Archives for October 2009

On Tuesday evening after work I took the tube to English National Opera's rehearsal space in West Hampstead. There I met the 47 or so members of the public who are preparing to be part of the ENO's Messiah production later this year.

Director Deborah Warner has started rehearsing with them in the last week and I met with them to find out what their expectations are and how they got involved in the project in the first place. They will not be singing in the production but all wanted to get a flavour of the work which many of them are unfamiliar with.

It was a great evening. Nic Chalmers, assistant chorus master, took us through our paces. If we'd had longer I'm sure we could have learned the whole chorus! (sorry, the microphone is a bit too close to the bass section...)

Listen to our efforts and hear some of the participant's thoughts on being involved. Nic Chalmers introduces the clip.

I also met with Joyia Fitch, Community Ensemble Participant, who is contributing to the ENO's blog.Read her thoughts.

• You can learn to sing the Hallelujah Chorus with our downloads.
• Register your choir to sing the Hallelujah Chorus on our map.
• Get a grip on Handel.
• Find out about the ENO's production.
• Watch an interview with conductor Laurence Cummings.
• ENO's Messiah will be broadcast on Chrismas Day on BBC Radio 3. 

Naturally, it is not difficult to spot the similarities. They both wrote songs and they both wrote operas, as you say, kleines c. I think, though, for there to be a worthwhile parallel, Townshend would have to have been at some point, a church musician, but as far as I know he wasn't even a chorister. Thomas Ades is a better example. He has even made a point of re-working the early baroque. We are talking about art songs here, not pop, which may be what you mean by 'neo-platonic use of the pedestrian and simple', precious. Purcell was capable of that too (Thou knowest Lord, Hush no more, the Funeral Music for Queen Mary, Dido's Lament) but sparingly and therefore the more effectively. Admittedly, there must be some similarity in choice of text between Townshend's 'A Quick One While He's Away' and Purcell's 'My Lady's Coachman John' but as far as the musical contrast goes, I cannot comment, never having heard the former.

If the idea is less that Townshend is really a serious composer and more that Purcell was a pop one, I think that position in Purcell's day was already taken by the balladeers and folk musicians. I refer readers to the anecdote about Purcell boring Queen Mary with his harpsichord compositions. She asked if he couldn't play something more popular like 'Cold and Raw'. I'll give her cold and raw, he said to himself and made the tune the bass line under the words 'May her blest example' in the 1692 Birthday Ode. I'd be interested to know if Townshend has ever pulled off such a contrapuntal feat.

French frank: Are you saying Townshend was a carpet-fitter? I'd no idea. Was he any good? It's very difficult to get a decent one these days.

None of this gets us any nearer the point, though. Is it only at Westminster Abbey* and the Wigmore Hall that Purcell is to be celebrated this St Cecilia's Day? Fiori Musicali promised me last year they'd be doing something, perhaps at Stationers' Hall, but I've not heard. And anyway - I was forgetting - it's not one leading composer but two to celebrate. Britten is traditionally accepted as the inheritor of Purcell's mantle, given the nature of his work and the fact that, as Purcell died, so he was born at St Ceciliatide. I don't see Townshend moving up the list. How is he marking the day?

*The concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Sunday 22 November, 6.30-8.30pm, the Feast of St Cecilia, and the occasion on which both the Te Deum & Jubilate and Ode on St Cecilia's Day were first performed. The broadcast forms part of the station's Purcell Weekend. 

You have to have stamina to work your way through Handel's operas. Having enjoyed the delightful magical and pastoral scenes of the operas broadcast in the Handel Opera Cycle in the past few weeks - Orlando, Alcina, Atalanta - we're now back to more traditional heroic stuff with Arminio (1737), this week. It tells the story (from Tacitus) of warfare between the Romans and the Germans (the barbarian invaders, in other words), with the German tribal ruler Hermann (Arminius) betrayed into captivity by the collaborator, Segestes, but ultimately triumphant.

The German theme may have meant the opera was intended to honour the Hanoverian monarchy. Perhaps Handel was inspired in that direction by his recent success with the delightful pastoral opera, Atalanta, written to celebrate the wedding of the Prince of Wales. Or perhaps he was hoping to ingratiate himself for financial reward - after all, he was still doing battle himself against the so-called 'Opera of the Nobility', who were occupying the opera house, and just as keen to curry favour with the royal family.

Of course, London couldn't maintain two opera companies: Arminio managed only six performances, and by the end of the season the Opera of the Nobility had folded. Handel had London's operatic life back to himself, and reigned triumphant. But Londoners' ennui had the last laugh. Although we still have some weeks to go before we reach the end of the run of Handel's operas, he had eventually to give it up due to lack of audience support in 1741, replacing it instead with the oratorio, which had proved increasingly popular with Londoners throughout the 1730s.

But had he really given up on opera? On Sunday night I went to hear his oratorio Susanna (1749) at the Barbican, where William Christie and Les Arts Florissants are doing four 30th-anniversary celebratory concerts. The performances were generally very good (particularly from the countertenors, Max Emmanuel Cencic and the showy David DQ Lee). But what really struck me was just how operatic the work was, with barely a chorus to be heard (a pity, given Les Arts Florissants' quality in that regard). So, Handel found ways to work operatic style into his biblical oratorios, despite the tastes of his audience, even at the end of his composing career. Really, it's HIS stamina you have to admire!

So Pete Townshend of The Who - of The Whom, surely? - has suddenly remembered he was once a devotee of Henry Purcell. Why didn't he say so before? It does so irritate me when rock musicians in their dotage start courting respectability by expressing an interest in classical music. Paul McCartney writes a Requiem, Sting sings Dowland and Elvis Costello starts turning up at new music gigs as if their former rock-star rebelliousness were never their real attitude at all.

Townshend's youthful posturing was all that classical music was not with its coarseness, immodesty, loudness and triumph of style over substance. Townshend and his rock band The Who became most famous not for of their music but their on-stage destruction of musical instruments. I wouldn't have thought that very Purcellian. Townshend's best known line was 'I hope I die before I get old', so he ought now to be keeping a low profile, his ambition unfulfilled. That was the fate for poor old Purcell, but I'm sure he never expressed it in a song

Baroque and Roll: Townshend on Purcell is on BBC Radio 4 at 1.30pm on Tuesday 27 October.

I notice that St Cecilia's Day is only a month away. Westminster Abbey has a major Purcell concert on Friday 20 November and the Wigmore Hall on Sunday 22 but that is no more than they do in a normal year. The City of Linz in Austria is marking the saint's day as No Music Day during which churches will hold no concerts, radio stations will feature only talk shows and cinemas will screen only films without soundtracks. I understand the political and social point they are trying to make (we should care more than we do about what we listen to), but it seems a little pointless when one has a nation's leading composer to celebrate. If anyone knows of other Purcell celebrations this St Cecilia's Day, I would be pleased to write about them.

Have your say here, by commenting on this blog post. Your opinion may be read out in recordings for Radio 3 Night Waves broadcasts at the Free Thinking Festival at the Sage Gateshead today!

Click on 'Comments' to add your comment.

:-)

Roly

What's the future for men?

What makes a happy family?

The greatest moment in Sport or the Arts is ...?

What's the big question for the next 50 years?

You can join in the thinking, and the fun, by commenting on this or any of the Free Thinking posts here on the Blog.

There's been a huge buzz around The Sage, and it's growing all the time as more people come in to attend the events on their weekends.

You can see the hub and get a flavour of Free Thinking at our picture gallery - and you can see what our video blogger Jon Jacob has been up to on the Radio 3 YouTube channel.

For now, I'm just off to a talk by former England cricket captain and psychologist Mike Brearley, about leadership and narcissism ...

More as at happens ...

Sunday morning

Got in early with our editor Roland Taylor to transcribe the public's thoughts on our post-it note screens, so that we can add them to the blog, and pass them on to the producers of today's talks and Night Waves recordings. Over 350 posts have been made by the public since we opened for business on Friday night.

It's great to see so many young people around The Sage. Because the building is open all day in an area which makes riverside walking a real pleasure (there are the Millennium Bridge, the Baltic Mills building and great views of Newcastle on the opposite bank of the Tyne to enjoy) families are constantly passing through - not least because there is an excellent cafe bar. MA students from Newcastle University School of Journalism are volunteering as runners at the Festival, and a more enthusiastic group of people it would be hard to meet. Among yesterday's visitors was Beatrice Pickup, news editor of the University's student radio station, who told me all about the internet station's work (they also broadcast live to the Student Union and tie in closely with the student newspaper); Beatrice is studying English Literature, with a focus on feminism and sexual theory; she was particularly interested in Gwen Adshead's session entitled, 'The Woman's Right to be Evil.' You can read Ros Porter's post on the talk here, and the talk will be broadcast on BBC R3 Night Waves on Tuesday 27th October at 21.15. Newcastle Student Radio's lively website is at www.unionsociety.co.uk/nsr.

Sunday afternoon

You can see all the comments written on the post-it notes as the public responded to the four propositions we put to them by clicking on these links:

What was the greatest moment in sport or the arts for you? 

What is the future for men?

What is the biggest question for the next 50 years?

What makes a happy family?

The picture below show Ian McMillan blogging in the hub, surrounded by post-it notes ...

It's Saturday lunchtime at the Free Thinking Festival and I've just finished co-hosting the Young Ranters event here at The Sage. If I say so myself, it was a triumph! We had eight young people each presenting a two minute rant on a subject of their choice, ably hosted by Radio Newcastle's Alfie Joey. My job was simple; I had to toot the Radio 3 hooter at the start and end of each rant and then comment on each of them and bring them together at the end with the aid of a flipchart and a pen.

I confess that my worry before the event was that the rants might be unfocussed or that they might not be about anything in particular; in the end they were beautifully constructed and moving and passionate. We had rants about car drivers, homework, being an asylum seeker and missing your family because they were abroad.

As I began to summarise the rants it struck me that we should do it as a poem, so we made it into a rhyming piece with a chorus and it became a bit of a singalong. As it was happening I thought: this is the real Free Thinking experience, the exchange of ideas, the mix of people in the room, the sense that none of us have the answers but that we're all on some kind of quest. I'm typing this as I look out over the Tyne from the beautiful Sage centre; later this afternoon I'm presenting the Theory Slam and then tonight I'm hosting The Verb.

And then tomorrow morning I hope to be able to recreate my experience of this morning; walking in the early mist along the river, passing a group of guys fishing and being passed by runners and bikers and turning over in my head all the things I'm learning this weekend. Last night's recording of Words and Music made me think again, about the possibilities of putting words with music and how they can interact...

I think next year we should do a Free Thinking week!

Friday 9pm

Hello, I'm Ros Porter - I'm attending the Free Thinking Festival as a Radio 3 listener and I'll be posting blogs here during the weekend.

My background is in classical music - I was Radio 3's Listener Diarist for the Tchaikovsky-Stravinsky Festival a couple of years back, and I couldn't resist the Free Thinking Festival at The Sage Gateshead because I live in Gateshead and it's on my doorstep.

I've just come out of the opening event - a fascinating and challenging lecture by clinical psychologist Tanya Byron: Tanya's talk is on Radio 3 at 915pm so if you see this I'd highly recommend you tune in! If you miss it there's always the iPlayer ...

More later!

Ros

Saturday morning ... early

'We live in a society where children are raised in captivity by their parents. They are afraid to be themselves.' - Prof. Tanya Byron. This quote from the Free Thinking brochure made it obvious beforehand that we were to hear some harsh truths during Prof. Byron's lecture.

She vociferously challenged the large audience on our fear of children and young people and our increasingly negative attitudes towards them, stressing how this in turn only serves to generate a negative sense of self amongst the most vulnerable in these groups, who actually most need the support, care and understanding of adults.

Her thoughts on the stereotyped vision of the single parent and dysfunctional offspring through to the 21st century's far broader definition of the term 'family' were extremely thought provoking. It was worrying to hear her discuss how the drawbacks of the vetting and barring process of adults working with children potentially endangered the development of the inter-generational bridges which could help those most needing assistance.

Statistics can be mind-numbing at times, but I found Prof. Byron's use of them to be highly supportive of her argument - and certainly very sobering for us to consider.

Changing perceptions on the risks that children can and should take provided an especially fascinating slant to the lecture: We may not let our kids play outside nowadays, but by diverting them to the technological world of online - are we in fact exposing them to a far greater potential danger? Feedback afterwards from the audience suggested many important aspects were not covered such as for example the commercial sexualisation of children at an early age. But time was against us.

Definitely a must-hear lecture for anyone who has children, who works with them and who cares about the development of our future generation.

Saturday morning - coffee time

Words and Music has always been one of my favourite Radio 3 programmes, so it was a real treat to be able to watch this special edition being recorded for Free Thinking last night here at The Sage Gateshead. A constellation of local stars ensured a sparkling evening, full of moments both poignant and humorous.

Entitled 'Family Portraits' and structured in three parts: Portrait of an Ideal Family; Portrait of a Family in Turmoil and Portrait of a 21st Century Family, the programme also paid homage to a variety of north-eastern writers and musicians with their inimitable philosophy of life.

From my point of view I found that the greatest musical impact throughout the first two sections of the programme seemed to come from the folk music-related elements. They certainly packed a visceral punch with the help of Alistair Anderson's evocative pipes and concertina playing and Emily Portman 's emotionally moving singing. Initially I felt the string quartet, (members of the Northern Sinfonia) were a little nervous with their extracts of Schubert and Dvorak somehow feeling rather disjointed from the evening's thematic plan, with the literary contributions theatrically read by Gina McKee and Donald McBride making a far deeper impression.

However, after the shocking outburst of Philip Larkin's This be the Verse, opening the 2nd section, the string quartet seemed to finally coalesce with the rest of the performing ensemble and the intensity of the evening noticeably increased. An especially heartfelt rendition by Emily Portman of her own song Little Longing with expressive accompaniment from cellist Gabriel Waite was a highpoint of the evening for me.

A comic yet moving dialogue between father and daughter by featured Festival writer Karen Laws opened the final section, adding to the intensity of writing from Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes amongst others, a gritty extract from a Philip Glass string quartet cleverly seemed to epitomise the fractured 21st century family and finally a fantastic duo between Alexandra Raikhlina (violin) and Alistair Anderson on accordion brought the evening to a rousing and positive conclusion. I'll definitely be listening again to this excellent programme.

Saturday afternoon

I'm perched on a cube in the Interactive Hub at The Sage, hunched over my laptop to briong you the latest from Free Thinking. There is a great atmosphere all around the building - a constant reverberant buzz of people from kids to adults exploring the many events going on all the time today in the building. Whether you want to pick the minds of an expert, or participate in the foyer events - it is all go right now. I certainly am starting to feel that my brain is exploding - but that's a good thing for me!

Free Thinking - Dan Cruickshank - Building Memories

Right from the start of this session it was pretty clear to all of us in the hall that here was a man with a passion and he wanted to tell us all about it. Dan Cruickshank has the infectious enthusiasm of someone with extremely strong opinions on his subject and it certainly makes for entertaining listening. I've always had a kind of vision of architecture as being 'frozen music', I'm interested in it but it doesn't have the excitement of say, a Mahler symphony - but here was someone who has the ability to bring what might seem a rather niche subject of retracing lost architecture vividly alive!

He spent much time telling us about his involvement in the efforts to restore the Euston Arch, which up to the 1960s formed a centrepiece grand entrance to Euston Station in London. He vehemently described its demolition as an act of vandalism and we were left in no doubts about his feelings on the matter. It was a fascinating story to hear of how a large proportion of the Arch had been dismantled and used as a breakwater in a river! The ongoing campaign to restore the Arch began...

Leading on from this was the thorny question of whether one should restore buildings in a historically correct way, rather than look to the future with new architecture. I wasn't alone in feeling that the presenter of this programme was trying to dominate the direction of the lecture/discussion - perhaps promoting his own personal agenda rather than allowing Mr Cruickshank to fully share his philosophy. However, there did follow a fascinating exchange of views relating to the recently completely rebuild of the Frauenkirche in Dresden, which was destroyed by Allied bombers in WW2. Mr Cruickshank vociferously defended his corner in arguing that the view of many of the people of Dresden was that the Frauenkirche reconstruction was a recreation of a meaningful moment in the city's history, it was seen as highly personal and symbolical to them of a final end to the horrors of WW2.

There were numerous enticing snippets of thought being thrown out by Mr Cruickshank and rather than spill all the beans here - my best recommendation is to listen yourself on Night Waves on Radio 3. 

The Q&A was far too short on this segment of Free Thinking but did throw up some thoughtful gems on good and bad architecture in Newcastle/Gateshead...! The biggest laugh of the session came from an audience member suggesting that in the spirit of renewal and rebirth the Palace of Westminster should be destroyed and rebuilt elsewhere - up north!

I enjoyed Dan Cruickshank's thoughts and ideas much more than I had originally envisaged and it has encouraged me to do some more background reading into architecture both new and traditional.

Early Sunday morning

Free Thinker: Gwen Adshead - The Woman's Right to be Evil

Not that I want to give any false impressions here, but this was one event high on my 'unmissable' list for Free Thinking. Ms Gwen Adshead is Consultant Psychotherapist at Broadmoor high security psychiatric hospital and works with people in violent and frightening states of mind.

A considerable amount of time in Ms Adshead's talk was spent detailing definitions of what actually constitutes evil. What do we mean when we talk about evil, and more specifically - what about evil in women? Interestingly, however, the first impression which immediately came across from Ms Adshead was her immense sense of personal calmness, which I guess is a prerequisite for working in such a challenging area. Perhaps for my taste there was a little too much concentration on definitions of our generalised perception of evil, and rather less than I had expected on specific examples of women who commit evil behaviour and their treatment. Nevertheless her comments were always salient and thought provoking. It was especially refreshing to discuss such an emotionally charged subject (which sadly so often provokes the most lurid tabloid headlines) in a completely non-sensationalist way.

Ms Adshead drew on historical examples of evil - such as the Nazi regime in Germany - and I personally found one of the best aspects of her talk was how she presented us with facts and statements which demanded our deeper consideration. Perhaps the most shocking discovery was that whilst men in the criminal justice system have many rehabilitation programmes, women do not. She was obviously concerned that often not enough is done to help women earlier on before they commit crimes - something which neatly tagged along with points made in Tanya Byron 's opening debate.

This is a programme I would recommend very highly to anyone intrigued, as I am, by the workings of the inner mind. One of Ms Adshead's final comments was on how one has to be fascinated by the degree to which we are ourselves fascinated by this thorny subject. Kudos has to go to the Free Thinking Festival for allowing audience and listeners to encounter people like Gwen Adshead.

This talk will be broadcast on BBC R3 Night Waves on Tuesday 27th October at 21.15.

Monday afternoon

The Free Thinking Interview - David Miliband

My father was a senior civil servant in Whitehall for 23 years, so politics and government were an integral part of my adolescence. As a result I quickly developed a healthy cynicism when it comes to observing politicians. If only the public knew what REALLY goes on behind the scenes...

So it was with a determinedly neutral approach that I sat down to watch Foreign Secretary David Miliband's interview, deftly handled with firmness and humour by Night Waves presenter Philip Dodd. Being a local MP, Mr Miliband appeared very relaxed with the supportive audience. The atmosphere might have been rather different in a Tory stronghold. I'd feared that this event might end up being nothing more than a bland procession of this week's Labour Party sound-bites but was pleasantly surprised that was not the case. Mr Dodd's questioning enabled us to delve deeper into the Foreign Secretary's character and personal philosophy and I found it fascinating to hear his view on the 'special relationship' between the USA and UK, as well as the very emphatic way in which he reaffirmed Britain's continuing leadership role in world international affairs.

'How does one learn to become a Foreign Secretary?' was one of Philip Dodd's lines of questioning. Mr Miliband talked of advice he had received from Madeleine Albright - first female US Secretary of State, as well as an unnamed previous British Foreign Secretary. He spoke with an obvious sense of awe and respect of the historical significance of his post. Inevitably the role of British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq arose and I felt he dealt with this thorny issue with the diplomatic smoothness that one obviously needs to succeed in politics.

Philip Dodd ought to have spent a little more time exploring Mr Miliband's cultural heritage - we got only a brief and tantalising glimpse of his Polish family roots and the major influence his parents had on his life.Given the rather tame Q & A session at the end of the interview, the time would have been better spent on exploring this area. I have to admit that I came out of the lecture feeling that Mr Miliband might well be Britain's next Labour Prime Minister... Keep an ear open for the broadcast on Night Waves on Tuesday 3 November and let us know what YOU think.

Monday evening

William Orbit's Guide to Listening

Everything was going so well at Free Thinking. But I'm afraid that this was the first disappointing event of my packed weekend. At first glance, it looked so promising: A Grammy Award-winning music producer in what was billed as a unique event to show us how we might hear things in a new way. Unfortunately, the act didn't live up to its billing. It is rather disconcerting when a speaker confesses that he has been putting the event together as he came up in the train. I couldn't clearly see Night Waves presenter Matthew Sweet's face at this point but it would have been interesting to observe.

Combine a BBC R3 production team and a stunning venue with excellent acoustics, what better than to demonstrate the topic of the talk with lots of aurally stunning sound clips? What did we get? Three woefully short, tantalising sonic bursts of what might have been: A brilliant short extract of one of William Orbit's mixes - including a snippet from Beethoven's 5th Symphony; a demonstration of the manipulation of sound by the record producer with a vivid display of how the addition of reverb will change the effect of a simple percussion beat; finally an eardrum battering comparison of a punk track on vinyl and CD, showing how sound compression really makes a difference.

Each of these aural examples lasted around 30 seconds, the rest of the talk centred on discussions of the role of the record producer, development of technology and some personal insight from Mr Orbit into what goes on during recording studio sessions. He also answered questions from the audience at the end. But in my view his efforts did not impress at all in comparison to other Free Thinking speakers

Wednesday

Debate: Sports v The Arts: Which is the greatest human achievement?

The Northern Rock Foundation Hall audience was buzzing with anticipation as the panel took the platform and one had the feeling this was going to be a match of two halves. Kicking off the debate was our excellent referee/presenter Philip Dodd and we heard a beautifully made sound montage of sports and cultural 'moments'. Initial views appeared strongly polarised with arts being high culture and sports, popular culture. I had a private bet with myself that the 'beautiful game' of football would be mentioned within the first minute of the debate - and so it was. There was much comment from Simon Pryde and Martin Kelner on the community spirit generated by sport, or more specifically football and the way in which a game can bring 40000 people 'together'. Edith Hall - a historian of ancient Greece took the opposite view, arguing that it isn't simply about numbers, arts and the community have just as valid a reach, for example with an art exhibition going around the world. Ms Hall had many valid points to make - especially her fears of the nationalist I.D. and tribal mentality generated by sport, the 'we will BEAT you mentality', but it was a pity that she felt she had to raise her voice to make them, simply giving her a rather hectoring tone which wasn't a fair reflection of her arguments. I did like her comment suggesting that sport is the opium of the masses for the 21st century.

Ed Smith rather sensibly felt he was sitting on the fence in the argument and as the thoughts flew rapidly from one side of the debate to the other, often with added spin, it was apparent that the sides were equally matched. I loved the fast flowing often witty comments, the frequent spontaneous supportive applause for speakers from the audience and the passion with which everyone defended their corner. In a rare introspective moment of the debate, historian Bill Feaver spoke with touching eloquence about a painting depicting people playing ice sports in a snowy winter landscape - painted by Pieter Bruegel - back in the 16th century. It is actually one of my own personal favourite pieces of art and Mr Feaver's point really struck home how sport and art really can't be torn apart in the search for the greatest human achievement.

I can't recommend this debate highly enough; it had everything - the time went by in a flash!

Look away now if you don't want to know my impression of the final score:

Sports 3 Arts 3 so no-one ended up feeling sick as a parrot. This debate will undoubtedly make great radio, do remember to tune in to Night Waves on 5th November at 21.15.

Thursday

Free Thinker: Tom Shakespeare - Art as a Tool for Thinking

Tom Shakespeare is one of these people who leave you in awe at the brilliance of the human mind. His lecture for Free Thinking was no exception and I have to confess that at the bottom of my notes I wrote: 'must Listen Again to really understand this.' At times I was carefully pondering the deeper implications of one comment, only to quickly realise he'd moved onto something completely different and equally intellectually demanding. This was high velocity thinking!

Mr Shakespeare sought to challenge our view of what art is for and to push his argument that with the world currently changing so fast, art can be used to help us approach scientific problems. He spoke of the need to turn to visual art, to relate it back to our lives, rather than the domination of the spoken word. He stressed how the average person doesn't really relate to statistics so that was why one could turn to art instead to make a point. I was impressed with Mr Shakespeare's great use of visual imagery in a radio medium - he paints with words - but frustrated, as his always cogent examples flew by before I had time to jot down the names of the artists involved. I wanted to press a 'pause' button so I could digest his statements properly. 

I was especially fascinated by one part of Mr Shakespeare's lecture where he emphasised how the arts can be used to explain and demystify disability and its effects on people. He obviously feels that art could do even more and went on to discuss the role of the artist in society and ended his lecture with a provocative quote by Einstein: 'If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.' The discussion with presenter Matthew Sweet was wide-ranging and full of salient points which warranted a debate of their own, I came out of this session feeling the need to totally re-evaluate my preconceived notion of the arts/science relationship. The programme will be broadcast on Night Waves during November - I can't wait to hear it.. 

'Have you seen the film Deliverance?' asked the man behind the counter at the American Embassy in London, a wry smile on his face. This seemed to be a common reaction to the idea of spending two weeks in the Appalachian Mountains, in many ways the crucible of American folk music, with the aim of seeking out and recording an older generation of banjo pickers, fiddle players and ballad singers for Radio 3's World Routes programme.

As a poor fiddler and a worse banjo player, I'd always been fascinated by this heady concoction of pickin' and scrapin', of mountain music and fiddlers' conventions. Contrary to my experience of English folk music, the crossing of the Atlantic seemed to have rid the music of its genteel roots, and created a rough-hewn, high energy music, as rugged as the mountains in which it was born, and as troubled as the history of its inception - as in all elements of American history, the story of Old Time music runs alongside that of European settlement, slavery and Emancipation.

First stop in North Carolina was the Mt Airy Fiddlers Convention, not the biggest by any means, but one with a fiercely loyal Old Time contingent. Old Time music is the American folk music of the late 19th Century, forged from the combination of the European fiddle tradition and the African banjo brought to the country through slavery. It's the music of the southern Appalachian mountains, the music that sustained these isolated communities before the arrival of the radio and the gramophone, and that entertained them at square dances or frolics.

Amongst the profusion of string bands, banjo players, and folk singers at the Fiddlers Convention; the beefburger stands, deep-fried Oreos, and moonshine sneakily consumed from jamjars, what stood out was the total lack of recorded music. Almost every attendee, it seemed, had arrived with an instrument, if not to compete on stage, then to play, night and day, with others who had come for exactly the same reason. Soldiers Joy, Cumberland Gap, June Apple, Cindy Girl, John Henry.. a roll-call of tunes that resounded from all corners of the campsite, and at all hours.

It was in Mt Airy too that we got our first taste of real Southern hospitality. For anyone with a hint of liberal sensibilities, the South's profusion of Rush Limbaugh bumper stickers and rifle shops can make you feel a little ill at ease, but sitting around the breakfast table with our new friends from local radio station WPAQ 740AM, devouring piles of biscuit and gravy, country ham and grits, their warmth and generosity overwhelmed us. 

Read the rest of this entry

Moses would have been a welcome guest on one of Radio 3's Free Thinking programmes. He astounded his Berlin friends by advocating the separation of church and state, proposing the idea of a personal God, recommending Jewish integration and campaigning for civil rights. He died too young for Felix to have known him but clearly his liberal beliefs permeated the Mendelssohn household. What's the difference - Jew, Christian, Moslem, Parsi....? the play declares. Felix was baptised a Christian. In the play, a Jew brings up a Christian girl as a Jew which incenses the Patriarch of Jerusalem, where the play is set at the time of the Third Crusade (1192). Saladin meanwhile challenges Nathan to tell him, if he's so wise, which is the true religion. Nathan relates the Parable of the Ring. Hallo, is that Wagner listening behind the velvet curtain?.......

I've just had a copy of a note from Deborah Salmon, secretary of the Promenaders Musical Charitiesaddressed to Proms Controller Roger Wright:

"The final total from the retiring collections taken at this year's

Proms was a little over £80,500. The Trustees of the Promenaders'

Musical Charities met recently and decided that this amount should be

split as follows:

• Musicians' Benevolent Fund: £26,500
• CLIC Sargent: £19,000
• Royal Albert Hall Trust: £17,500
• Awards for Young Musicians: £17,500

On behalf of the Promenaders' Musical Charities, I would like to thank

you the part you played in helping to ensure that this season's

collections were so successful; indeed, that they could take place at

all."

Well done the Promenaders!

The unusual picture above shows Sir Malcolm Sargent conducting the BBC Symphny Orchestra at the 54th season of the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, July 1948. Note the masking of the organ and the fabric canopy! Photo copyright: BBC

In the ten years - nearly - that I've worked for Radio 3 Interactive, we've been pursuing one particular grail object: synchronised surtitles for opera broadcasts. Easy enough to say: if I had a fiver for every time someone has said, 'Can't you just take a feed from the subtitle generator in the opera house and add it to the broadcast stream?' I wouldn't need to work for the BBC! Sadly, it ain't that simple ...

Well, about four years ago we got one hand on the grail when we provided synchronised surtitles on DAB LiveText for Wagner's Ring operas - this seemingly simple proposition involved about four days' prep: timing every cue in the scores (DAB labels take an immutable 45 secs to scroll - much slower than the time it takes to read a surtitle) and adapting/pruning the texts accordingly. On the night of the broadcasts, a score-reader and LiveText operator joined the studio production team: at the end of the experiment, we concluded that no-one could watch a whole opera of scrolling titles without going mad or turning into a nodding dog - there hasn't been much enthusiasm for developing that idea any further until DAB radios display entire labels simultaneously.

Now we have two hands on the grail - for the broadcast of the Royal Opera production of Verdi's Don Carlo on Saturday night, we're rolling out (fanfare of trumpets ...) the Royal Opera surtitles providing the English translation, with added stage directions, fed to the Radio 3 website, and synchronised with the audio stream.

As well as the software developers who created the technical system, an editorial team of two have been working on this for the last couple of weeks, led by my colleague, senior producer Roger Philbrick. Roger (pictured above) has provided me with some notes on what was involved, and this is the abridged version:

• Get edited audio from Radio 3
• Load audio into video editor, add the Royal Opera House proscenium graphic
• Create .mov files for each of the sections (creating movies with soundtrack but a static picture)
• Convert the .movs into .flv files for use by the BBC's EMP (embedded media player) system
• Build a host page on the Radio 3 website
• Get the surtitles from the ROH as a Word doc, plus the full annotated score
• Paste the surtitles into a spreadsheet
• Listen to the R3 recording, follow the score and add 'in' and 'out' timings to the spreadsheet for each surtitle
• In a mad moment, decide to add scene-setting info to fill the longer gaps between surtitles
• Generate xml files with all the surtitle and timing info, upload these to the servers
  
  Check the results and revise timings & text as necessary
• Fix various problems with an experimental system and keep all fingers crossed for Saturday night ...

There are 700 surtitles in Don Carlo - well done, Roger!

I'm reminded of the final scene of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when Julian Glover's baddie character, invited to choose from an array of grails, goes for a jewel-encrusted one and ages to death in an instant; Indy picks the simplest, wooden grail chalice. Bingo! 'You chose wisely,' says the Grail Knight. In pursuing our grail, let's hope we have!



You can access the surtitles (live from 6pm on Saturday) by visiting bbc.co.uk/radio3/opera

On this week's Verb I talked to the fantastic American novelist John Irving, author of epics like The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany. His new novel, Last Night in Twisted River, is a hugely Irvingesque tale of cooking, revenge, love and family and I found myself swimming it for days in the week before I met him and being thoroughly captivated and drawn into his world; sometimes I'm not great with plot when I'm reading novels and I forget who's who and what relationship they've got to each other.

With Last Night in Twisted River I got exactly what was going on, and that's tribute to Irving's skill. The man himself, like many Americans, was charming and articulate (I put that down to lots of Show and Tell in Primary School) and willing to be engaged with the process of The Verb. On this week's show we've also got a ghosty story from Frank Cottrell Boyce, a Freethought on the new OED Historical Thesaurus and a preview of this year's Freethinking Drama which is a heartbreaking piece about child abuse and the idea that, somehow, we're all responsible.

Ah, Freethinking! Not long to go now, and I have to say that I can't wait to get up to Gateshead because The Sage is one of my favourite venues; I did a gig there a couple of years ago with my band The Ian McMillan Orchestra and it is one of the friendliest and nicest venues I've been to in a long time. Don't call it Newcastle, though: that gets them cross.

As well as the Verb up at Gateshead, I'm presenting a Book At Breakfast event with the Cumbrian novelist Sarah Hall. I've been a fan of Sarah's since her first novel Haweswater: I like the way she can capture a Northern way of thinking and speaking and still create universal stories. Her new book How to Paint a Dead Man has accompanied me on a few train journeys recently; it's essentially a story about the power of visual art and the way that the visual imagination is perhaps superior to the verbal. I'm looking forward to talking to Sarah and the audience about it.

I did my own little Freethought the other day, too, about one of my longstanding passions and concerns: why can't we appreciate avant-garde and difficult poetry a bit more ? A nice fat magazine landed on my mat this week: The Cambridge Literary Review, a splendidly chewy new publication that concentrates on writing from Cambridge and (it's slightly different) Cambridge writing, poets like J H Prynne, Peter Riley and Veronica Forrest Thompson. I can't wait to start reading it, and it suggest a Verb item to me: 'What exactly is Cambridge Poetry ? Discuss.'

Ah well, there goes the weekend! Come and see us in Gateshead, and come and say hello to me. I'm the one who looks like a Beat Generation Les Dawson.

• The editoon of The Verb which Ian discsses here is broadcast tonight - Friday 16 October - at 9.15pm

The Free Thinking vote for the Greatest Free Thinker in the history of the North East is open till midnight this Friday (October 16).

I long ago decided that admitting ignorance is almost always the best policy - you learn more and you don't commit to things you don't understand. So the other day when the Night Waves team working on Free Thinking showed me the line-up of candidates I had to admit that I hadn't even heard of some of them.

Don't worry, I'm not talking about the Venerable Bede and Stephenson (though wait, that's not quite so easy, as you need to choose between Robert and George) but the list also includes the industrialist Ambrose Crowley, writer Githa Sowerby and the MP Ellen Wilkinson...Ellen Wilkinson? 'Oh she's really well known', my colleague exclaims, 'Haven't you seen her in the photos of the Jarrow march'. And suddenly I can see her, or I think I can. My partner's grandfather joined the Jarrow march and its mythology still runs in the family, but to be sure I go back to browse the Free Thinking website and then off through the links to many other pages of history and politics to find out more. I didn't know about Ambrose Crowley either, a pioneer of better rights for workers in the 1700s. He came orginally from Worcestershire but set up factories in Tyneside that supplied nails, hinges, pots and cannons to the Navy and the East India Company. Reading and talking about him I begin to feel as if I've known about him for years.

But isn't that one of the qualities of knowledge - once you have it it's hard to imagine not having it - which may be why programme contributors sometimes forget that listeners don't always share their own knowledge things - but that's another subject. Anyway, Ambrose feels like he's becoming an old friend although I imagine The Venerable Bede stands a better chance of winning the vote - but who knows? For me that's the fun in a vote like this - the journeys of discovery and the discussion - after all there are no fixed criteria by which to make your judgement.



But if it's fun taking part it's rather more hair-raising for the production team. Once the vote is decided (it'll be announced on Monday's Night Waves) they have to commission a talk about the winner to be delivered over the Free Thinking weekend, and they're far too busy to line up twelve potential essayists in advance of the result. This may not be a vote on the scale of Strictly Come Dancing but it is nail-biting ...

Today, In Tune comes live from Hoddinott Hall in Cardiff where the BBC NOW, conducted by Thierry Fischer, will play music by two of Radio 3's "anniversary" composers, Mendelssohn and Haydn, as well as works by Stravinsky, Massenet and Frank Martin. And making a special guest appearance with the orchestra, Welsh harpist Catrin Finch will perform music by Debussy.

As I write, there's a white heat of activity in the office as the producer and broadcasting assistant finalise the running order for the programme, and come up with creative ideas for potential interview inserts. Ideas suggested have included the Welsh College of Music and Drama redevelopment, the Welsh Sinfonia going at it alone as an orchestra but for the final decision, listen today at 5pm...

As researcher for the programme, I keep tabs on filling our two main slots on each show. With countless offers coming in constantly, new CDs to listen to and knowing what's on throughout the UK, we try and book a wide range of guests, with varying repertoire to give the show its unique balance, making it different from other programmes.

Last night's show was no exception: with world renowned Baroque cellist Anner Bylsma down-the-line from a studio in Amsterdam as well as Beethoven specialist Jonathan Del Mar and cellist Ralph Kirshbaum. We also had interviews with baritones Christopher Maltman and Sir Thomas Allen, and featured the Dudley Piano Competition as a news piece. (We like to cover arts news stories here - our mornings are often spent digging through that day's press to find that last minute addition to make that day's programme up-to-the minute) If you missed the programme, remember you can always listen again on the BBC iPlayer.

...For those of us in Broadcasting House today, we too will be waiting eagerly for the Cardiff programme to begin, but we'll also be enjoying our Friday 4 o'clock highlight - our lucky senior producer celebrates a great week by buying his team tea and cake.

Calantha Haggie is Radio 3's researcher for In Tune 

• Read programme details for today's In Tune

After almost a month away, I was pleased to find myself refreshed and impressed with today's Haydn Symphony (No 82 The Bear) on Radio 3's Classical Collection. Bloggers and listeners will remember that the producers are taking us through the entire sequence at the rate of two symphonies a week and we have now reached the first of the Paris set - Nos 82-87, with No 83 (The Hen) due to be broadcast in the morning spot on Friday.

All six scores maintain a wonderfully consistent level of invention. Clearly Haydn was thrilled to be writing for a much bigger orchestra than his own Esterhazy group. Compte d'Ogny's Concert de la Loge Olympique was probably the largest orchestra in Europe at the time, with 40 violins and ten doublebasses. It was made up of the most distinguished professionals in Paris and the best amateurs. The orchestral dress was truly striking - the players wore sky-blue frock coats with lace ruffles and swords by their sides. Their concerts were patronised by the Queen, Marie Antoinette, and the nobility, and held in the 'Salle de Spectacle de la Societe Olympique' a fine theatre with seating in boxed tiers.

I'm taking a particular interest in the Radio 3 producers' choice of performances for these works. Today it was the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra under Lovro von Matacic. Although the recording dates from 1981, it has kept its lustre. The engineers found a good balance between the strings and brass, although I'd have liked to hear rather more of the woodwind - especially as these symphonies show Haydn really savouring the chance to write both soloistically and as a group.

On Friday I'm much looking forward to hearing the redoubtable Sir John Barbirolli with the Halle in Symphony No 83 (The Hen). Firstly this features a symphony orchestra, and is therefore much more in keeping with the size of the ensemble for which they were originally written. Secondly, John Barbirolli had a huge repertoire, and was seldom, if ever, dull!

Walking along the street at the weekend in my home town of Lewes I bumped into John Hancorn who conducts the East Sussex Bach Choir. An enthusiastic conversation ensues about Sing Hallelujah. It seems Lewes will be doing something special on Dec 13th, and I hope something radical such as the downloadable Gospel version from the Sing Hallelujah site, which will reflect the true spirit of Lewes, a town known for shaking up the establishment.

They will be joined throughout the autumn by the dozens of choirs from all over the UK who have now signed up to the Sing Hallelujah site. We hope that every size and shape of community choir will want to get involved; check out Karl Daymond's Male Voice Choir in Chepstow for a performance starting on Dec 6th at 1759, the exact year of Handel's death, and also Karl's Singing Club, none of whom read music but will sing a unison version of the melody. Really anyone can join in, no matter what level of singer you are or what knowledge of music you have.



This exciting collaboration between English National Opera and the BBC has so far been a joy with both organizations hungry to reach out to new audiences and widen the appeal of classical music. Our joint BBC/ENO teams are beavering away planning the Glasgow and London live events and I feel it is really building up steam with some wonderful content for the website to be unveiled in the next few weeks.



Today I have talked through the designs for ENO's production of Messiah with director, Deborah Warner. Hot on the heels of her provocative new production of Brecht's Mother Courage at the National Theatre, Deborah and her team are now putting the final touches to their concept and looking forward to the first day of rehearsals. The stunning designs are being created by Tom Pye, and with a wonderful cast, led by tenor John Mark Ainsley, the ENO Orchestra and Chorus and the conducting of Handelian expert Lawrence Cummings, I feel sure that we are in for a treat.



Handel was the most versatile theatrical composer of the baroque period and many of his oratorios have a dramatic narrative hence the rich history of oratorio stagings over the last 10 years.



Key to Deborah's concept for the production is an amateur community group of actors drawn from Westminster and representative of a contemporary urban community. Our staging of Messiah and the Sing Hallelujah project are all about community, the joy of singing together, the thrill of participating, challenging the preconceptions that the place for Handel's Messiah is in church, a scriptural oratorio exclusively for a Christian tradition. In fact the annual Christmas performances of Messiah came about because Handel would conduct the work to raise money for charity. It has over the years, after what must be millions of performances, and with the great Hallelujah Chorus, become Handel's most celebrated work. There can be no better way to end a year of celebrations for this great composer than by coming together to hear, learn and sing this wonderful work.

• Read about Deborah Warner's ENO production of Handel's Messiah
• Find out about singing and how to participate in Sing Hallelujah!
  
  

John Berry is artistic director of English National Opera

Most people can hum the tune of 'Mac the Knife', some people may even know a few of the words and may perhaps substitute 'doo-bee-doo-bee-doo' for the rest.

This is something I found myself doing rather a lot of in the lead up to recording Brecht and Weill's The Threepenny Opera for Drama on 3 - the 'doo-bee-doo-bee-doo' lyrics in particular! I certainly knew all the words, having spent months listening to different recordings but with two young children at home I had to apply some censorship.

It is a play set in the criminal underworld of Victorian London whose central characters are beggars, gangsters and whores and the language reflects this. Of course I could have refrained from singing altogether but the problem is that Kurt Weill's music is so very catchy. My five-year-old is still singing 'Pirate Jenny' alongside his repertoire of contemporary pop songs.

Herein lies the genius of this iconic work: it is still as shocking, as politically sharp and as entertaining as it was when it premiered in 1928. And it is still as popular. Working in close collaboration with the Brecht Estate and the Kurt Weill Foundation we decided to use Michael Feingold's translation, considered by them to be the closest to the original. We also used all the original musical underscores and links. Creating an authentic version, albeit it in a different language to the original work was the vision.

I had the honour of collaborating with an ensemble of musicians from the BBC Philharmonic conducted by H K Gruber, one of the world's leading authorities on Weill's music. It would be easy for someone with his credentials to be entirely intimidating but Gruber (who likes to be known by his nickname, 'Nali') is possibly one of the most passionate, energetic, focused and charismatic individuals on the planet. He manages to draw the best from those around him, nurturing and coaxing and cheering them on through his sheer delight at having someone to 'play' with. He would cry 'wonderful' and throw himself on the floor, howl with laughter and convey such joy that it was hard for the actors not to thrive, despite the daunting task they had undertaken. This was the first time that Nali had worked on this music with actors, as distinct from singers; and the first time he had directed the work in English. In one rehearsal I saw his eyes fill with tears as he watched our young Polly Peachum, played by Elen Rhys: this was the Polly that Brecht had written, a young British woman: 'This is the real Polly,' he whispered to me.

I look forward to Sunday night when my children will be safely tucked up in their beds and I will be able to immerse myself in this Victorian criminal underworld without substituting any of the words with 'doo-bee-doo-bee-doo'.

The Threepenny Opera is produced by Nadia Molinari - it is a BBC Radio Drama North and BBC Philharmonic co-production.

• You can hear the Threepenny Opera at 8pm on Sunday 18 October on BBC Radio 3. For cast and production details, click here.
• In a special edition of Night Waves this Thursday at 915pm, Philip Dodd brings together a round table of guests to assess why the Threepenny Opera continues to intrigue. Click here for details.
• And in Composer of the Week, starting next Monday, 19 October, Donald Macleod explores the life and work of Kurt Weill. Click this link for more details.
• The Kurt Weill Foundation was founded by Weill's wife Lotte Lenya in 1962; the non-profit, private foundation is dedicated to promoting understanding of Weill's life and works and preserving the legacies of Weill and Lenya. Its website is a treasure-house of information about Kurt Weill. Click here for the website. 
• The Manchester studio photos in this blog show Joseph Millson (Macheath) and Elen Rhys (Polly Peachum) - also seen rehearsing with pianist Darius Battiwalla, and H K Gruber with the Manchester Chamber Choir.

On Saturday night, the Barbican was occupied by William Christie and his Paris-based ensemble Les Arts Florissants. They performed Purcell's hour-long opera Dido and Aeneas, not once but twice in early and late shows. I attended the second. There was no sound of tiredness in the voices, but there was a lot of emphatic over-acting as if they were trying extra hard.

The absurdities in the story of Dido and Aeneas - she kills herself for grief that there is to be no second night of passion with Aeneas - make a convincing dramatic presentation difficult. The drama lies in the music which was too often obscured by unnecessary action. The witches and sorceress were so full of manic antics that they forgot to sing in tune and the clumping chorus footwork spoilt the sensuous, soft baroque guitar dance at the moment of the kiss. Statuesque Swedish mezzo Malena Ernman as Dido, doing her best to make sense of her role, had a different mannerism for almost every bar, but came across as more deranged than love-sick. One was hardly surprised or even disappointed when she took her overdose. Her voice was all mannerism and no resonance and her beefy low register too obviously distinct from her cool, passionless head voice. The opening of her dying aria When I am Laid was magical, as in the stillness the viola da gamba spun out the solemn ground, but unfortunately her tuning sank as she did onto her maidservant's bosom.

The latter, sung by Dutch soprano Judith van Wanroij was the saving grace of the production. Her voice rang with simple bell-like beauty as she encouraged her mistress into her lover's arms and she phrased her lines with natural grace as she glided over the stage or shook her ample shoulders like a night club dancer to demonstrate the allure Dido lacked. Italian bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni was a smooth Aeneas, vocally dark and voluminous, but too much the stiff matinee idol rather than the raunchy, rough-hewn warrior that might have made Dido's rash act seem plausible.

The chorus sang with robust charm but overdid the echo in 'In a deep vaulted cell'. This was partly because they couldn't see the orchestra behind them or the director Christie who might have quietened them. Actually he beamed out indulgently at all his protegees. The strings' gorgeous sound floated weightlessly out into the darkened hall and the soloists, the bright, sinewy recorder and the warm, dark archlute, seduced the ear where most of the vocalists had only upset it.

• You can watch a Radio 3 Discovering Music video analysis of Purecll's Dido & Aeneas and a performance of Dido's Lament, by clicking this link. 

Rick Jones is Radio 3's Purcell blogger for Composers of the Year 2009

Well, now the dust has settled on National Poetry Day, let's have a look around and see what's actually happened. My NPD started early, a trip at 06.15 to BBC Radio Sheffield to do twelve live interviews with BBC local radio stations over a couple of hours, all of which were celebrating NPD in their own way: some of them had listeners sending in poems, some of them had started a poem and wanted the listeners to carry it on, some were discussing what poetry is and how it applies to our lives at the busy end of a decade.

What I got from the experience, as I always do, is a sense that people in this country love poetry, and that they'll talk about it and recite it and write it at the drop of a hat. Then I wandered around Sheffield for a while and went back to the studio at 11.00 to record interviews with the winners of this year's Forward Prizes for Best Poetry Collection and Best First Collection, Don Paterson and Emma Jones; Don's book Rain is a truly accomplished work, full of poems of love and family and ringing with a mysterious quality that resonates long after you've put 'em down. Emma is a young Australian writer whose work is full of water and wildlife and is often about the idea of trying to take on Australian history and her own personal history.

Afterwards, on the train back to Barnsley, I reflected on the fact that I'm indiscriminate: I love the kind of rhyming ditties that people were ringing in to the local radio stations, and I love the carefully crafted work of writers like Paterson and Jones.



Maybe my favourite kind of writing, however, is the dense, allusive, difficult and knotty poetry of the ignored gang of British avant-garde writers like Bill Griffiths, Denise Riley, Maggie O'Sullivan and too many more to mention. On the train I read the first issue of a new magazine, the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, and it made me ridiculously happy...

And I reckon all these poetries can live together. But I realise I'm probably in a minority of one. Look forward to seeing lots of people who will disagree with me at the Free Thinking Festival in Gateshead!

• For a link to the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, click here.
• Free tickets are available for the Free Thinking Festival: click here.
• You can read Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy's specially written poem for NPD: click here.
• The latest edition of Radio 3's The Verb includes coverage of the Forward Prizes. You can listen again via the iPlayer via The Verb's home page.

At Morley College we have postponed until Easter 2010 the performance of Purcell's Fairy Queen including Harvey Brough's Fairy Dream sequence. Although the date is slightly wide of Purcell's 350th anniversary, it more closely matches the centenary of Gustav Holst's 1910/11 revival of the work here for the first time since Purcell's day.

Holst was appointed Director of Music at the College in April 1907. The previous director, HJB Dart, had died suddenly in 1905 but Holst was only second choice after the Morley trustees offered the vacancy first to the charismatic Vaughan Williams. The latter, who, together with Cecil Sharp, had given an 'inspiring' series of lecture-recitals on English Folk Song at the college the previous year, said he was 'too busy' and turned down the offer, but proposed his friend Holst instead. The latter had recently become head of music at St Paul's Girls School and after giving a lecture on 'the horrors of bagpipe music', the college awarded him the position.

Morley College was, and arguably still is, the leading provider of adult education in the country. In Holst's day students paid £1 a term for a choice of lectures on firstly scientific subjects, but later practical courses and the arts. It was founded by the social reformer and suffragette Emma Cons with money from the textile manufacturer and MP Samuel Morley. Cons also opened the Old Vic in Waterloo as the Royal Victoria Music Hall and Coffee House in order to introduce 'working men and women to Shakespeare and opera'. The Old Vic was the first home of Morley College.

Read the rest of this entry

We've a rather unlikely 'loo book' at home - a beginner's guide to Geordie. (We don't actually keep it in the toilet but you know the kind of browsing book I mean). My partner doesn't need a guide to Geordie but his oldest school friend gave it to me when we first got together and I started visiting Newcastle and the area frequently. It was meant as a joke but it was also a friendly reminder that I was an outsider - something I remembered when we started planning this year's Radio 3 Free Thinking festival of ideas and decided to move Free Thinking (October 23-25) for the first time to the north-east to be based in the The Sage Gateshead. It's an area with an intensely rich and independent history but as we learnt in Liverpool, another city with its own complex identity, you can't begin to understand fully the pride, passions and anxieties of an area in the few months running up to a weekend festival but you can work creatively with partners who do.

We launched Free Thinking in 2006 in Liverpool and from the start we believed part of the unique flavour of the festival would be that we brought local and national viewpoints and experiences together. We would never 'import' all our guests for the the weekend but work with a range of contributors, some of them locally-based and others with longstanding local connections, alongside invited speakers from around the UK or the world. The decision to move from Liverpool after three years was all the more difficult because of the strength of the relationship we'd built up with some of Liverpool's dynamic cultural organisations, our host venue, FACT, The Reader Organisation and our colleagues at Radio Merseyside, just for example. But we'd never intended to keep Free Thinking in one location and moving on has enabled us to refresh the festival by including the issues and voices of another area.

For all the impact of globalisation in contemporary culture there are still huge differences of experience and attitudes just across the UK and I think we strengthen the quality of the debate around ideas by reflecting this in Free Thinking, partly in the selection of speakers but importantly also by hearing from the audiences at the events. The choice of this year's lead theme, the 21st Century Family, was inspired in part by a discussion about the strength of some of the local response to a national story there'd been about families earlier this year. We're delighted psychologist Tanya Byron is coming to Gateshead to give the opening lecture on the future of the family whilst Newcastle writers Fiona Evans and Karen Laws have been running local workshops to develop the Free Thinking drama 'Beware the Kids' and no doubt we'll hear a whole range of viewpoints in our debate 'Is there a Future for Men?'

But of course moving meant that just as we began to think we were getting the hang of putting on 30-odd talks, debates and performances over one weekend and broadcasting them - we were starting again in a new area - and heading for an earlier weekend than in previous years because of other commitments in the venue. But the Sage welcomed us from the start and we're delighted to be working with the BBC team in the north- east as well as with a whole new group of colleagues from around the north-east - Newcastle's Lit and Phil, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle University, Cafe Culture North-East, New Writing North and more. We've just launched the brochure online and the print versions have just arrived. There's nothing quite like having it in your hand to make you believe the festival is really coming. And coming it is.

I've just heard the first Free Thought in Radio 3's Breakfast... little nuggets of ideas around 0830 every morning that lay, as it were, a broadcast paper trail to the main weekend. Though there's a whole lot of preparation still to do we're really pleased with the line-up: former England cricket captain Mike Brearley on leadership, David Miliband, MP for South Shields, on the ideas that have shaped him and personal values, composer and music producer William Orbit with his guide to listening... and so many more... I'm looking forward to hearing Julia Neuberger, surely one of the wisest voices in public life, and the discussion of the culture of the Tyne, Tees and Wear rivers and the debate on sport vs the arts...

Almost all the festival is broadcast so if you can't make it to Gateshead you can catch up with it here on Radio 3 over the weekend of October 23-25 and in Night Waves during the weeks following. Though I'm not quite certain how we're going to broadcast one of this year's innovations - Greyworld's Sonic Safari. Radio 3's The Verb, Radio Drama and the public art collective Greyworld are working together to create an invisible forest of words that will grow through the public spaces of the Sage. You'll be able to record your own word and pursue its journey in amongst the others - so who knows what we'll find? It's time perhaps to get out that guide to Geordie.

Abigail Appleton is Head of Speech Programming and Presentation for BBC Radio 3

• Everything you need to know about Free Thinking is on the festival's home page.
• Breakfast's Free Thoughts are online now, starting with Simon Critchley and Lindsay Johns.
• The Festival's schedule is here and you can download a brochure.
• Radio 3 and local radio listeners are voting for the 'Free Thinker of the north-east' for a special event on 25 October.
• The picture shows a Geordie. It's by Conor Lawless and is used under licence.

Only connect... There's nothing a Radio 3 presenter likes more than a bit of serendipity - especially at 4.00 on a Friday, when he's been presenting Afternoon on 3 all week and has promised his Radio 3 Interactive colleague Graeme Kay to write a blog about it which he hasn't started yet!

A couple of examples: we've just played Poulenc's suite Les biches. In the middle of it, the Afternoon on 3 editor comes in to point out that today's In Tune (an outside broadcast from the City Halls in Glasgow) includes a live performance of Poulenc's Concert champêtre, with Radio 3 New Generation Artist Mahan Esfahani as the harpsichord soloist. I make a note to remind myself to mention this after Les biches.

Then the e-mail newsletter about tomorrow's Music Matters pops up on my computer screen. Tom Service is actually in the neighbouring studio recording the programme as I'm reading it, and one of the items is about the choreographer Kenneth MacMillan. Much of this week's music on Afternoon on 3 has had dance connections: Les biches, for instance, was commissioned from Poulenc by Diaghilev. MacMillan would have been 80 this year and Jann Parry's new biography of him - Different Drummer - is out. So a pointer to Music Matters is the ideal connection for me to make at the end of this afternoon. Eureka!

An ability to remember connections can be as important as spotting the unexpected ones. Presenting this week's broadcast - episode, I almost wrote - in our year-long Handel opera series does feel rather like joining the cast of a long-running drama. Just as a nervous young thesp might look to his more established colleagues, for this one I'm in the supremely safe hands of producers David Gallagher and Kevin Bee, not to mention this week's guest, the musicologist Annette Landgraf, editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia. (They're all younger than me, by the way; sometimes presenters get carried away with their metaphors.)

And suddenly it's 5.00, time to say thank you and good evening. I do hope Graeme hasn't given up waiting for this and gone home ...[No I haven't! - Graeme]

Last week I wrote about Gareth Malone's TV series, The Choir - Unsung Town, which showed just how much could be gained by individuals, and their communities, by getting involved in singing.

• The Sing: home page is here

• The Sing Hallelujah home page is here