In the Studio

Irish author Colm Tóibín is among the world’s most celebrated contemporary writers. His works includes novels such as Nora Webster and The Blackwater Lightship, but also journalism, criticism, drama and more. His book Brooklyn was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film starring Saoirse Ronan, and his writing has been translated into over thirty languages.

Colm has explored the experiences of other novelists and creative thinkers in his writing. His recent title, The Magician, traced the life of German writer Thomas Mann, and his book The Master, an international literary sensation, told the story of the novelist Henry James.

Alongside the release of his debut collection of poems, Vinegar Hill, Colm gives fellow Irish writer Helen Cullen an insight into how he works, taking her through his writing process, how he gathers his ideas and his approach to refining his work.

They explore the differences and similarities in techniques of writing prose and poetry, and how influence can be drawn from outside the literary world. Helen discovers what it is like to immerse oneself in the creative of mind of figures such as Henry James, and how it shaped Colm as a writer.

Presenter: Helen Cullen

Siri Hustvedt is best known for her novels ‘What I loved’ and ‘The Summer Without Men’ which were international bestsellers. She has in fact written seven novels, two books of essays, a book of poetry and several works of non-fiction. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages and she has been nominated for many international literary awards. In 2015 she won the Los Angeles Times Book for Fiction. She is married to fellow writer Paul Auster and lives in New York in America.

Reporter and actor Tara Gadomski is hanging out with Siri as she starts writing her next novel, ‘The Haunted Envelope’. This process involves very early starts along with lovely walks in the park. Siri has also been recording regular dispatch voice recordings from her desk as she works. We discover how being afflicted by migraines and the pandemic all play a part in Siri’s creative process.

Presented by: Tara Gadomski

Handel’s Messiah is one of the great Christian works of Easter. Jeff Lloyd Roberts follows the creation of a new production by the Glyndebourne opera company, looking at the challenges of mounting a huge choral piece and touring with it during a time of rising Covid rates.

While most oratorios put the spotlight on the soloists, Handel’s Messiah has the chorus at its heart. We hear from performers in one of the foremost choruses in international opera, as they take on a piece that wholeheartedly showcases its singers in everything from the exhilarating He Trusted in God to the rapt wonder and stillness of Worthy is the Lamb. Conductor Ben Glassberg discusses the challenge of finding a new way to tell the story of Christ’s birth, crucifixion and resurrection in such a well-known and well-loved work.

Image: The Glyndebourne chorus rehearses Handel's Messiah (Credit: Richard Hubert Smith)

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Nostalgia. Sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. But what if this sweet, warm, and fuzzy feeling was exploited by world leaders, and used as a tool to manipulate the masses?

That’s what Afshin Naghouni, a London-based Iranian-born British visual artist, believes has been happening around the world, with increasingly terrifying consequences. Through the rhetoric of the “good old days”, and an insistence on returning to the heyday of a “glorious” past, Afshin believes that some world leaders are tugging on nations’ collective nostalgic heartstrings to further their own agendas, and he explores this in his art.

Reporter Sahar Zand visits Afshin’s studio in West London, to find out how, for his new collection, the artist will paint this “collective nostalgic feeling” for a past we don’t remember correctly or haven’t personally experienced, drawn in our head by some external force. Having had to adapt and relearn how to paint after a life-changing accident, and vowing never to reveal what exactly each piece is depicting, mystery, and the overcoming of adversity, exist alongside imagined nostalgia as vital components in his vivid and evocative artworks.

Reporter/Producer: Sahar Zand

With the forthcoming publication of her debut short story collection, A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times, Meron Hadero takes us inside her process of writing short stories revealing how she creates a new, overarching narrative by presenting them as a collection. Over months of conversation with presenter and producer Sonia Paul, and in separate audio diaries and recordings with others in her life, Meron reflects on the themes she is attracted to as an Ethiopian-American writer and explores what it's like to create the space between Ethiopia and the United States with the turn of the page. She shares the nuts and bolts of publishing such a book - from determining the order of stories to working through edits, to deciding on a book cover along with dedications and acknowledgments - she pulls back the curtain to reveal the detailed thought process behind every decision.

Northern Irish composer Hannah Peel (Mercury Music Prize and Emmy nominee) has come together with the ground-breaking Paraorchestra to create a new album, The Unfolding. For In The Studio, we discover what lies behind Hannah’s creative vision: as thoughts of deep time and our shared roots as human beings in the universe swirled around her mind, she found the genesis of the project. We hear how the idea developed out of Hannah’s early melodic sketches and how it bloomed from there to celebrate Paraorchestra’s progressive approach to what an orchestra should be - mixing analogue, digital and assistive instruments with a unique ensemble of disabled and non-disabled musicians. As the record finally comes out into the world, we discover what it took to record it in morsels of time over three years, in the midst of a global pandemic.

Carlos Acosta was the most acclaimed ballet dancer of his generation, taking starring roles around the world. His journey from the streets of Havana - where he grew up poor, the youngest of 11 children - to becoming principal male dancer of the Royal Ballet in London is the stuff of legend. Now he passes on his experience to the dancers of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, where he is artistic director. Susan Marling joins Carlos as he rehearses a new and challenging production of Don Quixote with the company. How has he made the transition from dancer to director, and how has he kept the life and energy of the company through the long dark months of the pandemic?

Legendary dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp has been creating dances for half a century, as well as for Broadway musicals and Hollywood hits like Amadeus and Hair. Since starting her own company in 1965, Twyla has been expanding our idea of what dance can be by combining a huge variety of movement from jazz, ballet and even boxing into her work. She’s won Emmys and a Tony, and is still working aged 80. Clem Hitchcock joins Twyla as her latest performance, Twyla Now, opens at New York City Centre. Back in 1973, it also staged Twyla’s Deuce Coupe, her revolutionary breakthrough work scored to music by the Beach Boys, which mixed classical and modern dance to become the first ‘crossover’ ballet. For this performance, Twyla is drawing on dances from her mighty back catalogue, some famous, some never seen before. In a rare interview, Twyla chats with Clem Hitchcock about refreshing the dances of her past by collaborating with some of the superstars of American dance today. We hear from two of them: New York City Ballet principal dancer Sara Mearns, and James Gilmer from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. This includes a version of a dance Twyla first choreographed for herself and Mikhail Baryshnikov back in 1992, but this time switching around the gender of the two leads. She discusses the need for inclusivity and diversity in dance companies, and why for this show she was also keen to work with younger emerging dancers she found on the internet. Never one to stand still, Twyla looks back at how the last two years have been surprisingly productive, including choreographing a ‘Zoom ballet’, and reflects on her lifelong commitment to broadening the appeal of ballet to new audiences through evolving a relaxed, looser, more accessible way of moving.

Johan Holmström’s music is heard by millions of people every day but very few would know his name, what he looks like, or be able to give you the title of one of his compositions. That is because Johan is the resident composer and sound designer at King, the makers of the incredibly successful Candy Crush - a social game that has been installed over 1.7 billion times around the globe. Downton Abbey composer, John Lunn, joins Johan and follows every step of his creative process. Together, they discover how creating music for TV and film compares with scoring for social games.

We join wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson and go behind the scenes of Green Planet, a new, hugely ambitious BBC natural history television series which offers a plant’s eye view to our understanding of the world. We discover how Chris embraces the challenges of this series, the creative decisions he makes, and how he uses the latest technologies to capture the sounds produced by plants, as well as the sound world inside and around them.