Between the Ears

Lenny Henry stars in a musical fantasy written by Jakko M Jakszyk and Lenny Henry, woven round the real-life 1964 dinner encounter between the greatest poet in the English language of the twentieth century, TS Eliot and the legendary star of A Night at the Opera, Duck Soup and Horse Feathers, Groucho Marx.

Almost exactly fifty years after the meeting in early June 1964, Radio 3's adventurous feature series Between the Ears brings the moment to life with the aid of Groucho Marx and TS Eliot's exchange of letters. They'd been pen-pals since 1961, had swapped signed photographs - Eliot particular that Groucho send him a cigar-toting portrait - and compared lifestories. Eliot hung his Groucho picture between his portraits of WB Yeats and French poet Paul Valery - a place of great honour, according to Craig Raine, celebrated poet himself and biographer of Eliot, who also appears in the programme.

With Lenny Henry taking the role of Groucho, Jakko Jakszyk has woven a delicate vocal and instrumental score around the letters, while he and Lenny together speculate about the nature of the men's seemlingly unlikely passion for each other's work.

After a number of failed arrangements, in June 1964, a car arrives at the Savoy to collect Groucho and his wife to take them the short distance to Eliot's home for the much-awaited dinner. Yet such is the nature of celebrity that when Groucho quoted lines from Eliot's The Wasteland back to him, he was uninterested, and Groucho, in turn, was unable to recall the scene from Duck Soup that Eliot particularly loved. They parted, disappointed and a little dejected. Yet, nine months later, on learning of the poet's death, Marx wrote: "he was a nice man, the best epitaph any man can have...".

Joe is home from school.

"How was your day Joe?" asks his mum Emma (the producer of the programme).

But Joe, and many like him on the autistic spectrum, can't always find the words to summarise their day, or even make sense of the question. Yet later on, they may come round to offering an answer. So what is happening as they struggle to process what is being asked of them?

Through sound and interview, Joe and Emma explore where he and others on the autistic spectrum go to in their minds between the question and a possible answer.

Emma finds out that part of Joe's resistance to giving an answer may come from the fact that he's exhausted just from the effort of processing the transition between school and home. Whereas so-called "neurotypical" people find it easy to make sense of the different settings and can see them in a wider context, people with autism often focus on every tiny detail and find it difficult to filter information. So a short walk up the path to the house may be crammed with observations of every blade of grass, or a struggle to understand why some things have changed since they left- the window being open for instance when it wasn't before.

And the question itself - "How was your day?" Which part of the day? Does Mummy mean "today" or yesterday? Is it the right question to be asking at all?

Emma and Joe hear testimony from others on the autistic spectrum, including the writers Wendy Lawson, Michael Barton and the poet Nicole Nicholson. There are also contributions from Professor Simon Baron-Cohen (Director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University), clinical psychologist Andrew McDonnell, speech therapist Robert Bell and Delia Barton, Michael's mother.

Producer: Emma Kingsley.

Poet Paul Farley imagines himself a sound-recordist taping the Garden of Eden and recalls the impoverished soundscape of his childhood. Growing on the edge of Liverpool in the 1960s and given a simple cassette recorder for a birthday present he went in search of the sounds of the superbs inspired by the bird song records he borrowed from his local library. He pressed play and record on his Panasonic and eavesdropped on ... What? Not a lot, as it turned out. Instead his imagination went to work: the sound recordist's field notes from the Trojan War, during the Irish Potato Famine, lodged in the trenches of the First World War.... A radio poem with found, remembered and dreamt sounds.

Producer: Tim Dee.

The idea of a nation coming into being: in the track and weave of an oval ball. Owen Sheers' new sound poem explores the complex, often difficult relationship between rugby and modern Welsh identity.

"Re: Union" fuses the violent, lyrical soundscape of Welsh rugby and its culture with a meditation on the social, historical and cultural signifiers of the national sport.

A collaboration between between radio producer Steven Rajam and Welsh writer Owen Sheers, this new radio poem explores the complex, often difficult, links between modern Welsh identity and rugby union, Wales' national sport.

Sheers' new poem is told from the perspective of a young rugby player, about to make his debut for Wales. As he makes the mental and physical journey from the training pitch to the national stadium, he reflects on the experiences, the people and the deeply-knotted histories that have led him to the threshold of that hallowed first cap.

Realised for the radio by Steven Rajam, the poem is woven around the sounds and sensations of a real international matchday: the violence of the training pitch, the crowds thronging to the centre of Cardiff, the intensity of the stadium - and much more.

Complementing the young player's story are contributions from social historians, the groundsman at the Millennium Stadium, a player turned acclaimed poet, and 7-year-old superfans Dylan and Alfie - who show us how real Welsh rugby should be played - with a team of their teddies.

Voiced by Scott Arthur, and featuring contributions from Peter Stead, Ceri Wyn Jones and Martin Johnes.

Shadowplay offers a four-part 'symphony of voices' to celebrate 20 years of Between the Ears. It explores the shadows that may fall between the appearance of things and their reality. Making use of the full palette available to the radio producer - documentary, fiction, music, pure sound - four feature-makers address our values, our identities, our romantic inclinations and our sense of worth.

4. Final Movement: Art Values

One of the 'variations' in the first movement of Shadowplay, broadcast earlier this month, introduced the life-model Sue Tilley. A nude portrait of her by Lucian Freud, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, became the most expensive painting by a living artist when it was bought by Roman Abramovich in 2008. In this 'finale', Sue shares more of her life and work (as a life-model, benefits officer and '80s club-scene icon) at the centre of an exploration of the value of art - aesthetics, price-tags, high-life and the everyday.

With a cast of voices from the art world, including Tracey Emin, Ai Wei Wei, Jeff Koons, Robert Hughes, Roy Lichtenstein and Gilbert and George.

Shadowplay has been inspired by the words of TS Eliot:

Radio 3's showcase for adventurous feature-making was launched in October 1993 with a 'piece for radio', by the composer Ian Gardiner. 'Monument', which was conceived as a kind of London symphony, received the prestigious Prix Italia the following year.

Produced by Alan Hall.

Shadowplay offers a four-part 'symphony of voices' to celebrate 20 years of Between the Ears, Radio 3's home for adventurous and innovative radio. It explores the shadows that may fall between the appearance of things and their reality. Making use of the full palette available to the radio producer - documentary, fiction, music, pure sound - four feature-makers address our values, our identities, our romantic inclinations and our sense of worth.

3. Romantic Scherzo

Between the romantic fantasies of a young girl's imagination and the realities of a mature woman's experiences of love falls a shadow that allows for a playful exploration of expectations, illusions and (self-)delusions.

Radio 3's showcase for adventurous feature-making was launched in October 1993 with a 'piece for radio called Monument', which was conceived as a kind of London symphony and received the prestigious Prix Italia the following year.

Produced by Eleanor McDowall.

How can art be invisible? When it's made of sound.

Dan Jones commemorates the centenary of 'The Art of Noise Manifesto', by Luigi Russolo, with an exploration of that mysterious, invisible and vigorous form - Sound Art.

Luigi Russolo believed that the music of the future should reflect the noises of modern life. Rejecting the classical orchestra (along with pizza and pasta which he believed sapped the moral fibre of his nation) he invented 'noise- makers' to replicate the sounds of traffic, industry and even modern warfare.

Russolo may be a disputed godfather of sound art, but it would be almost a hundred years till a sound artist would be shortlisted for the Turner Prize (Susan Philipsz won in 2010) and the Museum of Modern Art, MOMA, in New York would open its first sound art show.

In 'Sonic Art Boom', Dan Jones considers why it has taken so long for Sound Art to get a hearing.

He talks to Janet Cardiff - whose sound installation "The Forty-Part Motet" has been presented by prestigious galleries all over the globe; speaks with Barbara London, MOMA's legendary curator, about the difficulties of displaying sound; meets his hero Stan Shaff - creator of 'Audium', the world's first sound sculpture theatre in San Francisco; and goes underground with Bill Fontana, world-renowned sound artist, as he places a giant loudspeaker in front of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

The art world, it seems, has pulled out its earplugs.

Producer: Sara Jane Hall

Presenter: Dan Jones is a BAFTA award-winning composer and sound designer working in film and theatre - Sound and Fury, is a theatre company of which he is a founder - and his performance piece, created with Luke Jerram, 'Sky Orchestra' has toured the globe for ten years.

Shadowplay offers a four-part 'symphony of voices' to celebrate 20 years of Between the Ears. It explores the shadows that may fall between the appearance of things and their reality. Making use of the full palette available to the radio producer - documentary, fiction, music, pure sound - four feature-makers address our values, our identities, our romantic inclinations and our sense of worth.

2. Slow Movement:

In the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world, the city of lights and dreams and distractions, a man sits down and tries to meditate. Learning to meditate is hard. Emptying one's mind, focusing entirely on one's breath is hard. And it gets even harder for the man with the realisation that he's sitting next to the famous actor Harvey Keitel.

Radio 3's showcase for adventurous feature-making was launched in October 1993 with a 'piece for radio', by the composer Ian Gardiner. 'Monument', which was conceived as a kind of London symphony, received the prestigious Prix Italia the following year.

Produced by Pejk Malinovski.

Five radio producers from around the world hijack The Essay for a week to play a game of audio 'Consequences'.

As part of BBC Radio 3's celebration of twenty years of Between The Ears', the BBC's home for adventurous feature-making, five radio producers from different corners of the world play a week-long audio version of the popular childhood game Consequences.

Five radio producers from different corners of the world play a week-long audio version of the popular childhood game Consequences.

Over the course of the week, the five elements of the narrative game are introduced - the woman, the man, where they met, what they said and the consequence ...

The series explores the many playful ways a story for the ear can be told - from documentary to drama, sound art to fantastical storytelling - with each player unaware of what has preceded them.

5. And the Consequence Was ...

Mirroring the structure of the game itself, three stories are interwoven about the marks left on the body by love, accident and design, inspired by the words "nobody can see what we can see" which appeared at the end of the first ever edition of Between the Ears in 1993.

Producer: Steve Urquhart

Five radio producers from around the world hijack The Essay for a week to play a game of audio 'Consequences'.

As part of BBC Radio 3's celebration of twenty years of Between The Ears, the BBC's home for adventurous feature-making, five radio producers from different corners of the world play a week-long audio version of the popular childhood game Consequences.

Over the course of the week, the five elements of the narrative game are introduced - the woman, the man, where they met, what they said and the consequence ...

The series explores the many playful ways a story for the ear can be told - from documentary to drama, sound art to fantastical storytelling - with each player unaware of what has preceded them.

She Said / He Said

A dialogue between a couple about a third person who stumbled into their lives leaving an indelible impression.

Produced by Bob Carlson, host of the American documentary series 'Unfictional'.

Producer: Bob Carlson

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 3.