Front Row

Paula Hawkins’s novel The Girl on the Train sold 23 million copies and was made into a film starring Emily Blunt. Now she has written A Slow Fire Burning, a who-and-why-dunnit about damaged people trying to move on with their lives, set along the Regent’s Canal in London. She talks to Front Row about starting with character, creating suspense, and how she reflects on the success of The Girl on the Train.

Alan Warner’s 1998 novel, The Sopranos, won the Saltire Society’s Scottish Book of the Year Award when it came out. It has gone on to be adapted for the stage where it won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy in 2017. Now it’s been adapted for the cinema with a new title – Our Ladies. Critic David Benedict assesses whether the film adaption will also be in the running for prize. And he also talks to Kirsty about whether theatre critics are being too kind to productions in a post-lockdown world.

As defending British champion Natasha Baker wins a Silver medal in the Paralympic Dressage freestyle event in Tokyo today, composer Tom Hunt explains the art of creating original music for some of the world’s leading dressage freestyle riders with Natasha Baker and Singaporean rider Laurentia Tan.

Nia Dacosta is only 31 but has already directed two blockbusters. Today she talks to Kirsty about her horror film, Candyman, a direct sequel to the 1992 film of the same name.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Jason deCaires Taylor has been working in underwater art for 15 years. Today, he joins us to discuss his new museum Musan, built in the Mediterranean sea off the coast of Cyprus.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Image: Sculptures by Jason deCaires Taylor, at Musan, Ayia Napa, Cyprus

Following the announcement of the death of the musician Charlie Watts, tonight’s Front Row is an archive edition featuring John Wilson in conversation with the band he was a member of - The Rolling Stones. The programme was recorded in 2012 to mark 50 years since the band’s first performance. In it, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Ronnie Wood reflect on life in the Rolling Stones as they prepare to return to the stage.

Music journalist David Hepworth reflects on the life and drums of Rolling Stone Charlie Watts who has died aged 80.

Natalya Romaniw is a soprano on her way to stardom. With numerous Madame Butterflies, Mimis and Tatyanas under her belt, Natalya was on the brink of international fame when the pandemic hit and took her momentum. Now she’s preparing to sing the eponymous Tosca in Puccini’s masterpiece, and she tells Tom how she’s preparing for one of opera’s most iconic roles and performing post-lockdown.

We hear from another of the five museums and galleries shortlisted for the prestigious £100,000 Art Fund Museum of the Year 2021. This year’s prize will reflect the resilience and imagination of museums during the pandemic, and today John Tanner, Project Manager at Experience Barnsley talks about five exhibits in the museum that speak for the town

Once Upon A Time in Nazi Occupied Tunisia is a darkly comic play about just that. Two young couples in Tunis, one Jewish the other Muslim, find their long-standing friendship tested by the German invasion of their country opening up questions of race, religion and identity. Tom talks to the playwright Josh Azouz about his use of humour in such serious circumstances.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

American conductor Kalena Bovell makes her Proms debut with the Chineke! Orchestra this week. She tells Samira about her path into conducting, and why it’s so exciting to be performing music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor at the Royal Albert Hall.

Following the death of singer Don Everly over the weekend, Bob Stanley joins us to reflect on the importance, sound and influence of the Everly Brothers.

Award winning playwright and screen writer Jack Thorne has delivered this year’s McTaggart Lecture at The Edinburgh Television Festival. He argues that representation of disabled people on both sides of the camera are currently woefully inadequate and calls for more to be done to increase their presence, representation and visibility at all levels of TV.

The fate for artists in Afghanistan at the moment is uncertain and may be dangerous. Poet Reza Mohammadi is the head of the Afghan Writers’ Union and he talks to us from Kabul about the fate he and others might face and what he intends to do to protect their artistic freedom .

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Main image: Kalena Bovell

Michael Sarnoski is the director and co-writer of Pig, starring Nicolas Cage and a pig that is brilliant at finding truffles – until it’s stolen. Cage’s trip to the culinary hot spots of the big city to find his pig reveals more about his past and explores ideas of grief, redemption, and what to value in life. The director joins Front Row to talk about casting Cage – and casting the right pig.

The singer-songwriter Moses Sumney has an extraordinary and distinctive voice and his songs challenge traditional ideas about love or identity. At the BBC Proms tomorrow night he’ll be performing songs from his albums Aromanticism and græ in new arrangements with Jules Buckley and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He talks to Front Row about his voice, words and music.

Mike White’s new HBO / Sky Atlantic television comedy drama series The White Lotus is a look at how the other half lives as it follows a group of hotel guests holidaying in a luxurious Hawaiian paradise, starring Jennifer Coolidge, Murray Bartlett, Connie Britton and Natasha Rothwell. In a world which is more deeply divided between the haves and the have nots than ever, how successful is The White Lotus as a satire of inequality?

Inspired by the story of the Zohra orchestra – Afghanistan’s only all-female orchestra – British musician Dan Blackwell composed a new work for them. He got himself to Kabul, to record the musicians playing the piece. The results can be seen in a new documentary, Sisters, that premieres this week at the Chichester International Film Festival. Dan joins Front Row to discuss the making of his film.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

At last, Cinderella has made it to the ball. After postponement, rearrangement, and postponement again because of, first the lockdown, then social distancing requirements, Andrew Lloyd Webber's new musical, Cinderella, opened last night. Emerald Fennell takes a radical approach to the fairytale: in her version Prince Charming is missing, presumed dead; the beauty industry is satirised and the banality of surface allure exposed. Still, there is pazzazz aplenty: big numbers, big frocks and big hair; a leather-clad chorus of dancing hunks; some close-hauled corsetry. What does it add up to? Has it been worth the wait? John Wilson was there, as was critic Sarah Crompton, and they discuss the show and Sarah gives her verdict on the most important live showbiz event of the year.

Award-winning guitarist Sean Shibe has recorded a new album of music that has comforted him over the Pandemic, and puts his own spin on Spanish music that is so often associated with the classical guitar. He explains what he put this selection of music together, and performs Satie live in the studio.

Prano Bailey-Bond's debut film 'Censor' had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. It references and celebrates 'video-nasties' from the 1980s. She explains where the idea came from and why the time period was one she wanted to explore.

We discover more about another finalist for The £100,000 Art Fund MOTY 2021 award. Firstsite in Colchester reached out to help the local community during Covid and created a whole new audience for what it has to offer. We speak with director Sally Shaw.

Presenter: John Wilson

This year's Edinburgh Festival is a smaller affair than normal but it's packed full of delicious cultural goodness. We speak with film director Isaac Julien about Lessons of The Hour- a 10-screen film about the former slave and emancipationist Frederick Douglass who visited Edinburgh many times.

Just These Please is a four-piece comedy group who have had more than 6m views on YouTube for their sketches and whose Edinburgh Fringe show has sold out.

Poet and playwright Hannah Lavery has many works at the festival - Lament for Sheku Bayoh is a play about a young black Scottish man who died in police custody in 2015. She has also co-written Eavesdropping, a guided audio walk around Edinburgh.

Siobhan Miller won her first singing prize at the age of 13 and is the only three-times winner of Scots Singer of the Year. She's playing a gig at the festival with her band and has a new album All Is Not Forgotten, and she plays live for us at The BBC site in Infirmary Street, Edinburgh.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

The Edinburgh Festival is a much more pared-down event this year because of Covid, but despite this there is still plenty on offer.

Comedian Henning Wehn is filling the Edinburgh Corn Exchange and he'll be discussing the challenge of preparing for a festival with all live comedy events cancelled for so many months.

Playwright Frances Poet discusses the world premiere of her unsettling play Still at the Traverse Theatre. Edinburgh-based writer Arusa Qureshi will being us her observations of how the festival city is different this year. And the Orkney four-piece folk band will be performing live from the BBC's outdoor stage.

Presenter Kirsty Lang

Dr Ahmad Sarmast, founder and director of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music tells John Wilson of his fears and hopes for music-making as his country falls under the control of the Taliban.

Some things can only be expressed in song. That’s the idea behind The Song Project at the Royal Court Theatre where five of our foremost female playwrights - E.V. Crowe, Sabrina Mahfouz, Somalia Nonyé Seaton, Stef Smith and Debris Stevenson - collaborate with composer Isobel Waller-Bridge, choreographer Imogen Knight, designer Chloe Lamford and the Dutch singer Wende, who will be performing the songs. These explore the hopes and anxieties women face, diving into the messiness of birth, death, rage, grace, friendship, motherhood, mothers, loss and ageing. So, the whole of life and its end, then. Chloe Lamford and Wende talk to John Wilson about the project and Wende, accompanied by Nils Davidse sings, live, one of the songs.

The Manchester Collective are making their debut at the Proms tomorrow. Founder Adam Szabo explains the ethos behind the group, why music genre shouldn’t get in the way of programming, and bringing little-known composers to light.

Presenter: John Wilson