Sounds Of Shakespeare
BBC Radio 3 marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare with a season celebrating the four centuries of music and performance that his plays and sonnets have inspired. Over the anniversary weekend, from Friday 22 to Sunday 24 April, Radio 3 will broadcast live from Stratford-upon-Avon, from a pop-up studio at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Other Place Theatre and other historic venues across the town.
In Tune
4.30pm-6.30pm BBC Radio 3
Sean Rafferty launches Radio 3’s Shakespeare anniversary weekend with a live showcase of musicians, singers and performers, including the Chelys Consort of Viols, students from the Royal Academy of Music and the world premiere of Love Sought – a brand new setting of text from Shakespeare’s A Winter's Tale by Roxanna Panufnik sung by Radio 3 New Generation Artist Kathryn Rudge. Live from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Other Place theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.
The Sounds Of Shakespeare
6.30pm-7.30pm BBC Radio 3
Radio 3 presenter Tom Service charts the magical chemistry between Shakespeare’s language and the music it has given life to over the last 400 years - from Romeo and Juliet to The Tempest. Live from the Radio 3’s pop-up studio at the Other Place Theatre.
Radio 3 In Concert: Shakespeare Odes
7.30pm–9.30pm BBC Radio 3
A spectacular commemorative concert at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford where Shakespeare was baptised and buried with Shakespeare-inspired works from the 18th and 21st centuries, performed by Ex Cathedra and City Musick, directed by Jeffrey Skidmore. For tonight’s performance the Ode has been reconstructed for the first time since the 18th century. Samuel West takes the part of Garrick and Sally Beamish has written the music for the missing opening and closing choruses. To end the concert, Sally Beamish and Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy have collaborated on a contemporary tribute to Shakespeare, A Shakespeare Masque.
Concert Interval: Shakespeare And Stratford
8.20pm-8.45pm BBC Radio 3
When did Stratford and the country at large really begin to celebrate Shakespeare? BBC Radio 3 presenter Suzy Klein is in conversation in the pop-up studio with Professors Michael Dobson and Ewan Fernie of the Shakespeare Institute to tell the story of how Stratford grew to love the memory of the man and revived his writing.
Sonnets In The City
Friday 22 April: 9.45pm-10pm; 10.45pm-11pm BBC Radio 3
Saturday 23 April: 9.30pm–10pm BBC Radio 3
Sunday 24 April: 11.30pm-11.45pm BBC Radio 3
Radio 3 has commissioned five writers to re-version five of Shakespeare’s most powerful sonnets as a series of edgy, contemporary dramas set across a single night in a city – and commissioned five composers to create the music for those sonnets, performed by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. In each play the original sonnet itself is read by Maxine Peake. The sonnets are 29, 61, 73, 140, 154 and they will be broadcast across the Sounds Of Shakespeare weekend. Writers: Tom Wells, Francesca Martinez, Lee Mattinson, Esther Wilson, Zodwa Nyoni. The composers: Tom Coult, Nina Whiteman, Aaron Parker, Chiu-Yu Chou, Daniel Kidane,
The Verb
10pm-10.45pm BBC Radio 3
Poet Ian McMillan hosts late night entertainment in the pop-up studio in Stratford with a roundtable of writers celebrating Shakespeare's linguistic fireworks. Benet Brandreth, a rhetoric coach, has written a new novel imagining Shakespeare’s lost years and Nell Lyshon imagines a fictional meeting with Spanish literary titan Cervantes who died on the same day in 1616. Plus spoken word artist, Polar Bear and poet Wendy Cope with her new poems, commissioned by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
World On 3
11pm–01am BBC Radio 3
Mary-Ann Kennedy celebrates the global influence of Shakespeare’s work – with live performances including English folk music and jazz inspired by The Bard, performed by Wes Finch and friends, as well as by the Peter Knight Trio and the visiting Nola Jazz band from New Orleans, and guest Andrew Dickson, author of “World Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare's Globe.”
Presenters/various, Producers/various
Publicity contact: BBC Radio 3 Publicity
