Bbc Radio 3 New Season 2015/16 Press Pack Contents

BBC RADIO 3 NEW SEASON 2015/16 PRESS PACK CONTENTS

 Arts and Drama  Classical  Digital  New Talent  World and Jazz

For more information contact radio3publicity@bbc.co.uk / 020 361 43888

ARTS AND DRAMA

Harriet Walter © Georgie Oetker David Suchet, Zoe Wanamaker & Howard Davies © BBC Guy Levy

Between the Ears: We Are Writing A Poem About Home

Poet Kate Clanchy presents a special Between the Ears as part of Contains Strong Language, a season of poetry and poets across the BBC to mark and celebrate the 21st birthday of National Poetry Day in October.

Some poets like woods. Some poets like cliffs. Kate Clanchy likes schools: in particular the small, extremely diverse, and often challenging Oxford comprehensive where she has been working for the last seven years. A school which still looks and sounds like the grammar school it once was - until you look closer and see there are more black faces than white, that most of the cricket team comes from Bangladesh, and that as they have fifty-four languages between them - Latvian, Nepalese, Hungarian, Kiswahili, Ibo and six kinds of Arabic - the kids have decided to speak English in the idiom of Kanye West – even if they are Lithuanian. This is a community without a majority culture: a place where, as no one is really sure of the right way to do things, eccentricity and creativity flourish.

Between the Ears takes listeners into Kate’s poetry workshop to meet its multi award-winning young poets.

Listen – as together they create a radio poem about home: the homes and home countries they came from, and the new homes they have found, and the home they are making in their school and in their writing.

“My poem will be a rock concert with no perfect edits, no careful straining through a BBC sieve, and no volume knob…”

Listen: this is school. The world is here, but School is still school. The cold, stone stairs scream at the bell. the gym bars swing back, the books thud shut. The field is torn with balls and cries, is bright with leaves with scarves laid down for goal – Come inside. The library. Listen, our pens scratch. We are writing home

“My poem is a jack fruit, the smell of it clings…”

“I may have been small/ but when trapped in the claws of war, my voice could soar – “

“I can’t write about my Hazara people…”

“My poem is my country, my home country – and my country is poor…”

“I have been a boat, a plane, a migrant, an angry bird in a game…”

Listen – this is England singing.

With poems from Robert Seatter and Asfa Awad.

TX: 10 October 2015 Producer: Jonquil Panting

Arthur Miller Centenary

As part of celebrations across BBC Radio 3, 4 and 4 Extra, Radio 3 marks the centenary year of one of the most important American playwrights of the 20th century with a season of dramas, documentaries and reflections on Arthur Miller’s huge influence in theatre, 100 years since his birth.

Sunday Feature: Arthur Miller - Speaking Of New York

Arthur Miller was a New Yorker. In his formative years he shared the city's pain during the Depression as his family lost its wealth and moved from glossy Manhattan to a small house in Brooklyn. Ben Brantley, chief theatre critic of the New York Times, is on location in the city to examine Miller's debt to his home town. New York offered Miller the vivid treasures of its characters, its language and gave the young writer a moral purpose that informed his work throughout his life.

Brantley visits the Millers' old house in Brooklyn – surely the model for Willy Loman’s home in Death of a Salesman – and is down on the docks to consider the inspiration of stories from the Sicilian community that became A View from the Bridge. He interviews Joan Copeland, Miller's 94-year-old sister, who is the marvellous keeper of the story of their early life and of the family's lost wealth during the Depression years, and also speaks to Miller's son Robert who produced the film of his father's novel 'Focus' which records anti-Semitism in New York in the post war years.

TX: 11 October 2015 Producer: Susan Marling, Just Radio

Drama on 3: Death of a Salesman

David Suchet, Zoe Wanamaker and director Howard Davies, who all won awards for the sell-out production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons in the West End in 2010, reunite to create a new production for Radio 3 of Miller’s 1949 classic about the American dream and his second big Broadway success. The original production won The Pullitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award and Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play.

Willy Loman (David Suchet) is a 63-year-old travelling salesman worn out by a life on the road. His wife Linda (Zoe Wanamaker) has supported him throughout and borne him two sons, Biff and Happy. Biff is working away and has returned home for the first time in years, so the whole family are reunited. But there is a secret between Willy and Biff, which has destroyed what was a mutual hero-worshipping relationship when Biff was a star athlete in High School, and still haunts them both.

TX: 11 October 2015 Director: Howard Davies Producer: Chris Wallis, Watershed Productions

The Essay: Staging Arthur Miller

To mark the centenary of Arthur Miller’s birth, playwrights, directors and an actor, reflect on what his work means to them and describe their personal connection with the playwright and his work.

Monday: Director Richard Eyre begins the series with a set of personal recollections of the playwright. He recalls conversations with Arthur Miller about the House Un-American Activities hearings; the first production of Death of a Salesman and his experience of directing The Crucible on Broadway. And he reflects on Miller’s impact on British theatre.

Tuesday: Actor Margot Leicester who has performed in many Arthur Miller plays writes about the deep personal connection she feels with his characters; recalls her experiences of working in the rehearsal room with Miller; and the process as an actor of, in Miller’s words, ‘making the lines land.’

Wednesday: Emmy award-winning screenwriter Ron Hutchinson who recently adapted Arthur Miller’s unproduced screenplay The Hook, for the stage writes about the process of working with Arthur Miller’s drafts and handwritten notes to ‘get inside his writing head word by word’ and examines the sheer potency of Miller’s technique. Miller wrote The Hook in 1951 but withdrew it from production when the studios demanded politically motivated changes, which he refused to make.

Thursday: British director David Thacker writes about his close friendship and working relationship with Arthur Miller. He reflects particularly on working with Miller on the script for ‘Broken Glass’ for its British premiere in 1994.

Friday: Tony Kushner is a Pulitzer prize-winning playwright and screenwriter who knew Arthur Miller and has recently edited Miller’s Collected Plays. He reflects on the importance of Arthur Miller in American theatre.

TX: Monday 12 – Friday 16 October 2015 Producer: Caroline Hughes, Whistledown Productions

Drama on 3: A View from the Bridge

Martin Jarvis directs Arthur Miller's 1955 award-winning masterpiece, recorded specially in the US for Drama on 3 with Alfred Molina leading an all-star American cast.

Universal themes of family, guilt, loyalty, sexual attraction, jealousy - and love - in a powerful story about illegal immigration that still resonates to our time 60 years later.

Set in an Italian-American neighbourhood near the Brooklyn Bridge in New York in the 1950s, lawyer and narrator Alfieri (Hector Elizondo) confides to listeners there are cases where he can only watch as they run their ‘bloody course’.

Longshoreman Eddie Carbone (Alfred Molina) lives with his wife Beatrice (Jane Kaczmarek) and her orphaned niece, Catherine (Melissa Benoist), in a Brooklyn tenement. He has a love of, almost an obsession with, 17 year old Catherine. Beatrice's Italian cousins are being smuggled into the country. The family hide the illegal immigrants, Marco (Reid Scott) and Rodolpho (Matthew Wolf), while they work on the docks. Eddie's increasing suspicion and jealousy of Rodolpho's developing relationship with Catherine ('he ain't right, he cooks, he sings, he makes dresses') eventually leads to betrayal and a tragic confrontation.

TX: 18 October 2015 Director: Martin Jarvis, Jarvis and Ayres Productions Producer: Rosalind Ayres

Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival of Ideas 2015

This year BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival of ideas returns to Sage Gateshead from Friday 6 November – Sunday 8 November 2015 for a weekend of provocative debate, new ideas, live music and performance. Now in its tenth year, the Festival brings together high-profile figures from the worlds of arts, science, politics and literature to discuss and challenge current thinking on a range of topics, this year focusing on a theme of ‘Tearing Up The Rule Book’, exploring why the idea of rule-breaking has become so attractive to business, politics, culture and other areas of public life – and asking which of our rule books need to be kept firmly intact.

World on 3, Sunday Morning, Jazz Records Requests, and the Early Music Show will broadcast from the festival for the first time bringing more music programming at the Festival than ever before, with many of Radio 3’s regular programmes broadcast live from the Radio 3 pop-up studio on the concourse of Sage Gateshead.

This year’s opening Free Thinking Lecture will be given by American poet Claudia Rankine, just announced as winner of the 2015 Forward Poetry Best Collection prize. Winner of the PEN Open Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, her book ‘Citizen: An American Lyric’ became an instant classic and New York Times best seller, being hailed as ‘the book of a generation’. On the stage at Sage Gateshead she will talk about the power of language and what it means to be black in the new millennium.

Guests and speakers for this year’s Festival exploring all aspects of rule-breaking and rule-making include scientist and atheist Richard Dawkins, Chocolat author Joanne Harris, actresses Sheila Hancock and Juliet Stevenson, novelist and filmmaker Tariq Ali, authors Anne Fine and Pat Barker, journalist Simon Heffer, theatre director and author Neil Bartlett, former tennis table champion and writer Matthew Syed and award winning composer Jocelyn Pook. The Free Thinking Festival will also feature performances at Sage Gateshead from artists including Royal Northern Sinfonia, Peggy Seeger, Sam Robson, The Wilson Family, Camille O’Sullivan, Voices of Hope and The Marian Consort.

The Festival will feature this year's BBC Radio 3 and Arts and Humanities Research Council New Generation Thinkers, winners of a scheme for young academics, who will be delivering a series of essays on topics including The Moor of Florence; Kilts, Celts and Clearances in World War One; Jews in Occupied

France; Beer and the British Empire; The Medieval Scottish Dream State and Sculpture and Seduction in the 18th Century.

All tickets for Free Thinking are free to the public and will be made available on Monday 5 October. Free Thinking is broadcast on Radio 3 over the weekend of 6 - 8 November and in the three weeks following the festival. All the debates and lectures will be available as free downloads via Radio 3’s Arts and Ideas podcast.

The weekend’s highlights include:

 Richard Dawkins In Conversation with Free Thinking presenter Philip Dodd on religion, culture and science

 Stage Directions: Actress Juliet Stevenson and theatre director Natalie Abrahami, who directed Stevenson in an acclaimed recent revival of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days ask: how easy is it to break rules in the theatre?

 Rule Making and Rule Breaking for Women and Men: Actress Sheila Hancock, culture editor at BuzzFeed UK Bim Adewunmi theatre director and author Neil Bartlett and Educating Yorkshire’s head teacher Jonny Mitchell discuss gender difference in attitudes to rule breaking.

 Books at Breakfast: Making Mischief: Author of Chocolat Joanne Harris and Radio 3 New Generation Thinker Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough discuss the enduring power of Norse mythology

 Rule Breakers or Rule Makers? Novelist and film maker Tariq Ali, historian and Daily Telegraph columnist Simon Heffer and Police and Crime Commissioner for Northumbria Vera Baird QC discuss which institutions should consider ripping up their rule books

 Breathalysing Britain: Free Spirits or a Drain on Society?: expert on addiction Dr Sally Marlow, philosopher and wine columnist Professor Barry Smith, author and Muslim women’s activist Shelina Zahra Janmohamed and former editor of the Sun and Patron of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics, David Yelland

 The Family is Dead! Long Live The Family!: With author and first Children’s Laureate Anne Fine, novelist and communalist Tobias Jones and Co-Director of the Centre for Population Health Studies Professor Sarah Cunningham Burley

 Landmark – Angela Carter: Novelists Joanna Kavenna and Natasha Pulley join Angela Carter’s literary executor Susannah Clapp and her friend the cultural critic Christopher Frayling to discuss the award-winning author’s writing and influence thirteen years after her early death

 Old Ways, New Directions: Cumbrian shepherd James Rebanks and cultural anthropologist Professor Veronica Strang explore human interactions with the environment and discuss the value of hard-won traditional knowledge and its challenges to the modern world

 A live edition of Radio 3’s Words and Music on the theme of “Tearing up the Rule Book” from St Mary’s Church in Gateshead with actors including Stephen Tompkinson accompanied by members of the Royal Northern Sinfonia

TX: 6-8 November and in the three weeks following the festival. All the debates and lectures will be available as free downloads via Radio 3’s Arts and Ideas podcast.

Producer: Robyn Read and Fiona McLean

Harriet Walter curated season in Drama on 3

Radio 3 has today announced three new productions starring or chosen by one of our leading stage actors, Dame Harriet Walter, as part of the BBC’s On Stage season in November 2015.

Ashes to Ashes/A Kind of Alaska, by Harold Pinter Two new productions of powerful Pinter plays, starring Harriet Walter. Ashes to Ashes from 1996 is a conversation between a couple about a past violent relationship which then merges into the violence of unnamed political barbarity. A Kind of Alaska from 1982 tells the story of a woman emerging from “sleeping sickness” and was written by Pinter after reading the book Awakenings by neurologist Oliver Sacks, who died in August of this year. Harriet Walter takes the role played by Judi Dench in the original production.

TX: 15 November 2015 Producer: Toby Swift

Dinner, by Moira Buffini Harriet Walter reprises her role as a Paige, a sharp-tongued hostess in this West End black comedy about an evening party that ends in death. On the surprise menu to celebrate the publication of her husband’s new book are ‘Primordial Soup’, ‘Apocalypse of Lobster’ and for dessert ‘Frozen Waste’. It soon becomes a darkly comic “dinner party from hell”

TX: 22 November 2015 Producer: Jonquil Panting

A Human Being Died That Night, by Nicholas Wright In Pretoria Central Prison, South Africa, a black psychologist prepares to sit opposite the apartheid regime's most notorious assassin: Eugene de Kock nicknamed "Prime Evil". She is a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and is interviewing de Kock while he serves 212 years for crimes against humanity, murder, conspiracy to murder, attempted murder, assault, kidnapping, illegal possession of firearms, and fraud. How did he become one of the most reviled figures in apartheid history? A Human Being Died That Night is based on the best-selling book by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela and explores her extraordinary interviews with Eugene de Kock and how a fundamentally moral person could become a mass murderer.

The original cast of the stage production bring this play to Radio 3 at Harriet Walter’s request. Since the play was recorded for Radio 3 Eugene de Kock has himself – controversially – been released on parole.

TX: 29 November 2015 Producer: Toby Swift

Sunday Feature: Making an Entrance – Asian Theatre in Britain

Sarfraz Manzoor charts the history of Asian theatre in Britain, a tale which stretches from The Bayaderes, “Priestesses of Pondicherry”, the temple dancers who came to London from India in the 1830s, through to the current generation of actors, directors and writers, via the performers who visited these shores at the height of the British Raj.

Sarfraz examines how political and social unrest in the 1970s sparked the founding of the first high-profile Asian theatre company in Britain, and looks at how the 21st century has seen an increasingly wide range of work – from controversial plays and new, sometimes radical versions of classic texts to Bollywood- inspired musicals. With contributors including Meera Syal, Hanif Kureshi, Tanika Gupta, Jatinder Verma and Sudha Bhuchar .

TX: 22 November 2015 Producer: Mohini Patel

Private Passions: Alan Bennett

Award-winning dramatist and screenwriter Alan Bennett will, for the first time, reveal his Private Passions to Michael Berkeley. Bennett, who has credited the Radio 3 programme for partly inspiring his celebrated play The History Boys, will discuss the influence music has had on his life and career. His interview will be one of the final Private Passions broadcasts of 2015, concluding the programme’s 20th anniversary year.

TX: 20 December 2015 Producer: Loftus Media

Artist Descending a Staircase

Sir Tom Stoppard’s Artist Descending a Staircase returns to the airwaves in a new production featuring acclaimed actors Derek Jacobi and Ian McDiarmid − the first new radio production of the play since Stoppard’s original production was premiered on BBC Radio 3 43 years ago. First written for Radio 3 in 1972 and later adapted for the stage, the play is a funny and moving exploration of both the meaning and purpose of art and the constantly shifting uncertainties of what we like to call "reality”.

Sir Tom Stoppard commented: “Two short plays for radio in the 60s were almost the first things I ever wrote and I have been periodically stimulated by radio drama commissions over the years. It was exciting to be involved in the original production of Artist Descending a Staircase and I feel very complimented by Radio 3 bringing the play back in a new production.”

TX: 10 January 2016 Producer: Gordon House, Goldhawk Essential

CLASSICAL

Chi-Chi Nwanoku © BBC Nigel Kennedy © BBC Chris Christodoulou

Essential Classics - Music in Time

From Tuesday 13 October, a new slot in Essential Classics will be placing Music in Time, bringing pieces of music to life as they’re put into historical perspective.

From the earliest written music to pieces composed today, at 10.30am Tuesday to Friday Rob Cowan and Sarah Walker will be choosing a piece of music and plotting it on the Essential Classics timeline. From Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque, to Classical, Romantic and Modern, to see how these eras developed and merged and how one composer influenced another.

TX: Tuesday – Friday from 13 October Producer: Sarah Devonald, Somethin’ Else

Hear And Now: Cut & Splice

BBC Radio 3's ground-breaking festival of experimental sound, Cut & Splice, is returning to the airwaves with recordings from this year's event at London’s Cafe Oto, curated by the composer Joanna Bailie and featuring the group Ensemble Plus-Minus.

Bailie's programme links the work of the early pioneers of the avant-garde to the trail-blazers of today and explores the relationship between music machines and the environment.

Music featured includes: Peter Ablinger: Renate Fuczik (2006-2026) for piano and pre-recorded media Alvin Lucier: Sferics (1981) for pre-recorded media Bryan Eubanks: Double Portrait (2012) for clarinet, field recordings, sine tones and tuned noise

Peter Ablinger: Renate Fuczik (2006-2026) for piano and pre-recorded media Mauro Lanza/Andrea Valle: Regnum Vegetabile (2014) for sextet and electromechanical devices Hildegard Westerkamp: Kits Beach Soundwalk (1989) for pre-recorded media Bryan Eubanks: Listening through glass walls (2014/15) for amplified violin and viola, and tuned space Peter Ablinger: Weiss/Weisslich 11b (since 1994) for pre-recorded media and readers Ensemble Plus-Minus: Mark Knoop (piano), Ilze Ikse (flute), Christopher Redgate (oboe), Vick Wright (clarinet), Aisha Orazbayeva (violin), Bridget Carey (viola), Alice Purton (cello) Owen Green (electronics) James Saunders and Matthew Shlomowitz (readers)

Recorded at Café Oto, London, 25-26 September. Cut & Splice is a partnership between Sound and Music, the national charity for new music, and BBC Radio 3's Hear and Now.

TX: 3 & 10 October 2015 Producer: Andrew King

Opera on 3

In the 2015/16 Season Opera on 3 will be bringing some of the best international opera to its listeners beginning this Autumn and including the most exciting and top artists of today in established and new roles.

Highlights this Autumn include the world premiere of Georg Friedrich Haas’s new opera, Morgen und Abend, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, starring Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer and directed by Graham Vick; the ROH at the Globe with Rossi’s Orpheus and a visit to the Wexford Festival live for the first time for many years. Throughout the season, Radio 3 will be broadcasting performances from top international and home-grown talent, with living opera legends such as Placido Domingo performing on the same Radio 3 stage as, Joyce DiDonato, Juan Diego Florez, Piotr Beczala, Angela Gheorghiu, Jonas Kaufmann, Sophie Koch, Roberto Alagna and many more. From the highlights of the summer festivals to new opera from contemporary composers alongside rarely heard classics and old favourites, Radio 3 will broadcast the rich and exciting content from opera houses and festivals from around the world to listeners across the UK from its new regular slot on Saturday night.

Hear and Now: Northern Lights

As part of Radio 3’s Northern Lights Season, the British composer Emily Hall travels to the most northerly part of the Shetland Islands and of the United Kingdom, the isle of Unst. She will be writing new music for Radio 3’s Hear and Now programme, based on the experience of her trip, and incorporating sound recordings made on location. Unst is on the same circle of latitude as Anchorage (Alaska), St Petersburg, and Bergen (Norway), which is the nearest mainland city.

Emily visited the island in mid-September, and recorded the sound of birds at Hermaness Nature Reserve, the wind turbines at the renewable energy centre PURE, the spinning wheel of a local lace maker, and the organ at the UK’s most northerly church, in Haroldswick. She went out to sea in a fishing boat and with her hydrophone recorded the underwater conversation of dolphins, and at the UK’s most northerly school Baltasound Junior High, children performed traditional repertoire including the Unst Boat Song and Farewell ta Yell.

Other musical sources Emily will draw on include the Norwegian hardanger fiddle, and a well known 19th- century folk ballad, Lady Franklin’s Lament. Visible from Hermanness are the outcrops of Muckle Flugga

and Out Stack, where, it is said, Lady Jane Franklin waited in vain after reports of her husband’s failed expedition to the Canadian arctic.

Using these materials Emily is creating 3 new pieces based on different times of the day: morning, afternoon and night. The work will be broadcast in Hear and Now’s programme on Saturday 19th December in conversation with the composer. Emily has also recorded an audio diary which will be broadcast in the week leading up to the programme and available online.

TX: 19 December 2015 Producer: Felix Carey

In Tune Christmas Special

In Tune celebrates the festive season with a special live broadcast from the Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House. Sean Rafferty will be hosting a feast of live performances from special guests including violinist Nigel Kennedy and double bass player, principal and co-founder of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Chi-Chi Nwanoku, with musicians from her Chineke! Foundation.

TX: 18 December 2015 Producer: Roger Short

New Year New Music

The world’s biggest commissioner of new music, Radio 3 is to present New Year New Music in early 2016 – a special season celebrating the best of modern classical music.

For the first seven days of January, some of the best of contemporary music from the last sixty years will feature across the Radio 3 schedule. Today’s exciting new generation of composers will share the airwaves with great modernist figures of the last century as well as the great composers of the past. There will be daily opportunities to hear new music on Breakfast and In Tune, Afternoon on 3, Composer of the Week, Radio 3 In Concert and other strands.

To get celebrations going, Radio 3’s flagship contemporary music programme Hear and Now will present a very rare complete performance of one of the great set pieces of the late twentieth century avant garde: Karlheinz Stockhausen's iconic electroacoustic masterpiece Hymnen. Taking as the starting point a December live performance by the London Sinfonietta of Hymnen's 3rd Region (originally composed to a commission by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic), Radio 3 has also acquired copies of the original four-channel tapes of the remaining Regions 1,2 and 4 of Hymnen from The Stockhausen Foundation for Music in Germany. Presented by Robert Worby, Hear and Now will broadcast the whole piece for the first time in 4.0 surround sound on 1 January – a world premiere and seismic broadcasting event in the history of modern music.

Stockhausen Foundation for Music commented:

“In October 1958, Stockhausen wrote his essay Electronic and Instrumental Music. This was published in Die Reihe 5, in 1959.

In it he writes:

If one believes in the idea of a new instrumental music, one must accept the fact that it will have even more difficulty in prevailing than electronic music. The whole question of whether we are capable of finding and animating a new, irreplaceable form of collective listening through listening to the radio will depend exclusively on the composers who work on this new instrumental music. In a way similar to spatial electronic music, some of the new instrumental works functionally incorporate into composition the direction and the movement of the sounds in space. A radio transmission—even a two-channel one, as is already possible today—can only convey an approximate idea of this "three-dimensional" music, and people must go into the space where the musicians are playing, if they really want to experience this music.

If Stockhausen had only known that there would someday be the possibility of 4-track radio listening as is now the case. So together with Stockhausen, the Stockhausen Foundation for Music is delighted that the BBC is pioneering this world premiere 4 channel broadcast.”

Further details of New Year New Music programming is to be announced in due course.

TX: 1-7 January 2016 Producer: Felix Carey

BBC Performing Groups

The BBC’s performing groups each play a unique role in British cultural life. Based in Cardiff, Glasgow, London and Salford, the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, BBC Concert Orchestra, BBC Singers and the BBC Philharmonic, reach an audience of millions with their wide-ranging and distinctive programming.

Performing with the world’s leading conductors and soloists, the BBC performing groups give around 400 concerts a year in over 60 locations across the UK as well as touring worldwide.

The Performing Groups organise more than 100 learning and outreach projects across the country, bringing music to tens of thousands of people of all ages across the UK. They are an integral part of the BBC’s Ten Pieces, an initiative designed to encourage children to get creative with classical music.

The BBC Performing Groups are the backbone of the BBC Proms, collectively giving almost half of the concerts at the world’s largest classical music festival.

BBC Concert Orchestra

As part of its 2015-16 season, the BBC Concert Orchestra will be teaming up with the Society of London Theatre to celebrate 40 years of the Olivier Awards, with a special gala concert at the Royal Festival Hall (25 Jan). Announced today, Maria Friedman will be both performing and directing alongside a host of other past Olivier winners including Daniel Evans, Adrian Lester and David Thaxton. They will perform a selection of songs from award-winning musicals with the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Principal Conductor Keith Lockhart.

The BBC Concert Orchestra will also continue to perform across the UK, with forthcoming appearances at the Malcolm Arnold Festival in Northampton (17 Oct); King’s Organ Gala (Cambridge Music Festival) (11 Nov); Chelmsford’s Civic Theatre (15 Nov) and Chichester Festival Theatre (18 Nov).

BBC Radio 2’s popular Friday Night is Music Night will also continue to feature the BBC Concert Orchestra, with forthcoming recordings including tributes to the master musician and arranger Nelson Riddle; and the legendary musical theatre partnership between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein.

BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales

The BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales launch their 2015-16 season in Cardiff (3 Oct) with Principal Conductor Thomas Søndergård conducting Rachmaninov’s The Bells, and the London Concerto by new Composer-in-Association, Huw Watkins. Further highlights include a concert featuring the music of Nystroem, Rautavaara, Leifs and Sibelius, as part of Northern Lights, BBC Radio 3’s exploration of rare repertoire from the far north (15 Dec).

BBC Radio 3 will follow the BBC National Orchestra of Wales as it embarks on one of its most ambitious tours to date, to Argentina, Chile and Uruguay (22 Oct - 11 Nov). The tour includes a week-long residency working with communities throughout Patagonia, marking the 150th anniversary of the establishment of Y Wladfa, the Welsh settlement in the Chubut Province.

Supporting the cultural exchange between Argentina and Wales, Radio 3 has commissioned two new works - Hirdaeth by Hector MacDonald, a fourth generation Welshman who comes from Chubut Province in Patagonia, was given its premiere at this year’s Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod; and We Have Found a Better Land, by Welsh composer Mark Bowden, which will be premiered by the BBC National Chorus of Wales (15 Nov).

BBC Philharmonic

The BBC Philharmonic embarks on an American adventure during its 2015-16 season, as the orchestra celebrates the work of composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, who died 25 years ago. This season, the BBC Philharmonic also welcomes Mark Simpson to the artistic team as its new Composer in Association. Key anniversaries marked this season include the 150th anniversary of Sibelius’ birth, Ginastera’s centenary, Anthony Payne’s 80th birthday and the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

The BBC Philharmonic heads off on a three week tour to Macau, China, and South Korea in October, which for the first time will see them taking partners from the Royal Northern College of Music and Marketing Manchester. Forging relationships with cultural partners in those regions, the tour will feature soloists Sarah Chang, Viktoria Mullova and Trey Lee, performing British, European and Chinese music – all under the baton of Chief Conductor Juanjo Mena.

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

John Wilson has recently been appointed the BBC SSO’s Associate Guest Conductor, while the orchestra today announces that Ilan Volkov will extend his contract as Principal Guest Conductor for a further three years, to September 2018. Donald Runnicles will pass the baton to Thomas Dausgaard as he takes over as Chief Conductor of the orchestra in September 2016.

In 2015 the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra celebrates its 80th birthday with Mahler’s The Song of the Earth (3 December) conducted by BBC SSO Artist in Association Matthias Pintscher. The season also offers a chance to see Thomas Dausgaard perform for the first time at City Halls, Glasgow, since being announced as Chief Conductor Designate, he will be conducting Sibelius 5,6,7 (8 October). Donald Runnicles closes his last season as BBC SSO Chief Conductor with Mahler 1 (19 May).

BBC Singers

The growing audience for the BBC Singers’ run of concerts in London’s newest concert venue, Milton Court Concert Hall, opens with a sold out performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers with I Fagiolini, before concerts including Handel’s Saul, a magical presentation of Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales, led by Chief Conductor David Hill, and a concert remembering the battle of the Somme. The Singers at Six series of early-evening concerts at St Giles’s Cripplegate features music by Elgar, Judith Bingham and James MacMillan, as well as a concert including American Songs by Copland, Barber and Eric Whitacre.

Further highlights of the BBC Singers’ 2015-16 season includes a performance of Górecki’s native church and folk music, as part of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Total Immersion day focused on the work of the composer.

The BBC Singers are at the heart of Radio 3’s Breakfast Christmas Carol Competition and, as last year, will perform the shortlisted carols and winning work live on air.

BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus The BBC Symphony Orchestra has recently announced that Sakari Oramo has extended his contract as Chief Conductor to 2020. A champion of British music, further highlights of the season will see Oramo conduct the orchestra in Elgar’s first and second symphonies (13 April 2016 and 15 January 2016) and Strauss’s Alpine Symphony (11 December 2015).

The BBC Symphony Orchestra’s 2015-16 Barbican season launched with a performance of Mahler 3, conducted by Oramo, and will see the orchestra present a number of major masterworks, including Berlioz’s complete Romeo and Juliet and Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, both featuring the BBC Symphony Chorus.

There are four world premieres, including works by Richard Ayres, Joseph Phibbs and Richard Dubugnon as well as new music from Anders Hillboorg, Anna Clyne, Detlev Glanert and the BBC SO’s Artist in Association, Brett Dean, who joins the orchestra to perform his own Viola Concerto.

Further highlights include Total Immersion days devoted to the music of, Henryk Górecki, Louis Andriessen (including Andriessen’s opera La commedia) and Henri Dutilleux, as well as a collaboration with Opera Rara for two rarely-heard operas – Leoncavallo’s Zazà and Bellini’s Adelson e Salvini.

DIGITAL

Tanya Tagaq © Ivan Otis

Northern Lights − World on 3

As part of Radio 3’s Northern Lights season, World on 3 gives the first broadcast performance of Canadian inuit singer Tanya Tagaq’s soundtrack to the classic 1922 silent movie ‘Nanook of the North’ by American film-maker, Robert J. Flaherty. Presented by Mary Ann Kennedy, the performance is being specially recorded at the Banff Centre in Alberta, and the original movie will be streamed live alongside the performance on the Radio 3 website − the first time Radio 3 has streamed a film with soundtrack live on the station's website.

‘Nanook of the North’ is celebrated as the first full-length documentary film ever made, chronicling the traditional ways of the Canadian Inuit just as they were disappearing for ever – it documents the lives of Nanook and his family with a direct, unromanticised approach, reflecting the brutal harshness of their environment. Tanya Tagaq, who last year won Canada’s prestigious Polaris Prize, is joined by violinist Jesse Zubot and percussionist Jean Martin in a score rooted in the throat-singing traditions of the Inuit people.

TX: 11 December 2015 Producer: Roger Short

Opera on 3 – Welsh National Opera performance of Handel’s Orlando

BBC Radio 3 will champion a pioneering experiment in partnership with Welsh National Opera to commentate simultaneously online alongside the broadcast of WNO’s performance of Handel’s Orlando on BBC Radio 3, transporting the action from Cardiff to wherever you are in the world. Commentary will accompany the listener and enhance their enjoyment of one of Handel’s baroque masterpieces, and convey the excitement of the opera stage with unique back-stage access. Perfect for those who are

interested in opera or singing or Handel, but don't feel they know enough to confidently tune in and enjoy it.

If you follow it online you'll always have someone following it with you and explaining what is happening on the stage with inside information on the production through photographs and much more. If you have to pop out of the room or answer the door during the opera then just go to the BBC Radio 3 website to know exactly what has happened, where we are, and what the characters are singing about. Tune in and log on for Radio 3’s brand new operatic experience.

TX: 7 November 2015 Production: BBC Wales

Performing Miracles

Performing Miracles is a gateway to the classical world, intended to reach out to new listeners by providing great classical highlights to listen to any time; day or night. Audiences are invited to listen to selections from the best of the previous day’s live performances from Radio 3 whenever they want, all presented on the Radio 3 website in an easy-to-listen and accessible format. Classical favourites are made easy to find as well as other less well known works for digital listeners to enjoy and to discover new composers, concertos and pieces.

New Music Collections

Bringing together exclusive world premieres and the most recent works from modern composers, The New Music Collection is a digital space hosting innovative work to challenge and inspire the listener to explore classical music in all its diverse and exciting contemporary breadth. Audiences are invited to listen to the best of today’s exciting new work broadcast by Radio 3, in these special collections on the Radio 3 website designed to allow listeners to discover new and innovative composers and their music.

The Classical Catch Up

Specially chosen performances of classical music from Radio 3, focussing on full length works and intended as a companion piece audiences can listen to whenever and wherever they like. Available for download and to keep for up to thirty days in the iPlayer Radio app.

NEW TALENT

BBC Introducing Classical

BBC Radio 3 has today announced BBC Introducing Classical. BBC Introducing, the BBC’s new talent scheme which gives undiscovered and unsigned music artists a platform, will for the first time feature classical music in a special collaboration with BBC Radio 3.

BBC Radio 3 will help to discover and champion emerging classical music talent – both performers and composers – from around the UK. Through working with BBC Introducing, unsigned classical artists will be offered high profile performance opportunities and a platform for their music. Radio 3 will give the best of the UK’s new and emerging classical music talent a platform through regular air-time on the station’s drive-time programme In Tune and exposure on Radio 3’s primary contemporary music programme, Hear and Now.

Classical music performers and composers will be invited to submit their tracks to the BBC Introducing Uploader, and the expert presenters and producers at BBC Radio 3 will then choose a selection of the best compositions and performances to play on the programme. Talented performers and composers will be invited onto Radio 3’s drive-time programme In Tune for regular live sessions with the first session taking place on 28 October. Through BBC Introducing, the artists will also be offered wider opportunities to appear on other network BBC radio stations and platforms.

The collaboration between BBC Radio 3 and BBC Introducing is part of BBC Music, a commitment made by the Director General of the BBC, Tony Hall, to celebrate Music across BBC platforms. Earlier this year BBC Introducing and BBC Radio 3’s world music programme World on 3 joined forces to launch a search for emerging roots-based talent across the UK, and over the past five years BBC Radio 3’s contemporary jazz programme Jazz On 3 has partnered with BBC Introducing to seek out the nation’s best new jazz talent, giving emerging bands and musicians a platform on air and on major UK jazz festival stages.

Jason Carter, Head of BBC Introducing commented: "BBC Introducing was launched back in 2007, created to support new and emerging UK talent across the popular music genres. Year on year it has played an ever increasing role for new artists through Radio 1, Radio 2, 6 Music and 1Xtra. It's incredibly exciting to now be able to extend those unique BBC opportunities to new classical music talent via Radio 3, and we are looking forward to seeing what new discoveries we will unearth."

BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists Scheme 2015-2017

Radio 3 has announced the new young artists joining its New Generation Artists Scheme – seven new artists the station believes will be the classical music stars of the future.

Radio 3’s New Generation Artists scheme, founded in 1999 as part of the BBC’s commitment to nurturing young talent, offers an unrivalled platform to talented young musicians from across the globe. Now in its 17th year, the scheme provides musicians with opportunities to perform live and in the recording studio, to work with the BBC orchestras, give lunchtime concerts from around the UK, and collaborate with fellow NGAs.

Through supporting the brightest musicians in reaching the next stage of their careers the scheme showcases new talent to listeners across the UK via a series of Radio 3 broadcasts, fronted by BBC Young Musician presenter Clemency Burton-Hill. Over the past 17 years the scheme has supported and spotted internationally recognised artists as diverse as Benjamin Grosvenor, Alison Balsom, the Belcea Quartet, Christine Rice and Gwilym Simcock.

The 2015-17 New Generation Artists are:

Beatrice Rana – Piano (Italy) Beatrice Rana has performed worldwide at concerts and festivals including Vienna’s Konzerthaus, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Verbier Festival, Washington DC’s Kennedy Center and the Radio-France Festival in Montpellier. She has also performed with orchestras such as the Accademia di Santa-Cecilia, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Detroit Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra under conductors including Antonio Pappano, Leonard Slatkin and Yannick Nézet-Seguin. In 2013, Rana won Silver and the Audience Award at the prestigious Van Cliburn Competition having won First Prize and all special prizes at the Montreal International competition in 2011.

Ilker Arcayürek – Tenor (Turkey / Austria) Born in Istanbul and raised in Vienna, Ilker Arcayürek was a Song Prize Finalist in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition 2015. He has been a member of the International Opera Studio Zürich and Verbier Festival Academy, and has had masterclasses with Thomas Quasthoff, Ileana Cotrubas, Sir Thomas Allen and Alfred Brendel. From 2013 he was a member of Stadttheater Klagenfurt where he sang roles including Alfred in Strauss‘ Die Fledermaus and Chevalier de La Force in Poulenc’s Les Dialogues des Carmelites. He is currently a member of the ensemble of Staatstheater Nürnberg where his roles include Rodolfo in Puccini’s La Bohème, Don Ottavio in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Nadir in Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles.

Kathryn Rudge – Mezzo-soprano (UK) Having completed her vocal studies at the Royal Northern College of Music, Kathryn Rudge joined the English National Opera Young Artist Programme and between 2010-2013 was a YCAT (Young Classical Artists Trust) artist. Since being featured as The Times Rising Star of Classical Music 2012, Kathryn made her debut to critical acclaim with English National Opera as Cherubino in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro in a production directed by Fiona Shaw, and at Opera North as Sesto in Handel’s Giulio Cesare. Her concert

work has included recitals at London’s Wigmore Hall, Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall and the Cheltenham Festival as well as performances with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Philharmonia Orchestra.

Peter Moore – Trombone (UK) Peter Moore is Co-Principal Trombone at the London Symphony Orchestra, an Ambassador for the BBC Ten Pieces project and a Yamaha International Artist. In 2008, at the age of 12, he became the youngest ever winner of the BBC Young Musician Competition and as a soloist he has appeared with the BBC National Orchestra Wales, the Polish Chamber Orchestra at the Rheingau and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festivals, and at the Slide Factory in Rotterdam. He has toured in Australia and New Zealand, and in 2015 took part in the SliderAsia Festival in Hong Kong. During the 2015-2016 season he makes his solo debuts with the Lucerne Symphony and Thailand Philharmonic Orchestras.

Laura Jurd – Jazz trumpet (UK) Laura Jurd is a London-based, award-winning trumpet player and composer. An active improviser, her band has performed at European Jazz Festivals including the Internationale Jazzfestival Münster in Germany and 12 Points Festival in Dublin. Later this year they will be appearing for the first time in Toulouse and performing at the Berlin Jazz Festival. Laura recently received the 2015 Parliamentary Jazz Award for 'Instrumentalist of the Year' and has previously received the Dankworth Prize for Jazz Composition, the Worshipful Company of Musician's Young Jazz Musician of the Year Award. As a composer Laura has been commissioned by the EFG London Jazz Festival and BBC Radio 3, and has been shortlisted for a BASCA British Composer Award. She is also a member of art-rock/improv band, Blue- Eyed Hawk, and founder of London-based group of musicians and record label Chaos Collective.

Quatuor van Kuijk – Quartet (France) Since Quatuor van Kuijk formed in 2012, they have won First Prize and Audience Award at the Trondheim International Chamber Music Competition, in Norway. They are currently studying with members of the Alban Berg, Artemis and Hagen quartets at Proquartet, Paris and are also laureates of the Aix-en- Provence Festival Academy and the FNAPEC Ensembles Music Competition in France. An established presence in major international venues, Quatuor van Kuijk has performed at the Salle Gaveau in Paris and at festivals in Heidelberg, Verbier, Aix-en Provence and Stavanger. They also participated in the Tivoli Concert Series in Denmark and the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival in Austria in summer 2015. The quartet has performed at London’s Wigmore Hall where they recently won the 2015 Wigmore Hall String Quartet Competition, along with the associated Best Beethoven and Best Haydn prizes.

Annelien Van Wauwe – Clarinet (Belgium) One of the most promising clarinettists of her generation, Annelien Van Wauwe has studied with internationally renowned soloists including Sabine Meyer in Lübeck and Pascal Moragues in Paris. From an early age she has won numerous first prizes, among them in Lisbon, Turin, Brussels and Berlin. She won the 61st International ARD Music Competition in Munich in 2012, the scholarship of the Fondation d'Entreprise de la Banque Populaire Paris in 2014, and this year she received the Klara Award from the Flemish Radio. As a soloist, Annelien has performed with the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra, the Geneva Chamber Orchestra, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, the German Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. She has also appeared in concert halls including the Philharmonie Berlin, Konzerthaus Vienna, Tonhalle Zürich and the Concertgebouw Amsterdam.

Radio and BASCA work together on diversity in composition

Radio 3 today announces that in partnership with BASCA the station will be running a diversity in composition seminar day next year. More information will be announced in due course

NORTHERN LIGHTS

Rugged, challenging and captivating, the region north of 60 degrees latitude is home to some of the world’s most beguiling landscapes, culture and music. During December, its darkest time of year, BBC Radio 3 will explore and celebrate the world’s most northerly music and culture, and the landscapes and environments that have shaped and inspired it. We will explore the region’s creative lights through new music commissions, dramas and the most remarkable classical music.

Taking as a starting point the 150th anniversary of Sibelius’ birth; highlights of programmes this winter include a new music commission composed at the most northerly part of the UK on the Shetland Island of Unst, new drama commissions, and the first broadcast performance of Canadian Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq’s soundtrack to the classic 1922 silent movie ‘Nanook of the North’ which will be simultaneously streamed live on the Radio 3 website.

Sibelius

Sibelius’s 150th anniversary is the centre-piece of the season with special editions of Music Matters recorded on location dedicated to the composer on 5 December. Listeners will also have another chance to hear the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Proms performance of Sibelius’ Kullervo. On Sunday 6 December, Drama on 3 sees the debut of Finlandia, a new play about Sibelius by Stephen Wyatt and starring Tim Piggott-Smith and Barbara Flynn. Following this, Composer of the Week will be dedicated to Sibelius from Monday 7 December.

Live Music

Listeners can look forward to a host of live performances throughout the season. Three live editions of Afternoon on 3 will feature the BBC’s performing groups performing specially for the season.

On Friday 18 December, the Lunchtime Concert brings ‘Organ Masterpieces from Nordic Europe’ live from the Temple Church in the City of London and Radio 3 in Concert also broadcasts there later that evening as part of the Winter Temple Festival.

From 8 December the Lunchtime Concert will feature a week of programmes recorded exclusively for BBC Radio 3 at the St Magnus Festival in Orkney presented by singer, performer and presenter Jamie MacDougall.

Concluding the season, Lunchtime Concerts from Tuesday 22 December will showcase the work of Nielsen as BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists, and the Danish String Quartet perform a complete cycle of the composer’s string quartets.

Drama on 3 and speech

In addition to the brand new Sibelius play, Finlandia, featuring Tim Piggott-Smith as Jean Sibelius and Barbara Flynn as Aino Sibelius, Drama on 3 will present Nordic Nights, a set of three new 30-minute plays from Scandinavian writers Jonas Gardell (Sweden), Anna Bro (Denmark) and Jon Atli Jonasson (Iceland). Commissioned by BBC Radio 3, translated and then adapted into English by BAFTA and Oscar award winner Rebecca Lenkiwicz, the plays will broadcast on Sunday 13 December.

A brand new Between the Ears called Yuletide in the Land of Ice and Snow will broadcast on Saturday 19 December along with three Sunday Features looking at the flora, fauna, climates and cultures in the part of the world north of 60°0’N . There will also be three new series of The Essay examining the relationship between the magnetic north, visual arts, the rock formations of the northern latitudes, Christianity, paganism and religion more generally.

World on 3: Nanook of the North

Radio 3’s World on 3 gives the first broadcast performance of Canadian Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq’s soundtrack to the classic 1922 silent movie ‘Nanook of the North’ by American film-maker, Robert J. Flaherty. The performance is being specially recorded at the Banff Centre in Alberta, and the original movie will be streamed live alongside the performance on the Radio 3 website − the first time Radio 3 has streamed a film with soundtrack live on the station's website. ‘Nanook of the North’ is celebrated as the first full-length documentary film ever made, chronicling the traditional ways of the Canadian Inuit just as they were disappearing for ever – it documents the lives of Nanook and his family with a direct, unromanticised approach, reflecting the brutal harshness of their environment. Tanya Tagaq, who last year won Canada’s prestigious Polaris Prize, is joined by violinist Jesse Zubot and percussionist Jean Martin in a score rooted in the throat-singing traditions of the Inuit people.

Other highlights include:

Sunday Feature: The Idea of North

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, a former New Generation Thinker, investigates the shared culture in the north of Europe. She travels through the region in search of common ground - religion, language, ideas, beards, calmness, good design and saunas; she visits the debates at this year’s Nordic Council in Rejkjavik; the Minnesota Vikings game; and talks to politicians from Greenland and Russia about the attraction of their neighbours’ culture.

But this is no stereotypically happy northern European club. Eleanor will examine the problems and complexities of Scandinavian politics and history, look at economic relationships within the group and see how a sense of shared culture sharpens attitudes to immigration. Political relations are not straight forward; Norway and Sweden are divided by the blue line of EU Membership and the Nordic Council divides ‘core’ members like Norway, Sweden and Denmark from peripheral ones like Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

Taking inspiration from the Canadian government in the 1960s, Eleanor compiles an index of Nordicity. Is it possible to define what it is? Who do we exclude from this culture and why? How Nordic is the Nordic Bakery in London? How Nordic is Whitley Bay? And - more seriously – would an independent Scotland be Nordic enough to join these other countries? With contributions from Professor Stefan Brink, the Swedish communities in South America, recent migrants to Norway, and Jon Henrick Fjallgren, the Colombian orphan who was adopted into a Swedish Sami family and has won Talang Sverige: 'Sweden’s Got Talent'.

TX: 13 December 2015 Producer: Melvin Rickarby

Sunday Feature: Freeze:Thaw

Cultural Geographer Hayden Lorimer explores ice as a metaphor and as a fact with the help of glaciologists and poets, featuring Deborah Warner, Joanna Kavenna, Gavin Francis, Lavinia Greenlaw, Alexandra Harris, Nick Drake, Jane Darke, Paul Farley, Peter Davison, Barry Lopez and the ghosts of William Morris, Mary Shelley and Kpomassie Tete-Michel. Plus music played on instruments made of ice and from the Aurora borealis.

TX: 20 December 2015 Producer: Tim Dee

Hear and Now

On Saturday 19 December, Hear and Now will feature a brand new commission from Emily Hall which has been composed on location on the Shetland Island of Unst, the most northerly inhabited island in the UK. She will be writing new music based on her experiences and will incorporate sound recordings made on location.

Hall visited the island in mid-September, and recorded the sound of birds at Hermaness Nature Reserve, the wind turbines at the renewable energy centre PURE, the spinning wheel of a local lace maker, and the organ at the UK’s most northerly church, in Haroldswick. She travelled out to sea in a fishing boat and with her hydrophone recorded the underwater conversation of dolphins, and at the UK’s most northerly school Baltasound Junior High, children performed traditional repertoire including the Unst Boat Song and Farewell ta Yell.

More information on page 10 – Classical

TX: 19 December 2015 Producer: Felix Carey

JAZZ AND WORLD MUSIC

BBC Introducing on World on 3

A special collaboration between BBC Radio 3 and BBC Introducing was launched in January 2015 to help discover and champion emerging roots-based talent around the UK.

Tibetan singer and ex-monk Ngawang Lodup and Algerian singer, songwriter and guitarist Nazim Ziryab were the first entrants of the scheme to have their tracks played on Radio 3 and subsequently performed at WOMAD festival in July 2015.

Two new acts will be recording sessions live on World on 3 this October: Eastern European Contemporary Folk band, MUHA, who combine the melodic beauty of Eastern European folklore, North Indian Kathak rhythms, Cuban beats and original lyrics, and Kourelou, a London-based band who draw on their Greek and South Balkans roots to produce a vibrant musical mash served with a contemporary twist.

TX: 9 October (Muha) and 16 October (Kourelou) 2015 Producer: Roger Short

BBC Music Jazz Pop-up digital radio station

BBC Radio has recently announced it is launching a temporary Jazz Pop-up digital radio station with Jazz FM and The EFG London Jazz Festival. A ground-breaking BBC Music collaboration with Jazz FM, BBC Music Jazz and EFG London Jazz Festival, it marks the first time BBC Radio will work with Jazz FM to offer shared content for audiences. ‘BBC Music Jazz’ will run on digital radio, online and mobile from 2pm on Thursday 12th November 2015 – midnight Sunday 15th November 2015.

The temporary pop-up digital radio station aims to offer listeners the very best of jazz music with something for everyone from complete beginners to aficionados. It will feature all-star presenters, performers, archive gems, live content from BBC Radio 3’s collaboration with EFG London Jazz Festival, bespoke content from BBC Radios 2, 4, 6 and BBC Radio Scotland. Jazz FM will offer access to their flagship programmes and rare archive recordings. BBC Radio 3’s Geoffrey Smith with special guest and Jazz FM presenter Helen Mayhew will present the ‘50 Greatest Jazz Artists’. The programme will be broadcast daily on the pop-up station with audiences invited to vote for their favourite artist.

For more information visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2015/bbc-radio-jazz-pop-up- station

TX: 12-15 November 2015 Producer: BBC Radio 3, BBC Music & Jazz FM

Jazz on 3 at the EFG London Jazz Festival

Live from Ronnie Scotts Jez Nelson hosts the now traditional show that kicks off the festival, broadcast live from Ronnie Scott’s, featuring interviews and sets from festival artists. Guests include Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer and band Vula Viel. TX: 13 November 2015 Producer: Somethin’ Else

Adventures in Sound Adventures in Sound is the latest in a fascinating series especially created for the festival – an extended afternoon of improvisation curated by Jazz on 3, featuring short sets from established acts as well as one- off collaborations between improvisers from diverse musical backgrounds. Featuring Maciej Garbowski’s piano trio, trombone virtuoso Samuel Blaser who’ll be paying tribute to American clarinettist and composer Jimmy Giuffre, solo harmonica player Philip Achille plus the Julie Kjær trio. TX: 16 November 2015 Producer: Somethin’ Else

World on 3 at Celtic Connections

In January, World on 3 takes up residence at Celtic Connections, one of the world’s biggest winter music festivals which is taking place across 23 days in Glasgow from 14−31 January. Presenters Mary Ann Kennedy and Lopa Kothari introduce three programmes from the city’s Centre for Contemporary Arts, featuring live performances from the best of the Festival’s artists from Scotland, the Celtic world and beyond.

TX: 15, 22, and 29 January 2016 Producer: Roger Short