Television

The BBC TV channels work in partnership with BBC Radio and online, and many major music organisations, and the musicians themselves, to create and truly immersive music experiences for our audiences.

The Soundtrack Of The Twentieth Century

Popular music is the soundtrack and the lifeblood of what it was to be alive in the 20th century. Until the 20th century music had been a moment – heard once and never again. The global village began in 1904 when Caruso became the first singer to sell a million records. Popular music came from below, from the folk melodies, hymns and humour of the masses. It became Pop Music when it was captured and amplified by the new media of the 20th century.

Television has covered this rich history in genres and moments, but The Soundtrack Of The Twentieth Century (working title) for BBC Two will be the first time the story has been told as a whole, capturing the history of one of the most exciting achievements of the last hundred years.

This definitive, yet provocative, many part BBC TV series will explore popular music’s rise and many transformations across the 20th century not only on TV but across radio and online to form a BBC anthology of the music that made us who we are.

Perhaps ultimately the sound of the 20th century is the sound of an emerging democratic world in which we are what we buy and what we hear. From Caruso to Taylor Swift via Robert Johnson, Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Eminem and so many more, this is the story of a hundred years of stars, misfits and media as only the BBC can tell it early in the 21st Century.

BBC One

BBC One features spectacular events as well as some of the world's leading performers in concert, including George Michael and Adele, as well as landmark music documentaries in the BBC Arts strand Imagine.

BBC Music Awards

For the first time ever, BBC One, Radio 1 and Radio 2 will unite for a spectacular celebration of the best in popular music from the last 12 months. Hosted by Fearne Cotton and Chris Evans, the BBC Music Awards will take place at Earls Court on Thursday 11 December.

The extravaganza, the biggest musical event on the BBC since Glastonbury, will feature captivating live performances and collaborations to review and celebrate the year, whether it’s re-creating a magical performance from Radio 1’s Live Lounge, a stand-out moment from Glastonbury or an artist creating a collaboration with a BBC Orchestra.

The biggest award of the night will be 'British Artist of the Year'. From a very long list of candidates, many of them featured within the show, the eventual winner will be decided by the combined expertise of the presenters and producers of the BBC’s mainstream music programming. The same group will determine the winner of the 'International Artist of the Year' category.

Viewers and listeners will have their say in deciding the winner of the 'Song of the Year', making it one of the most interactive awards ceremonies of the year.

Among performances from the biggest and most iconic names in music, we’ll also be reserving a special place for one of BBC Introducing’s hottest talents, giving a new artist time and space to play live on the BBC’s biggest television channel.

Radio 1 and Radio 2 will give their huge audiences exclusive behind-the-scenes access. Tickets for this event will go on general sale in early Autumn.

Charlotte Moore, Controller, BBC One says: "I think this is a fantastic opportunity for BBC One to collaborate with Radio 1 and Radio 2 and host this unique celebration of music in the UK. The BBC has always been a destination for new and established musical talent, and by bringing the two together the BBC Music Awards promises to give viewers and listeners an unforgettable night."

Guy Freeman, executive producer, says: "The BBC Music Awards is an exciting new programme for BBC One, giving audiences a chance to enjoy unique performances as well as reflecting on their personal musical loves from the past year."

Live At Edinburgh Castle

A spectacular concert Live At Edinburgh Castle with a glittering array of big names will be shown on BBC One ahead of the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

Presented by The One Show’s Alex Jones on Saturday 19 July, Scotland's capital city will be welcoming a wide range of international musical acts, including Kaiser Chiefs, Smokey Robinson, Rizzle Kicks, Paloma Faith, Katherine Jenkins, Il Divo, One Republic, Taio Cruz, Alfie Boe and Pumeza – with more names to follow.

The music will also be interspersed with comedy on the night as Bill Bailey performs his unique brand of musical humour with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Fred MacAulay makes a special guest appearance. Some of the performances will be accompanied by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and a house band, led by Mike Stevens, who has worked with artists including Gary Barlow and Annie Lennox.

The One Show

From August, as well as delivering topical features and big name studio guests, the hugely successful live magazine programme, BBC One’s The One Show, will bring a new and regular weekly music performance slot to millions of viewers.

The Voice UK

The big, red, spinning chairs make a welcome return to BBC One in January as The Voice UK begins its fourth series.

BBC Two

BBC Two aims to bring music to a broader audience with high quality landmark series, single drama documentaries about pivotal moments in music history, as well as feature-length rock and pop films made by award-winning producers and directors, profiling internationally renowned bands and artists.

Genesis: Together And Apart (working title) is a feature-length documentary on one of the most successful bands in rock history. From its first beginnings as a band of songwriters in the late 1960s to its final incarnation as a rock giant in the 1990s – via full-blown theatrical progressive rock in the mid-1970s and the subtler jazzy pop of the early 1980s – Genesis could perplex and enrage the die-hards, whilst exciting and exhilarating the newer disciples.

Made with the full co-operation of Genesis, the film reunites all original members of the band together – Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett and Mike Rutherford – for the first time since 1975.

The film recounts an extraordinary musical story, exploring the band’s songwriting as well as emotional highs and lows, alongside previously unseen archive material and rare performance footage from across their entire career.

Reginald D Hunter’s Songs Of The South is a three-part BBC Two series which sees Georgia-born comedian Reginald turn his unique wit on the world and music in which he grew up as he embarks upon an epic road trip from North Carolina to New Orleans through 150 years of American popular song.

From banjo-toting hillbilly to dirty southern hip-hop via minstrelsy and modern rock, Reg will take a picturesque journey into a great yet terrifying crucible of music, an extraordinary landscape and the bloody birthplace of America itself.

Combining specially shot performances from leading southern musicians, choice encounters and Reg’s sharp wit, Reginald D Hunter’s Songs Of The South will be a stylish evocation of the lands, people and songs of a musical Egypt and the culture that it has left behind.

BBC Three

Once again, BBC Three will be on hand to bring all the best from T in the Park and the Reading and Leeds Festivals to viewers' living rooms this Summer.

BBC Four

Music continues to sit at the heart of BBC Four’s story. Two new seasons sees the channel come together with BBC Radio to celebrate country music and music and fashion, as well as introducing an exciting new live strand that celebrates some of the greatest music venues in the UK.

BBC Four and BBC Radio 2 present Country Legends: Nashville And Beyond, a season of programmes exploring the rich history of country music and the reasons for its current resurgence. And three new films on BBC Four look into the phenomenon of Nashville.

Nashville: Country Capital (w/t) gets under the skin of Nashville, the Hollywood of country music. Nashville is the city of dreams – and big business – to which all country music gravitates and from where it makes its way to the outside world. Exploring the evolution of country music from the 1920s to the present, this programme explores where the music and the business of country intersect in Music City USA, Nashville, Tennessee.

Kenny Rogers: The Gambler (w/t) examines the life and career of the artist who “knows when to hold ’em and knows when to fold ’em”, recounting Kenny’s remarkable rise to the top of his game and bringing a golden era of country music to life. Featuring exclusive access to Rogers on his Through The Years tour, this honest, eye-opening and occasionally moving film provides a backstage pass to 50 years of performing and recording, with insight and candour from the man himself.

‘Whispering’ Bob Harris journeys to America’s country music capital for Bob Harris: My Nashville and reveals why Nashville became Music City USA. From the beginnings of the Grand Ole Opry on commercial radio, through the threatening onset of rock ‘n’ roll in the 50s, right up to the modern mainstream hits of Music Row, this is the story of how music has shaped Nashville and why today it’s a place of pilgrimage for musicians from all over the world. With exclusive performances and interviews with Emmylou Harris, Duane Eddy and Roseanne Cash, Bob explains why country music owes its enduring success to Nashville’s unique nurturing community of songwriters. The documentary is produced by WBBC.

As part of the Radio 2 line-up, the station will be broadcasting live from Nashville on the day of the annual Country Music Association Awards, and then listeners will be able to join Bob Harris backstage at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena for highlights of the CMA Awards, complete with live performances and interviews with the winners.

Radio 2 will also broadcast a special concert featuring country music superstar Brad Paisley and three of the songwriters behind his biggest hits, hosted by Bob Harris.

Around London Fashion Week this September, BBC Four and BBC Radio 6 Music collaborate to create a bespoke collection of programming that celebrates the intimate relation between music and fashion. Central to the season is Oh You Pretty Things! (w/t), a three-part television series from Oxford Scientific Films, explores the relationship between British rock and pop music and the fashions that have accompanied it. From the mid-60s to the early 90s, it examines these two aspects of British creativity and identity through Cilla Black’s Biba dresses, Bowie’s androgynous glamour, Zandra Rhodes flamboyant designs for Queen, the Sex Pistols’ ripped-up style, the immaculate detailing of Dexy's Midnight Runners and Siouxsie Sioux’s goth extravagance. Moving onto the highly-styled 80s music videos and the urban streetwear and club culture trends which followed in the 90s, the series looks at the enduring legacy which is still influencing artists, designers and the high street today.

It features artists and fashion gurus from the heart of the scene including Biba’s Barbara Hulanicki, Sex Pistol’s Glen Matlock, Jazzie B, The Kills’ Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince, Zandra Rhodes, Andy Mackay of Roxy Music, and Warren Gold plus many more. Each episode will be soundtracked by a 6 Music presenter, using their expertise of music with an alternative spirit to showcase the social history, sounds and looks from the decades covered. And the season will feature tailored programming and special guests across 6 Music exploring further the themes of the series.

Looking further ahead, BBC Four and Radio 6 Music are working together to celebrate some of the UK’s greatest music venues in a major new strand. These big nights will celebrate the concert halls, dance-halls and clubs that have been at the centre of some of our greatest revolutions in music and popular culture, with Camden’s Roundhouse sitting at the heart of our plans.

BBC Four continues its rich tradition of in-depth, original music documentaries featuring world class talent with single documentaries about Kate Bush, Northern Soul, and The Joy of the Guitar Riff.

Kate Bush has always danced to her own tune and we love her for it. We Need To Talk About Kate (w/t) explores what makes this singer-songwriter unique through the recollections of her colleagues and friends as well as those she has influenced down the years. Interviews include Sir Elton John, Tori Amos, Natasha Khan, Peter Gabriel, Jo Brand, Stephen Fry and author Neil Gaiman.

The riff is the DNA of rock ’n’ roll, a telling Rubik’s cube of repetitive simplicity and fiendish complexity that provides the hook on which the history of rock is built. Think Johnny B Goode, You Really Got Me, Smoke On The Water, Beat It and so many more. The Joy Of The Guitar Riff, a documentary to be broadcast on BBC Four to coincide with Radio 2’s Guitar Season, is a celebration of this key building block of rock ’n’ roll, charting the evolution of the riff from the 50s to the present day, around 10 game-changing moments. Along the way, it discovers the evolutionary leaps made by the likes of Hank Marvin and Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine before winding up at every football terrace’s favourite riff, the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army. The cast includes Brian May, Tony Iommi, Joan Jett, Nancy Wilson, Robert Fripp, Dave Davies, Nile Rodgers, Hank Marvin, Tom Morello, Lita Ford, Kevin Shields, Richard Hawley and many more.

Northern Soul: Living For The Weekend, made by independent production company Somethin’ Else, tells the story of a genre of music unlike any other. It’s 40 years since DJ Russ Winstanley unleashed the Wigan Casino on the world, playing Northern Soul to thousands of young people in the club's legendary all-nighters. The Wigan Casino even beat New York's Studio 54 for title of Billboard Magazine’s 'Best Disco in the World' in 1978.

Northern Soul was a unique and peculiar genre of music. Rare American soul tunes, often with a 4/4 beat, were hunted down by obsessive DJs from northern British towns. But the Northern Soul scene was also about authenticity, style and passion and the programme hears stories from Northern Soul DJs Ian Levine, Kev Roberts, Ian Dewhirst, Richard Searling and Colin Curtis, as well as author Bob Stanley, Good Times DJ Norman Jay, musician Lisa Stansfield, filmmaker Elaine Constantine and music legends such as Radio 2 DJ Tony Blackburn and DJ/Producer Pete Waterman.

Join BBC Four as it becomes one station under a groove for an evening of Funk this autumn, returning to funk’s heyday when the music had the whole world ‘keeping it on the one.’ Like blues and jazz, funk is one of the great musical cultures of America. Since its inception it has become part of the fabric of popular music, its rhythms and grooves infiltrating every genre. James Brown, Sly & the Family Stone, Parliament, Funkadelic, Kool & the Gang, Cameo, Earth Wind & Fire, Chic and Prince - funk music has produced some of the most famous, eccentric and best-loved acts in the world. At the height of its popularity in the 1970s this fun, futuristic and freaky music changed the streets of America with its outrageous fashion, space-age vision and street-wise slang. Its legacy was to become the foundation for other genres: without it hip-hop, disco and dance music simply don't exist.

In fact, funk music has now permeated popular culture to the extent even President Barack Obama quotes Sly Stone in keynote speeches. But funk is more than just good time music. In the 1970s, as America’s civil rights struggle raged on, its irresistible grooves provided the basis for a new philosophy, belief-system and lifestyle that united young black Americans, helping them identify with their African roots.

As well as Funk At The BBC and a classic live concert from a major artist, at the heart of the evening is a documentary that tells its story, exploring the music and artists who created a positive soundtrack at a negative time for African Americans.

BBC Arts at…

BBC Arts at…continues with a special programme in which Michael Grade speaks to the internationally acclaimed lyricist, Tim Rice.

This exclusive conversation will see him discuss the fascinating stories behind his catalogue of hit song lyrics, including West End shows Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Chess, The Lion King and Aida amongst others.

Recorded at the Royal Festival Hall on 8 July, an array of performers including Rob Brydon, Roger Daltrey, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Cynthia Erivo, Tim Minchin, Julian Ovenden, Diana Vickers and Rufus Wainwright will perform some of the songs, accompanied by the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Mike Dixon.

Classical Music TV

The BBC's commitment to putting musicians centre stage continues with a raft of new programming on BBC Two and BBC Four.

On BBC Two, Simon Russell Beale travels to Italy to explore the creation of the radical and enduring Vespers of the Blessed Virgin and the relationship between the ambitious potentate, the Duke of Mantua, and his ill-paid yet determined composer, Claudio Monteverdi - in The Duke And The Composer - Monteverdi In Mantua. Featuring specially recorded performances from The Sixteen, conducted by Harry Christophers.

An ambitious partnership between the BBC, Arts Council England, Southbank Centre, The Hallé in Manchester, Bristol Music Trust, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, and the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain will bring L'Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste (OSK) from Kinshasa, the Congo – to the UK for the first time. A BBC Arts at…documentary will follow the Kinshasa Symphony Orchestra – many of whom play on self-built instruments - as they embark on a ground-breaking tour of concerts across the UK with a programme including Congolese music alongside works by Beethoven and Berlioz.

In The Joy Of Mozart on BBC Four, Tom Service discovers the true essence of the composer’s genius with the help of Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Nicola Benedetti, Paul Morley and others.

Also on BBC Four, film-maker John Bridcut and 1212 Productions present a portrait of Herbert Von Karajan, exploring his legendary career as one of the 20th century’s greatest and most controversial conductors and his life-long determination to bring classical music to the widest possible audience.

Further highlights include the first new TV biography for 15 years of Britain’s best-loved conductor – Sir Simon Rattle (BBC Two) which will chart his international career working with the world's greatest orchestras, following the irresistible dynamism of his rehearsals and performance and the day-to-day life of a great conductor achieving a formidable reputation.

A major documentary marking the 80th anniversary of Glyndebourne Festival, Glyndebourne: The Untold History (Sunday 22 June, BBC Four), and an observational series produced by Tony Woods at Buccaneer Media (Hollyoaks, The Only Way Is Essex) exploring life inside a touring orchestra (BBC Three).

In 2015, BBC Four will dedicate a year of programming to celebrating the extraordinary power of song and dance across a whole spectrum of eras and styles. The Classical Voice Season includes a series presented by Sir Antonio Pappano exploring the great operatic roles and lieder, alongside the Cardiff Singer of the World, the Voice of Black Opera with Scottish Opera and related programming on BBC Radio 3.

Notes to Editors

Picture credit for Kinshasa Symphony Orchestra: SOUNDING IMAGES

Picture credit for Genesis: Photography Patrick Balls/Copyright Gelring Limited