The tentacles of freedom

Available for over a year

Tom Service meets the boundary-defying Pulitzer Prize winning composer Du Yun, as she prepares to curate a radical upgrade of ancient Chinese and Indonesian sound-worlds in 'The New Java and Shanghai', part of Southbank's new music festival Soundstate. And in a further exploration of today's composers and their octopus-like creative minds, as the BBC Proms Inspire Competition launches its 20th year Tom speaks to two of its alumni: Jack Sheen explains how the competition propelled him into a career as a composer, conductor and programmer of new music, and Shiva Feshareki gives Tom a turntabling masterclass in her studio. Alexandra Wilson's new book 'Opera in the Jazz Age' explores the art form's tentacular connections with popular culture in 1920s Britain, countering today's assumptions that opera has always been considered elitist. Tom meets up with Alexandra in the Royal Opera House's new Open Up space. Plus news of the latest trends in sales of classical music, with the BPI's Gennaro Castaldo.