniversary celebrations. Written and performed by the poet, Rain was inspired by a visit to Romford Essex, which experienced a dramatic sudden rainstorm in the early hours of June 23 that year. The poem examines the effect this natural atmospheric occurrence has on an urban environment and its population. A version of Rain has been created in binaural sound. Listen on headphones for the full effect. Rain - wr...
Dec 09, 2016•26 min
The innovative composer and electronic music pioneer Matthew Herbert physically deconstructs the instruments of a string ensemble while they play one of Beethoven's late string quartets, considered by many to be the epitome of chamber music. In a new commission, with an original performance by the Tippett Quartet, Beethoven's String Quartet in F major Op.135 is lovingly rendered until it starts to decay, collapse and become unrecognisable. The music unfolds with the sounds of the quartet being s...
Nov 17, 2016•29 min
Last summer the musician Tim van Eyken had to make a distress call while afloat. He was struck by how, at the moment of greatest tension and stress, the language used was calm itself. Instructions were simple and clear. Indeed, during the crisis language itself almost disappeared through the imposition of radio silence (the call 'Seelonce, Seelonce') clearing the airwaves so rescuers could listen solely to signals from those who had called for help. Tim van Eyken, the dramatist Joseph Wilde and ...
Apr 30, 2016•29 min
In a melting magical funnel of musical love (and the odd bit of reverb), musician David Bramwell investigates the unlikely story of how, in 1969, an amateur dramatic production of "Alice Through the Looking Glass", starring a young Martha Kearney, became one of the most sought-after psychedelic records in the world. Sony Award-winning musician David Bramwell heads out over the Downs to Ditchling, Sussex, where Peter Howell and John Ferdinando first met as teenagers - creating the soundtrack for ...
Nov 14, 2015•34 min
Newcastle writer David Almond investigates the story of a wild child who was said to roam the Yorkshire Dales near Crackpot Hall in the 1930s - and makes a surprising discovery. Crackpot Hall is an ancient, ruined farmhouse near the village of Keld, which lies on the crossroads of the Pennine Way and the Coast to Coast Path in Swaledale. In its time, it has been a hunting lodge, an office for the local lead-mining industry and a family farm. The acclaimed children's writer David Almond has long ...
Nov 07, 2015•27 min
A baby sleeps. A man in another room watches her on a screen. Her loving father? No. This man does not know this baby. He's in another country, thousands of miles away. And, each night, he watches a different baby. Wake Up, Baby! is an atmospheric journey into the sometimes unsettling world of "reassuring" technology. The media storm that surrounded the 1932 'baby Lindbergh kidnap', and the subsequent trial, planted the fear of child abduction into the public imagination. In 1937, Zenith produce...
Jun 06, 2015•29 min
Monument Valley, which straddles the state lines of Arizona and Utah, is a place most of us have seen and never visited or listened to. The 'true West' of John Ford movies and endless car adverts. Mark Burman takes his microphone through the red dust of history with Navajo guide Larry Y. Holiday. Chased by the storm clouds and lightning, theirs is a trip through nature's own movie set. At the turn of the 20th century, very few outsiders had penetrated its mysterious spaces. Spanish priests, Amer...
Mar 21, 2015•28 min
Imagine a town of harmonica players; sounds a bit surreal? Now 'Between the Ears' gives listeners a chance to hear the harmonica as a truly virtuoso instrument, always an instrument of the people - portable, affordable and playable. Acclaimed poet Kim Addonizio turns harmonica student, heading to blues school with pen, mouth, and a stack of harps at the ready, in search of the sweetest sounds. Trossingen in Germany may be the world capital of harmonicas. Every street echoes to the sound of the h...
Mar 07, 2015•28 min
Early in 2013 record producer Dan Carey bought a vintage tape machine at a charity shop in Streatham, South London. The Ferrograph recorder came with a box of 7-inch tapes containing an audio documentation of the previous owner's social life as a young man in the 1950s at a time when reel to reel tape recorders were state of the art audio technology. Among the recordings was a poetry reading event featuring an unusual selection of texts, from obscure comic verse to sections from the King James B...
Feb 21, 2015•29 min
A funny and moving autobiographical documentary about one of Britain's most brilliant performance poets, John Cooper Clarke; a revealing look at John's relationship with clothes, monkeys and fatherhood. John takes us to a gig, a Savile Row tailors and a journey into his mind exploring his relationship with clothes from childhood to present day, and culminating in his feelings of paternal love. Produced by Pauline Harris More Info: John has a massive cult following, he performs now to packed audi...
Feb 09, 2015•29 min
A meditation on the cultural representation of comas through music, poetry and interviews with the families of people who have a suffered brain injury. There are several thousand people in vegetative or minimally conscious states in the UK and, as medical interventions to save the body improve, numbers are growing. 'What is it like being in such as state?', 'Is she in there?', 'Does he recognize me?' 'What should I do for the best?' 'Is this a meaningful existence, or a state worse than death?' ...
Oct 11, 2014•29 min
Wilfred Owen wrote that he was a 'poets' poet'. He also wrote, in the preface to 'War Poems', 'Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War'. Owen is, then, a soldiers' poet, and the people who figure in his poems are all soldiers. In this Between the Ears, soldiers, all serving when they were recorded, choose a Wilfred Owen poem, explain why, read it and speak about the impact it has on them. They range from Barbara Ennis, a corporal, who chooses 'Dulce Et De...
Jun 28, 2014•31 min
Lenny Henry stars in a musical fantasy written by Jakko M Jakszyk and Lenny Henry, woven round the real-life 1964 dinner encounter between the greatest poet in the English language of the twentieth century, TS Eliot and the legendary star of A Night at the Opera, Duck Soup and Horse Feathers, Groucho Marx. Almost exactly fifty years after the meeting in early June 1964, Radio 3's adventurous feature series Between the Ears brings the moment to life with the aid of Groucho Marx and TS Eliot's exc...
Jun 16, 2014•29 min
Joe is home from school. "How was your day Joe?" asks his mum Emma (the producer of the programme). But Joe, and many like him on the autistic spectrum, can't always find the words to summarise their day, or even make sense of the question. Yet later on, they may come round to offering an answer. So what is happening as they struggle to process what is being asked of them? Through sound and interview, Joe and Emma explore where he and others on the autistic spectrum go to in their minds between ...
Jun 07, 2014•28 min
Poet Paul Farley imagines himself a sound-recordist taping the Garden of Eden and recalls the impoverished soundscape of his childhood. Growing on the edge of Liverpool in the 1960s and given a simple cassette recorder for a birthday present he went in search of the sounds of the superbs inspired by the bird song records he borrowed from his local library. He pressed play and record on his Panasonic and eavesdropped on ... What? Not a lot, as it turned out. Instead his imagination went to work: ...
Jan 18, 2014•28 min
The idea of a nation coming into being: in the track and weave of an oval ball. Owen Sheers' new sound poem explores the complex, often difficult relationship between rugby and modern Welsh identity. "Re: Union" fuses the violent, lyrical soundscape of Welsh rugby and its culture with a meditation on the social, historical and cultural signifiers of the national sport. A collaboration between between radio producer Steven Rajam and Welsh writer Owen Sheers, this new radio poem explores the compl...
Jan 13, 2014•29 min
Shadowplay offers a four-part 'symphony of voices' to celebrate 20 years of Between the Ears. It explores the shadows that may fall between the appearance of things and their reality. Making use of the full palette available to the radio producer - documentary, fiction, music, pure sound - four feature-makers address our values, our identities, our romantic inclinations and our sense of worth. 4. Final Movement: Art Values One of the 'variations' in the first movement of Shadowplay, broadcast ea...
Oct 26, 2013•29 min
Shadowplay offers a four-part 'symphony of voices' to celebrate 20 years of Between the Ears, Radio 3's home for adventurous and innovative radio. It explores the shadows that may fall between the appearance of things and their reality. Making use of the full palette available to the radio producer - documentary, fiction, music, pure sound - four feature-makers address our values, our identities, our romantic inclinations and our sense of worth. 3. Romantic Scherzo Between the romantic fantasies...
Oct 19, 2013•19 min
How can art be invisible? When it's made of sound. Dan Jones commemorates the centenary of 'The Art of Noise Manifesto', by Luigi Russolo, with an exploration of that mysterious, invisible and vigorous form - Sound Art. Luigi Russolo believed that the music of the future should reflect the noises of modern life. Rejecting the classical orchestra (along with pizza and pasta which he believed sapped the moral fibre of his nation) he invented 'noise- makers' to replicate the sounds of traffic, indu...
Oct 18, 2013•46 min
Shadowplay offers a four-part 'symphony of voices' to celebrate 20 years of Between the Ears. It explores the shadows that may fall between the appearance of things and their reality. Making use of the full palette available to the radio producer - documentary, fiction, music, pure sound - four feature-makers address our values, our identities, our romantic inclinations and our sense of worth. 2. Slow Movement: Everything, Nothing, Harvey Keitel In the middle of one of the busiest cities in the ...
Oct 12, 2013•18 min
Five radio producers from around the world hijack The Essay for a week to play a game of audio 'Consequences'. As part of BBC Radio 3's celebration of twenty years of Between The Ears', the BBC's home for adventurous feature-making, five radio producers from different corners of the world play a week-long audio version of the popular childhood game Consequences. Five radio producers from different corners of the world play a week-long audio version of the popular childhood game Consequences. Ove...
Oct 11, 2013•14 min
Five radio producers from around the world hijack The Essay for a week to play a game of audio 'Consequences'. As part of BBC Radio 3's celebration of twenty years of Between The Ears, the BBC's home for adventurous feature-making, five radio producers from different corners of the world play a week-long audio version of the popular childhood game Consequences. Over the course of the week, the five elements of the narrative game are introduced - the woman, the man, where they met, what they said...
Oct 10, 2013•14 min
Five radio producers from around the world hijack The Essay for a week to play a game of audio 'Consequences'. As part of BBC Radio 3's celebration of twenty years of Between The Ears, the BBC's home for adventurous feature-making, five radio producers from different corners of the world play a week-long audio version of the popular childhood game Consequences. Over the course of the week, the five elements of the narrative game are introduced - the woman, the man, where they met, what they said...
Oct 08, 2013•14 min
Five radio producers from around the world hijack The Essay for a week to play a game of audio 'Consequences'. As part of BBC Radio 3's celebration of twenty years of Between The Ears, the BBC's home for adventurous feature-making, five radio producers from different corners of the world play a week-long audio version of the popular childhood game Consequences. Over the course of the week, the five elements of the narrative game are introduced - the woman, the man, where they met, what they said...
Oct 07, 2013•14 min
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the shadow. The words of TS Eliot provide a cue for this playful, challenging and touching anniversary series celebrating 20 years of Between the Ears. Radio 3's showcase for adventurous feature-making was launched in October 1993 with a 'piece for radio', by the composer Ian Gardiner. 'Monument', which was conceived as a kind of London symphony, received the prestigious Prix Italia the following year. Shadowplay offers a new ...
Oct 05, 2013•29 min
Musician David Bramwell delves into the world of Victorian psychic phenomena, modern witchcraft and mind altering states in the search for the story behind an inherited moustache. "In the early summer of 1991 I inherited a moustache from my Great Aunt Sylvia. She made it to the over-ripe age of 96 before sailing out of this world, fag in hand, leaving behind an unfinished jigsaw of the Eiffel Tower and a forlorn cat..." Obsessed with finding out the identity of the moustache's owner - an unlikel...
Mar 27, 2010•29 min
