The English composer William Byrd died 400 years ago. To mark this the acclaimed vocal ensemble Stile Antico is about to release an album of his music. Five of the twelve members of the ensemble come to the Front Row studio to sing and talk about Byrd's extraordinary and moving music. The author and founder of the Women's Prize for Fiction Kate Mosse and actor Julie T Wallace, who played Ruth in the BBC TV production of The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, join Front Row to mark the work of writer...
Jan 04, 2023•42 min
Tom Hanks talks about playing a curmudgeonly older man whose life changes when a young family moves in next door in his latest film, A Man Called Otto. Author Deepti Kapoor on her new novel, Age of Vice, which explores crime and corruption in the world of New Delhi’s elites. The London Ticket Bank – promising tens of thousands of theatre and music tickets across the capital to those most impacted by the cost-of-living crisis. Samira is joined by Co-Founder Chris Sonnex to explain the new initiat...
Jan 03, 2023•42 min
Front Row visits Leeds as the city prepares to celebrate culture throughout 2023. Following Brexit, Leeds’ bid for European Capital of Culture was ruled ineligible. Sharon Watson, Principal of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, reflects on the initial disappointment and the decision to press ahead anyway, and creating a new dance work for The Awakening - the opening event of Leeds 2023 Year of Culture. The Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage joins his LYR bandmates, singer-songwriter Richard W...
Jan 02, 2023•42 min
Critics Tim Robey and Rhianna Dhillon join Front Row to watch the murder-mystery gothic horror film The Pale Blue Eye, starring Christian Bale, Gillian Anderson and Harry Melling, as Edgar Allan Poe, and the return of Happy Valley starring Sarah Lancashire and written by Sally Wainwright for what will be its final series. After the Windsor Castle fire in 1992, the artist Alexander Creswell was commissioned by the Queen to initially chart the destruction and five years later to capture the restor...
Dec 22, 2022•42 min
Film director Marie Kreutzer on her new period drama film, Corsage, about the rebellious Elisabeth, 19th-century empress of Austria and queen of Hungary. Matthew Sweet joins Front Row to mark the work of Mike Hodges, the celebrated director of the classic films Get Carter and Flash Gordon, whose death has just been announced. When does an 'art-speak' buzzword, such as 'immersive' or 'liminal,' add to our aesthetic landscape and when does it get in the way? Times critic James Marriott and the art...
Dec 21, 2022•42 min
Terry Hall of The Specials remembered after his sad passing. We hear him talking to John Wilson in 2019, and Pete Paphides looks back on his life and music. Plus, the state of UK theatre and its future outlook. Samira is joined by Nica Burns, co-owner of Nimax, who runs seven West End theatres and recently opened Soho Place - the first new theatre to open in the West End in 50 years; plus Matthew Xia - Artistic Director of the Actors' Touring Company; and Matt Hemley – Deputy Editor of the indus...
Dec 20, 2022•42 min
Lucy Prebble, acclaimed playwright and Succession screenwriter, talks to Tom about the return of I Hate Suzie Too, her TV collaboration with Billie Piper about a B-list celebrity making a reality TV comeback, following an intimate phone hacking scandal. Immersive and interactive exhibitions, performances and ‘experiences’ are everywhere, from the Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Reel Store in Coventry to a Peaky Blinders experience in London. Tom is joined by author Laurence Scott and art critic Ra...
Dec 20, 2022•42 min
For our Thursday review, film critic Leila Latif and art critic Ben Luke join Samira to discuss the much anticipated release of the Avatar sequel, The Way of Water and the exhibition of the late Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle Of Thread And Rope at Tate Modern in London. The much-loved and much-celebrated illustrator and author Sir Quentin Blake will be 90 on December 16th. He is well known for his collaborations with Roald Dahl, Michael Rosen and many others as well as for his...
Dec 15, 2022•42 min
Neil Gaiman reflects on The Ocean at the End of the Lane as the stage adaption of his award-winning novel begins a nationwide tour. A new report investigating China's art censorship in Europe has just been published. Jemimah Steinfeld, Editor-in-Chief of Index-on-Censorship, and art journalist Vivienne Chow, discuss its findings. Professor Dave O'Brien from the University of Sheffield and poet and trustee of the Working Class Movement Library, Oliver Lomax, discuss the decline of the working-cla...
Dec 14, 2022•42 min
Director Kasi Lemmons discusses her new film, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, a biopic of the performer Whitney Houston, whose unmatched vocal power saw her become one of the best-selling musical artists of all time. She talks about exploring the darker sides of Whitney’s life and working with British actor Naomi Ackie who stars in the title role. Hannah Khalil, writer-in-residence at Shakespeare's Globe theatre, tells Luke about her retelling of the classic 1001 Nights story cycle - Hakawatis: Wom...
Dec 13, 2022•42 min
Zadie Smith talks about her play The Wife of Willesden, a modern re-telling of Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath starring Clare Perkins in the title role at Kiln Theatre, London. David Tennant discusses playing Russian Alexander Litvinenko in a new ITV drama based on the real life events of his shocking death. Keyboard player Rick Wakeman discusses how he's having to adapt his UK tour after a load of his musical gear was stolen from his van last week. And film critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh expresses her f...
Dec 12, 2022•43 min
Orlando starring Emma Corrin at the Garrick Theatre in London and Guillermo del Toro’s animated film Pinocchio are reviewed by Shon Faye, author of The Transgender Issue, and Observer theatre critic Susannah Clapp. The story of double agent and defector Kim Philby has been told many times. A Spy Among Friends, a new six-episode series on ITVX, focuses on Nicholas Elliott, Philby’s lifelong friend. Damian Lewis, who plays Elliott, and writer Alexander Cary talk to Tom Sutcliffe about telling the ...
Dec 08, 2022•42 min
The winner of this year's Turner Prize will be announced at St George’s Hall in Liverpool. Art critic Louisa Buck reflects on this year’s Turner Prize and responds to the news of the winner of this prestigious award for contemporary art. Razorlight’s Johnny Borrell tells Samira about the band reforming, their new album - Razorwhat? The Best Of Razorlight, and a new documentary, Fall To Pieces, which charts the meteoric rise, break-up and make-up of the band. And poet Kim Moore was recently annou...
Dec 07, 2022•42 min
Film director Antoine Fuqua discusses his new film, Emancipation, which stars Will Smith. He discusses basing his film on the true story of an enslaved man in 1860s Louisiana. Earlier this year, Front Row revealed how non-disclosure agreements were being misused in film and TV casting, with actors being kept in the dark about the roles they were auditioning for. The actor’s union Equity has come up with new guidance on NDAs. Carolyn Atkinson explains what this means for auditions. April De Angel...
Dec 06, 2022•42 min
Jazz pianist Fergus McCreadie performs live from his latest album Forest Floor, which recently won the Scottish Album of the Year award and a Mercury Prize nomination. Performance poet Leyla Josephine discusses her debut poetry collection In Public / In Private. Patricia Allerston, chief curator of the Scottish National Gallery, on the transformation of the museum and creation of a new exhibition space. Plus Kate goes behind the scenes to meet conservators who are restoring the works of art, Les...
Dec 05, 2022•42 min
Veronica Ryan OBE is shortlisted for the Turner Prize. She talks to Front Row about her Windrush Commission sculptures in Hackney that have won the hearts of both the community and critics, how she uses materials from old fruit trays to volcanic ash, and how her work contains multitudes of meaning. Nii Ayikwei Parkes, writer, commentator and performance poet and Lisa Verrico, music critic for the Sunday Times review White Noise, an extraordinary film written and directed by Noah Baumbach and bas...
Dec 01, 2022•42 min
Maxine Peake discusses playing Betty Boothroyd, former Speaker of the House of Commons in Betty! A Sort of Musical, which is about to open at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre. Turner Prize nominated artist Heather Phillipson, best known for her sculpture of a giant cherry topped ice cream on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth, discusses her exhibition 'RUPTURE NO 1: blowtorching the bitten peach', using recycled materials, video, sculpture, music and poetry, currently on display at Tate Liverpo...
Nov 30, 2022•43 min
Clint Dyer discusses directing Othello starring Giles Terera at the National Theatre, the first Black director to do so. He talks about how he is approaching the racism and misogyny in the play, and the history of previous productions. In the second of Front Row’s interviews with the artists nominated for this year’s Turner Prize, Ingrid Pollard discusses her work, Carbon Slowly Turning, and how she explores themes of nationhood, race, history and identity through portraiture and landscape. And ...
Nov 29, 2022•42 min
Author Katherine Rundell talks to Tom Sutcliffe about her book Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, which has won this year’s The Baillie Gifford. In the first in a series of interviews with the artists shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize, Sin Wai Kin discusses how they use performance to challenge misogyny and racism. The acclaimed dance company Ballet Black, known for giving a platform to Black and Asian dancers and choreographers, turns 20 this year. Michael McKenzie visits...
Nov 28, 2022•43 min
The much-celebrated singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading on her 50-year career, her book of lyrics, The Weakness in Me, and new album Live at Asylum Chapel. Arts journalist Nancy Durrant, and art historian and writer Chloe Austin review Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s new show at the Tate Britain, and the film She Said, starring Carey Mulligan, which details the New York Times investigation into Harvey Weinstein. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Ellie Bury
Nov 24, 2022•42 min
Lara Feigel and Tom Shakespeare review Netflix’s new adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, starring Emma Corrin. The English National Opera stages an operatic reimagining of It’s a Wonderful Life, the classic 1946 Christmas film, by the composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer. Jake joins Samira. The casting of Ukrainian actors who have arrived here escaping the conflict, with actors Kateryna Hryhorenko and Yurii Radionov, and casting directors Olga Lyubarova and Rachel Sheridan. And the...
Nov 23, 2022•42 min
Director Matthew Warchus discusses his new film Matilda the Musical. Based on the Tony and Olivier award winning stage play, it brings Roald Dahl’s much loved children’s story to the screen. Scottish-Indian protest musician Kapil Seshasayee performs live and talks to Samira about his new album Laal. And art critics Louisa Buck and Bendor Grovenor discuss the impact of the recent climate protests in museums and galleries. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Kirsty McQuire
Nov 22, 2022•42 min
Luca Guadagnino won the Silver Lion for Best Director at this year's Venice Film Festival for his latest film, Bones and All, starring Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell. He talks to Tom Sutcliffe about confronting the taboo of cannibalism on screen and reuniting with Chalamet after Call Me By Your Name. Mark Bills, the Director of Gainsborough’s House, joins Tom to discuss the reopening of the painter's home in Suffolk. Ronald Blythe, the man who’s been described as the greatest living writer...
Nov 22, 2022•42 min
With Samira Ahmed. Guests Katy Hessel and Lillian Crawford review Florence Pugh's drama The Wonder, based on an Emma Donoghue novel, and the Royal Academy's Making Modernism exhibition, which explores the lives of a group of female artists active in Germany in the early twentieth century. The theatre company Frantic Assembly is running a nationwide programme to find the actors of the future, hopefully from unexpected places. Luke Jones talks to Frantic Assembly’s artistic director Scott Graham a...
Nov 17, 2022•42 min
Julie Hesmondhalgh, who played Hayley Cropper on Coronation Street, on writing a survival guide for new actors- An Actor’s Alphabet. What happens when football is taken from the pitch and put on the canvas? Nick Ahad is joined by the curators of three football-inspired exhibitions: Art of the Terraces at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, plus The Art of the Football Scarf and It's The Hope That Keeps Us Here at OOF Gallery in Tottenham Hotspur's stadium. Chornoblydorf, a new opera that looks ...
Nov 16, 2022•42 min
With Samira Ahmed. To mark the centenary of the first BBC radio broadcast, Samira Ahmed discusses the art of radio and radio’s influence on art with the novelist and radio enthusiast Tom McCarthy and with Benbrick, sound designer and co-producer of the Peabody award-winning Have You Heard George’s Podcast? From early on the BBC made programmes especially for children. Samira Ahmed speaks to Joy Whitby, a pioneer of children’s programmes – she started Play School and Jackanory – and hears how her...
Nov 14, 2022•42 min
The Crown: as series five is with us, we review the next ten part instalment of Netflix's royal drama as it slips into more recent territory - the turmoil of the nineties. Plus jailed Iranian film director Jafar Panahi’s new metafiction No Bears, in which he plays himself, forced to direct online from a village near Iran’s Turkish border. With Kate Maltby and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh. Jez Butterworth: the playwright and screenwriter on his new show Mammals starring James Corden, airing on Amazon Prim...
Nov 10, 2022•42 min
Filmmaker Ryan Coogler discusses returning to Black Panther after the death of Chadwick Boseman and how that experience has inspired the making of the sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. In the wake of this year’s annual Museums Association conference which asked its members to “to reimagine our future if we are going to survive”, Front Row brings together Rowan Brown, CEO of Museums Northumberland and Cllr Gerald Vernon-Jackson, Chair of the Local Government Association’s Culture, Tourism a...
Nov 09, 2022•42 min
Jennifer Lawrence and director Lila Neugebauer discuss their new film Causeway. Grammy award-winning mandolin player Chris Thile plays live in the studio from his latest album Laysongs, on the eve of his UK tour. A new book, Chokepoint Capitalism, looks at how big tech companies and large corporations control large parts of creative markets. The authors, Rebecca Giblin, a professor at Melbourne Law School and Cory Doctorow, writer and activist, join Front Row to discuss what that means for both ...
Nov 08, 2022•42 min
Arts Council England have announced the most dramatic shift in funding for decades, diverting investment from London towards other parts of the country. The Chair of Arts Council England, Sir Nicholas Serota, Stuart Murphy of English National Opera, which is set to relocate out of London, and arts journalist Sarah Crompton discuss the details. Director Tas Brooker discusses her new film When We Speak, a documentary about female whistleblowers, including Rose McGowan and Katherine Gun, whose evid...
Nov 07, 2022•42 min
