Composer Dobrinka Tabakova talks to Tom Service about her artist residency at The Hallé in Manchester. She discusses her love of melody, the thrill of writing for youth orchestra, the importance of understanding the character of the musicians she writes for, and how meeting composer Iannis Xenakis when she was 14 shaped her musical path. Tom visits the site of the new Shireland City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Academy in West Bromwich, which opens in September 2023. As the first state schoo...
Jan 28, 2023•44 min
Ahead of her performance in the Royal Opera House’s production of Tannhäuser, Tom Service joins the Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen backstage at Covent Garden during rehearsals for Wagner’s story of love, redemption, and mythical depiction of the Wartburg Song Contest. She tells Tom about inhabiting the role of her character, Elisabeth, and how opera is a space in which we can connect with world events. As Celtic Connections celebrates its 30th anniversary in Glasgow, Tom is joined by musician, ...
Jan 21, 2023•44 min
Beloved by choirs and audiences all over the world, John Rutter is one of the most popular and successful choral composers of the last half-century. In particular, for many people, Rutter’s carols and carol arrangements are the sound of Christmas. The festive season would be unthinkable today without the joyful tunes of Shepherd’s Pipe Carol or Star Carol resounding in school halls, churches and concert halls. Tom Service visits the composer at his home in rural Cambridgeshire to try to learn th...
Jan 10, 2023•44 min
As part of Radio 3's New Year New Music, Kate Molleson talks at length to one of the 21st-century's leading creative artists – the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. Celebrating her 70th birthday this year, Kaija describes music as a study of self and the human spirit. Kate meets her at home in Paris where she reflects on her life in music, describing the the conviction with which she pursued compositional classes with Paavo Heininen at the Sibelius Academy, and the distinctive musical style she d...
Jan 07, 2023•44 min
Kate Molleson speaks to Irish soprano Ailish Tynan at home with her dog. She reminisces about growing up in Ireland, learning her craft as a young artist at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and working with students at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance in Greenwich where she has been recently announced as International Artist in Voice. Kate travels to rehearsals to meet members of the Glasgow Senior Citizens Orchestra where she finds them preparing for their next concert; and...
Nov 26, 2022•44 min
Ahead of her concert next week with the LSO, Tom Service speaks to the pianist Alice Sara Ott who is also preparing to embark on a tour which features lighting and images alongside performances of Chopin’s Op 28 preludes, and other contemporary works from her recent Echoes of Life album, to create a multi-media experience that extends the boundaries of what’s possible in concert halls. As the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference concludes, Music Matters hears from Managing Director of t...
Nov 19, 2022•44 min
On the eve of the launch of her new album, ‘Seraph’, featuring works for trumpet and string orchestra by James Macmillan, Grieg, and Satie, Tom Service speaks to Norwegian trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth about her diagnosis with cancer last year, her relationship with music during gruelling treatment, and the conscious decision she made after her recovery to commit again to a career in music. As Arts Council England reveals its 2023-26 national portfolio of funded organisations, Music Matters speak...
Nov 12, 2022•44 min
The Labeque Sisters, Katia and Marielle Labeque, shot to fame in 1980 with their arrangements of Gershwin, including the Rhapsody in Blue, and for more than half a century have made a unique musical life together. Tom Service talks to Katia and Marielle about the broad range of music that they are creating, the boundaries that they are constantly pushing, and their sound-world within two pianos. Before the release of their award-winning Gershwin disc in 1980, Katia and Marielle Labeque predomina...
Nov 05, 2022•44 min
Presenter Tom Service visits the Pit Theatre at the Barbican to learn more about a new theatrical meditation on the bittersweet consolations of sorrow. He speaks to countertenor Iestyn Davies about the melancholy of John Dowland’s music and its power to process grief, while the director Netia Jones tells Tom how she’s weaved together creative visuals with philosophical musings of Robert Burton’s 17th-century treatise The Anatomy of Melancholy as well as those of Freud and other contemporary expe...
Oct 29, 2022•44 min
Tom Service joins Rachel Podger and her violin for a walk in the Brecon Beacons to talk about her new album ‘Tutta Sola’ which features lesser-known solo violin music of the 18th century. Rachel discusses the new musical discoveries she’s made through making the album and what it means to play solo, and she treats us to some solo Bach live on a hillside. Tom talks to Ukrainian musicians and musical leaders about their musical life in Ukraine right now and how music and music-making is both an es...
Oct 22, 2022•44 min
This week Kate Molleson focusses on Northern Ireland. Kate visits pianist Ruth McGinley at her studios in The MAC in Belfast to chat about her upcoming album of Irish airs and her unique approach to music making. Beyond Skin is an arts collective using music as a means for cultural education and exchange. Darren Ferguson explains how the collective has been working with musicians seeking asylum and refugee status through creative collaboration and social support. Kate meets with some of these mu...
Oct 15, 2022•44 min
To mark World Mental Health Day, Tom Service presents a special programme in collaboration with Professor Sally Marlow, a mental health specialist at King’s College London and BBC Radio 3’s first ever Researcher in Residence. Composer Gavin Higgins talks to Tom about how his early musical life in brass bands helped him to deal with his symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. We visit Bethlem Gallery to meet composer and artist Gawain Hewitt and Fiona Lambert from City of London Sinfonia's 'So...
Oct 08, 2022•44 min
Presenter Tom Service visits Blackpool to explore the iconic seaside town’s rich musical history and learn more about the energy of a musical ecosystem famed for its ballrooms, dance bands, and Wurlitzer organs; to hear from the those responsible for creating new musical opportunities for the area’s residents and visitors; and to speak those nurturing the next generation of musicians from across the town. Tom starts at the world-famous Tower Ballroom, where he hears organist Phil Kelsall after h...
Jul 09, 2022•44 min
Tom Service is joined in the studio by Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, chief executive of UK Music; Kate Whitley, composer and founder of the Multi-Story Orchestra in south east London; and Olivia Giovetti, music journalist and editor of VAN Magazine, who joins the panel from Berlin. They deliberate on the pressing issues concerning the music industry this year. They hear from Ukrainian musicians, Herman Makarenko and Valeriy Sokolov about how the war in Ukraine is affecting their lives and their music. Th...
Jul 02, 2022•44 min
Tom Service talks to drummer, conductor and composer Tyshawn Sorey. A musician very much in demand across both classical and jazz circles, Tyshawn discusses his continuing mission to break down boundaries in music and his recent piece ‘Monochromatic Light’, written for the 50th anniversary of Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, for which he took inspiration not just from the artwork of Mark Rothko, but the piece Morton Feldman wrote for the opening of the space in 1971. Tom also speaks to conductor...
Jun 11, 2022•44 min
Tom Service talks to Sir Bryn Terfel about an extraordinary life performing at opera houses and concert halls all over the world. He talks about how his career took flight after winning the Lieder Prize at Cardiff Singer of the World in 1989, as well as his partnerships with conductors like Georg Solti and Claudio Abbado and the composer Stephen Sondheim. Bryn Terfel brings drama to the stage through great characters such as Wotan, Scarpia, Sir John Falstaff and Leporello, with music by Wagner, ...
Jun 04, 2022•44 min
Tom Service meets the British Italian tenor Freddie De Tommaso ahead of his starring role in Madame Butterfly at the Royal Opera House. Conductor André J Thomas, who has just been announced as LSO Associate Artist, tells Tom about his life in choral music and his project to unite the voices of gospel and community choirs from across London. There's also a report on the innovative music programme to help rehabilitate inmates at Karachi Central Jail in Pakistan, and news of a project taking music ...
May 28, 2022•44 min
Kate Molleson visits Glyndebourne Festival Opera to hear about its new production of Ethel Smyth’s ‘The Wreckers’ – the first major staging of this tale of a hostile coastal community in many, many years, heard, as the composer intended, with its original French libretto. This new edition of the opera was researched and typeset by Martyn Bennett, Head of Music Library and Resources at Glyndebourne, using source material from the original score, with missing fragments orchestrated by Tom Poster, ...
May 21, 2022•44 min
Tom Service is joined by Dan Grimley for a walk in the Surrey Hills where Vaughan Williams grew up to explore the ways in which the community, sound and landscape of this area shaped his music and his thinking. They also visit Dorking town centre where Vaughan Williams played a central role in the community, especially during World War Two and in the local music scene as conductor of the Leith Hill Musical Festival for almost 50 years. Tom visits folk singer Shirley Collins at her home in East S...
May 14, 2022•44 min
Tom Service is joined by Russian music and history expert, Marina Frolova-Walker and BBC journalist, Olga Ivshina to discuss the effect the war in Ukraine is having on Russian music and culture. Clarinettist and conductor, Martin Fröst talks to Tom about reshaping the classical musical arena through multi-media spectacular as he prepares to launch his newest project, Xodus. Singers, Jess Dandy and Joanna Harries take Tom on a musical walk through a woodland in south east London ahead of their "S...
Apr 16, 2022•44 min
Tom Service talks to virtuoso vocalist Bobby McFerrin about the latest chapter in his musical life and his ceaseless creativity. He’s been inspiring audiences to make music with him during concerts for decades, and now, following a Parkinson’s diagnosis, he is taking this further as he starts to perform live again. Bobby reflects on his early solo shows, the improvisation technique ‘circle singing’ which he developed in the 1980s and whether music can really bring peace to the world. Folk musici...
Apr 02, 2022•44 min
Ahead of a new production of Britten's Peter Grimes at the Royal Opera House, Sara Mohr-Pietsch hears from members of the creative team bringing this compelling tale of an outsider to life, in a post-pandemic, 21st-century context. The composer Anna Clyne also talks to Sara about her latest work, including a Handel-inspired piece to be premiered later this month by the Academy of Ancient Music and the National Youth Choir of Great Britain. As the situation in Ukraine continues, Sara looks talks ...
Mar 19, 2022•44 min
As the Barbican Centre in London celebrates its 40th anniversary, Tom Service asks if the future of music venues and cultural hotspots is going big or small, and how should they engage with the communities around them. We talk to the Barbican’s Artistic Director Will Gompertz about the challenges they face with diversity and inclusion, and put those same questions to two other different sized arts centres – the CCA in Glasgow and the ARC in Stockport – in order to find out how arts centres can b...
Feb 26, 2022•44 min
Image: © Simon Fowler The Italian pianist Beatrice Rana joins Tom Service to discuss her immersion in Beethoven’s late piano sonatas during Italy’s lockdown, and her relationship with one of the most famous works in the canon – the composer’s ‘Emperor’ concerto. She reflects on how the circumstances of Chopin’s life are articulated in his Scherzi, and on thanking audiences for being part of performances. With Robert Nathaniel Dett’s Oratorio, The Ordering of Moses, receiving its first outing in ...
Feb 19, 2022•44 min
Sara Mohr-Pietsch talks to Ruth Slenczynska, the last living pupil of Rachmaninoff, from her home in Pennsylvania ahead of releasing a brand new solo piano album entitled My Life in Music. She reminisces about her childhood as a prodigy, connecting with her audiences, and performing still in her ninth decade. The writer, musician and composer Richard Thomas, and contemporary BAFTA and multi award-winning artist, photographer and filmmaker Alison Jackson, join Sara to discuss their new collaborat...
Feb 05, 2022•44 min
Photo credit: Marco Borggreve Sara Mohr-Pietsch talks to viola virtuoso Tabea Zimmermann about her dazzling career on the concert platform. She first picked up a viola at the age of three, and in the decades since she’s performed with the world’s greatest orchestras and has become a hugely respected chamber musician and teacher. She discusses the music that means the most to her, the curiosity that comes from working with young performers, and the future of classical music. Theatre artist Femi E...
Jan 22, 2022•44 min
In the final episode of 2021, Tom Service meets mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton and composer and pianist Jake Heggie whose album ‘Unexpected Shadows’ has been nominated for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album in the 2022 Grammy Awards. Jamie recently sang in Atlanta Opera’s production of Jake’s first major opera, Dead Man Walking, which tells the story of a nun who becomes the spiritual advisor to a convicted murderer on death row. They discuss the power of opera and song in tackling existential stories ...
Dec 18, 2021•44 min
Tom Service talks to Lin-Manuel Miranda about making musicals, including Hamilton and tick, tick … BOOM! The soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn talks about the songs she has uncovered by composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. And two musicians who have had to leave their homes in Afghanistan share their hopes for the future.
Dec 11, 2021•44 min
Today Tom Service talks to superstar violinist and conductor, André Rieu about his passion for sharing the joy of music across the world with his Johann Strauss Orchestra. Tom also visits the Russian pianist Pavel Kolesnikov, now a resident of London, whose recordings of Chopin and Bach have earned widespread acclaim. Bach's Goldberg Variations also feature in a radical new reworking, which has been occupying the pianist and composer Xenia Pestova Bennett. She tells Tom more about Gold.Berg.Werk...
Nov 27, 2021•44 min
Tom Service travels to the Monastery in Gorton, the new home of the Manchester Camerata, to find out how the orchestra is embedding in to the community. Gorton was once the engine-room of the world as it kickstarted the Industrial Revolution, building the engines for the cotton mills. Having since suffered from socio-economic decline, Gorton is now being regenerated and the Manchester Camerata is doing something very new in its move to The Monastery, providing a weekly Music Café for local resid...
Nov 20, 2021•44 min
