Tom Service talks to soprano, Claire Booth about a filmed production for Welsh National Opera of Poulenc’s La voix humaine. The monodrama was written in 1958 but the themes of isolation and lost connectivity are equally relevant today.

As Radio 3 marks a decade of New Generation Thinkers, Dr Daisy Fancourt describes how music and the arts are necessary for mental and physical health. Dr Joseph Sonnabend, one of the leading doctors during the early years of the AIDS pandemic, talks to Tom about those times in New York as well has his life as a composer and his love of music by Alban Berg.

Suzi Digby, Artistic Director & Founder of ORA Singers talks about what the future holds for our professional choirs and composers. And, Judith Webster, Chief Executive of Music for Youth, explains how young people are making innovative choices about how to celebrate music-making both live and online.

Producer: Marie-Claire Doris

Kate Molleson talks to folk singer songwriter Sam Amidon about his new album and breathing new life into his American folk heritage. We hear from the author Anne Searcy, too, about her new book on the role ballet played in US-Soviet Cold War relations. And Kate is joined by Allegra Kent, one of the prima ballerinas of New York City Ballet who toured to the USSR at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Aidan Moffat, vocalist and one half of the band Arab Strap, and songwriter Crispin Hunt, chair of the Ivors Academy, join Kate to discuss the economic impact of music streaming.

This week Tom Service focuses on freelance musicians. He hears from the violinist Daniel Hope about the collaborative Hope@Home concert series featuring performances with young freelance musicians from his own living room in Berlin, which have been broadcast by the German/French ARTE TV network since the start of the pandemic and have reached a staggering 8-million viewers. The composer and author Julian Anderson speaks to Tom about his life in music - from his very first symphony, to an opera specially commissioned for a socially distanced world, Eight songs from isolation, as well as his new book of conversations with the scholar and critic Christopher Dingle, Dialogues on Culture, Composing and Listening. The trumpeter Chris Cotter talks to Music Matters about the ongoing economic and artistic challenges facing freelance musicians as they supplement their income by taking on other jobs. Horace Trubridge of the Musicians' Union talks to Tom about access to income support schemes, and we hear too from folk musician Anna Massie who explains how she and her peers are trying to find new ways of connecting with their audiences, while the jazz guitarist Shirley Tetteh describes what has happened to her life as a session musician since the start of the first lockdown.

Tom Service asks what climate change means for classical music, and explores how cultural organisations, practitioners and institutions can respond to looming environmental challenges. We speak with the American composer, John Luther Adams, as he looks out over a freak wintry landscape of cactuses covered by snow in the Chihuahaun desert. He shares his thoughts about humanity’s relationship with the planet, his faith in future generations, and a lifetime’s work in the service of music. George Kamiya, Energy Analyst at the International Energy Agency, and the researcher and musicologist Kyle Devine, join Tom to discuss the environmental costs to how we consume music digitally. We hear, too, from the CEO and founder of Julie’s Bicycle, a charity which advises the creative industry about how to reduce its carbon footprint, and the leader of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Margaret Faultless, as they consider the environmental consequences of the classical music industry’s activity and what they’ve learned from different ways of working. And, the director Stephen Langridge shares how he’s put sustainability at the heart of the production effort behind Gothenburg Opera’s Ring cycle. Plus there’s another instalment of our ‘Musicians in our Time’ series with the members of the Castalian Quartet.

Kate Molleson looks at how music venues and institutions across the world are responding creatively to the programming and performance challenges of COVID-19. Kate talks to Deborah Borda, Chief Executive of the New York Philharmonic. The orchestra has cancelled all scheduled concerts until June 2021 but its musicians have been reaching every corner of the city by performing music on the back of a truck as part of their new live concert format, NY Phil Bandwagon. Composer and vocalist Jennifer Walshe has recently been elected into Aosdána, the affiliation of creative artists in Ireland whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts. Jennifer talks to Kate about her recent project involving artificial intelligence and how she is gathering source material during these uncertain times. The prize winning novelist and music journalist, Sean Michaels shares his thoughts on how Montreal’s vibrant venues and music makers have become silent again. We hear from Chief Executive of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Marcelo Lopes and composer, João Ripper about how they have been welcoming back live audiences and continuing to premiere new works. Finally in Kenya, Elizabeth Njoroge, Founder and Director of the Art of Music Foundation, she talks about her music education and social project, Ghetto Classics.

Tom Service hears from Ray Chen about the online videos he’s created during lockdown, which have attracted hundreds of thousands of followers, and Ray compares his ten million dollar Stradivarius with a $69 violin. We speak to the writer Stuart Clark about the ancient Greek theory that linked music with the stars, and his new book, Beneath the Night: How the Stars Have Shaped the History of Humankind. And, ahead of his performance as part of this autumn’s “Live from the Barbican” series, Orkney composer Erland Cooper reflects on the influence, in his music, of the islands' landscape and people. We also mark the centenary of the death of composer Max Bruch, with contributions from critic Wendy Thompson and violinists Tasmin Little, Elena Urioste and Jack Liebeck.

Kate Molleson speaks to the Canadian soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan about a new scheme to help support young artists share the stage with the world’s leading soloists, and grant young professional conductors opportunities to lead an orchestra during rehearsals. We also hear another instalment from our ‘Musicians in our time’ series, and are joined this week by guitarist Sean Shibe who shares his reflections about the impact of the pandemic on his life plans, the way he plays, and why he’s choosing alternative repertoire. The rock critic Paul Morley, who made his reputation in the 1970s and 1980s writing about Manchester punk, post-punk and New Pop, tells Kate what happened when he set out to rewrite the entire history of classical music. And Music Matters joins the sitar player Baluji Shrivastav and musicians from his Inner Vision Orchestra - the UK’s only professional ensemble of blind and visually impaired musicians – who describe how the mechanics of hearing and their experiences of making music have changed during lockdown.

Tom Service catches up with viola player Lawrence Power to talk about his filmed series of Lockdown Commissions from major composers, and his imaginatively re-worked West Wycombe Chamber Music Festival in Buckinghamshire. The newly installed Artistic Director of English National Opera, Annilese Miskimmon, revels in the return of live opera with ENO's new drive-in production of La boheme from the car park of Alexandra Palace in North London, and reveals her vision for the company's future. To mark National Alzheimer's Day on Monday, Tom talks to Dr Sylvain Moreno, one of the world’s leading researchers on how music can positively affect the brain, and to front line workers with people suffering from dementia - Camilla Vickers and soprano Francesca Lanza from Health:Pitch, and Rebecca Seymour from Celebrating Age Wiltshire. And Music Matters' Musicians in Our Time series, following leading musicians as they face the challenges of their lives and remake the musical world over the course of the next year, continues with flautist Jane Mitchell of the Aurora Orchestra, recent recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Salomon Prize.

Photo Credit: Jessie Rodger

Radio 3’s flagship magazine programme Music Matters returns this Saturday as Tom Service surveys the developments that have occurred in the musical world during an unprecedented summer period blighted by COVID-19. Discussing the significance of local performance, the role cities play in creating cultural energy, how music is serving audiences in both the community and online, and how freelance musicians might continue to support themselves as government support schemes are wound down, Tom is joined by the ISM’s Deborah Annett, Manchester Camerata’s Bob Riley, and the economist Gerard Lyons. We visit the organist and pianist James McVinnie and London gallerist and founder of Bold Tendencies, Hannah Barry, during rehearsals for their public concert series at Peckham’s Multi-Story Car Par, to see how living musical culture is returning in an of era social distancing. And the soprano Mary Bevan tells Tom how she created opportunities for performers to make live music outside a church tower in Hornsey. He also hears from the classical music critic Fiona Maddocks, and speaks to programmer, curator & producer, Toks Dada, about how the industry needs to adapt and innovate in order to survive.

Kate Molleson hosts an online panel discussion on issues relating to race and equality within the classical music industry with contributions from performers, composers, artistic leaders and programmers. The panel considers past histories and looks to the future through the lenses of education, economics and programming and deliberates on the current impact Covid-19 is having on diversity within the arts. Kate Molleson is joined by Founder, Artistic and Executive Director of the Chineke! Foundation, Chi-chi Nwanoku; experimental vocalist, movement artist and composer, Elaine Mitchener; composer and Professor of American Music at Columbia University, George E. Lewis; Chair of UK Music Diversity Taskforce, Ammo Talwar; and Head of Music at Manchester International Festival, Jane Beese; with contributions from writer, Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason; Founder and Artistic Director of plainsightSOUND, Uchenna Ngwe and composer, Adolphus Hailstork.