Front Row

Nine-time Grammy winning record producer and Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin has produced hits for artists including Run DMC, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Johnny Cash. He discusses drawing on his experience for his new book The Creative Act: A Way of Being.

Theatre director Rebecca Frecknall discusses her new production of A Streetcar Named Desire and the nuances that Tennessee Williams’s writing has for contemporary audiences.

Syrian virtuoso Clarinetist Kinan Azmeh discusses the influence of his homeland, and combining performance, composition and improvisation, and plays live in the Front Row studio.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

The film critic Clarisse Loughrey and literary editor Sam Leith join Tom Sutcliffe live in the studio to review the new HBO series The Last of Us, based on the critically acclaimed video game, and the film Enys Men, a Cornish folk horror by Mark Jenkin, the BAFTA winning director of BAIT.

In the most recent in an occasional series of interviews about the artistic influence of mentors, the musician and composer Nitin Sawhney discusses his relationship with his mentor, the sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar.

Ahead of next week's announcement of the winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, Victoria Adukwei Bulley reads her poem The Ultra-Black Fish from her shortlisted collection Quiet.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Picture: Pedro Pascal as Joel & Bella Ramsey as Ellie HBO / Warner Media© 2022 Home Box Office, Inc.

Tár is a psychological drama about an imaginary conductor, Lydia Tár, which has already made waves both for its central performance by Cate Blanchett and for its striking, sometimes dreamlike story about the abuses of power. It is tipped for awards and Cate Blanchett has already won the Golden Globe for her performance. The writer and director, Todd Field, joins Front Row.

The news that the celebrated opera company Glyndebourne has cancelled its national tour for 2023, due to the recent cut to its Arts Council funding, was received as the latest bombshell on the UK’s opera landscape. Glyndebourne’s artistic director, Stephen Langridge, and the music writer and critic Norman Lebrecht discuss the company’s decision and explore what kind of support and vision opera in the UK needs.

Jyoti Patel on winning musician Stormzy's Merky Books New Writer’s Prize in 2021 and now making her debut as novelist with her book, The Things We Have Lost.

Continuing Front Row's look at the shortlist for this year's TS Eliot Prize For Poetry, today Anthony Joseph reads from his collection Sonnets For Albert – poems exploring being the Trinidad-born son of a mostly-absent father. The poem is called El Socorro.

Presenter: Shahidha Bari

Main Image Credit: Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár - Universal

Designer Steven Zapata and artist Anna Ridler discuss whether AI art poses a threat to artists and designers.

Imagine reading more than 200 new books of poetry. That was the task faced by the judges of the T S Eliot Prize. Jean Sprackland and fellow judge Roger Robinson talk to Tom Sutcliffe about their experience and what they learned about the art of poetry today.

It’s the time of year when lovers of orchards, apples and cider gather to bless and encourage their trees. The tradition of wassailing is ancient, and modern too. Jim Causley from Whimple, Dartmoor, sings wassails old and new, and with artist Simon Pope talk about their project ‘Here’s to Thee’.

And in the latest of the poems shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize, Jemma Borg read her poem Marsh Thistle from her collection Wilder.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

The Light in the Hall, a crime drama starring Joanna Scanlan, has launched on Channel 4 following its previous incarnation in Welsh on S4C, as Y Golau. Director Andy Newbery joins Shahidha to discuss directing a bilingual ‘back to back’ TV production with a single cast and crew.

Photographer Mark Power discusses his seminal book The Shipping Forecast, which has been re-released with over 100 previously unseen photographs.

And the writer Nell Zink, known for her dark humour, discusses her latest novel, Avalon, which focuses on the life of the indefatigable teenager, Bran, who grows up in the pie-less version of America and embarks on a contradictory love affair.

Presenter: Shahidha Bari

Image: Joanna Scanlan as Sharon Roberts in TV drama The Light in the Hall on Channel 4/ Y Golau on S4C.

John Preston, the Costa Award-winning biographer of media tycoon Robert Maxwell, makes his screenwriting debut with a drama about another infamous figure of the 1970s, the MP John Stonehouse. He joins Tom Sutcliffe to discuss the line between fact and fiction in dramatising the story of the MP who faked his own death.

Reviewers Amon Warmann and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh give their verdicts on two major films out this week: Till, the story of Emmett Till’s mother Mamie’s fight for justice after her son was lynched in 1955, featuring a powerful performance by Danielle Deadwyler; and Empire of Light, written and directed by Sam Mendes. Set in a seaside town cinema in the 70s it stars Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward, and is inspired in part by Mendes’ mother’s experiences.

And James Conor Patterson reads his poem “london mixtape” from his debut collection “bandit country”, which has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Poetry Prize. Front Row is featuring each of the 10 poets shortlisted and we’ll hear from the winner when they’re announced on Tuesday 17th January.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

(Till picture credit: Lynsey Weatherspoon / Orion Pictures)

The English composer William Byrd died 400 years ago. To mark this the acclaimed vocal ensemble Stile Antico is about to release an album of his music. Five of the twelve members of the ensemble come to the Front Row studio to sing and talk about Byrd's extraordinary and moving music.

The author and founder of the Women's Prize for Fiction Kate Mosse and actor Julie T Wallace, who played Ruth in the BBC TV production of The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, join Front Row to mark the work of writer Fay Weldon, whose death was announced today.

Veteran director John Strickland talks about filming The Rig, a new 6-part big budget Amazon Prime eco-thriller set on an oil rig cut off from all communication in the North Sea. An ensemble cast of familiar faces from Line of Duty, Game of Thrones and Schitt's Creek contend with a mysterious deep-sea entity.

And Zaffar Kunial reads his poem Brontë Taxis from his TS Eliot Prize-nominated collection England's Green.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Photograph of Stile Antico credit: Kaupo Kikkas

Tom Hanks talks about playing a curmudgeonly older man whose life changes when a young family moves in next door in his latest film, A Man Called Otto.

The London Ticket Bank – promising tens of thousands of theatre and music tickets across the capital to those most impacted by the cost-of-living crisis. Samira is joined by Co-Founder Chris Sonnex to explain the new initiative from the Cultural Philanthropy Foundation and Cardboard Citizens, in partnership with The Barbican, Roundhouse, and The National, Almeida, Bush, Gate, and Tara Theatres.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Front Row visits Leeds as the city prepares to celebrate culture throughout 2023.

Following Brexit, Leeds’ bid for European Capital of Culture was ruled ineligible. Sharon Watson, Principal of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, reflects on the initial disappointment and the decision to press ahead anyway, and creating a new dance work for The Awakening - the opening event of Leeds 2023 Year of Culture.

The Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage joins his LYR bandmates, singer-songwriter Richard Walters and instrumentalist Patrick Pearson, to perform two songs ahead of headlining at The Awakening.

Kully Thiarai, Creative Director of Leeds 2023, explains why she thinks the city’s decision to press ahead with a year-long celebration of culture even after Brussels said no, has been transformative.

Theatre maker Alan Lyddiard is gathering 1001 stories from those aged 60 and over for a takeover event at Leeds Playhouse this spring. He reveals why he feels Leeds was the perfect city for this project.

The poet Khadijah Ibrahiim will be performing at The Awakening but for her 2023 is not just about Leeds’ cultural celebrations, it also marks the 20th anniversary of the creative writing organisation for teenagers, Leeds Young Authors, that she founded in 2003. She concludes tonight’s programme, with her poem, Roots Runnin II.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

Image credit (c) Lorne Campbell, Guzelian for LEEDS 2023

Critics Tim Robey and Rhianna Dhillon join Front Row to watch the murder-mystery gothic horror film The Pale Blue Eye, starring Christian Bale, Gillian Anderson and Harry Melling, as Edgar Allan Poe, and the return of Happy Valley starring Sarah Lancashire and written by Sally Wainwright for what will be its final series.

After the Windsor Castle fire in 1992, the artist Alexander Creswell was commissioned by the Queen to initially chart the destruction and five years later to capture the restoration of the castle. It was the only series of paintings that the Queen ever commissioned. Alexander Creswell reflects on the commission that led to him creating twenty-one watercolour paintings. The series is not currently on public display, but can be viewed on the Royal Collection Trust website.

Picture credit of Harry Melling and Lucy Boynton in The Pale Blue Eye: Scott Garfield/Netflix © 2022

Presenter: Samira Ahmed