Tom Service talks to virtuoso vocalist Bobby McFerrin about the latest chapter in his musical life and his ceaseless creativity. He’s been inspiring audiences to make music with him during concerts for decades, and now, following a Parkinson’s diagnosis, he is taking this further as he starts to perform live again. Bobby reflects on his early solo shows, the improvisation technique ‘circle singing’ which he developed in the 1980s and whether music can really bring peace to the world.

Folk musician Mari Kalkun comes to the studio with her kannel, a traditional Estonian plucked string instrument with a long history which plays a central role in much of her music. Mari talks to Tom about her personal and artistic response to the war in Ukraine and how musical activism is now an essential part of her role as an artist.

We visit English National Opera to find out more about a new production of Poul Ruders’s The Handmaid's Tale, based on Margaret Atwood’s seminal novel. Tom is joined by director Annilese Miskimmon, mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey who sings Offred and soprano Emma Bell who sings Aunt Lydia, to explore how the story is being brought to life on stage and why it is a shattering story of our times.

Plus conductor and harpsichordist Rinaldo Alessandrini tells us about the irresistible theatrical energy of Vivaldi's 'L'estro armonico' concertos from 1711 and why placing them alongside reworkings by JS Bach on his new recording with his ensemble Concerto Italiano offers a new perspective and a thrilling ride.

Image: © Carol Friedman

Ahead of a new production of Britten's Peter Grimes at the Royal Opera House, Sara Mohr-Pietsch hears from members of the creative team bringing this compelling tale of an outsider to life, in a post-pandemic, 21st-century context.

The composer Anna Clyne also talks to Sara about her latest work, including a Handel-inspired piece to be premiered later this month by the Academy of Ancient Music and the National Youth Choir of Great Britain.

As the situation in Ukraine continues, Sara looks talks to Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, about the company's parting of ways with Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, and to conductor Thomas Sanderling about the decision to leave his post at the Novosibirsk Philharmonic Orchestra, asking the question of how one effectively balances art and politics.

And the phenomenally successful Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi joins Sara from his home studio in the Italian Alps, where the pandemic allowed a break in his usual hectic schedule to reappraise his creative process.

Producer: Sam Hickling

Image: Ludovico Einaudi (c) Duet Postscriptum

As the Barbican Centre in London celebrates its 40th anniversary, Tom Service asks if the future of music venues and cultural hotspots is going big or small, and how should they engage with the communities around them. We talk to the Barbican’s Artistic Director Will Gompertz about the challenges they face with diversity and inclusion, and put those same questions to two other different sized arts centres – the CCA in Glasgow and the ARC in Stockport – in order to find out how arts centres can best serve the communities they are rooted in.

Tom takes a trip to The Holbeck in Leeds where, during the pandemic, Alan Lane’s ground breaking Slung Low Theatre company operated the venue as a food bank, serving the local community with a mission to ‘provide the best cultural life for the people of Holbeck’. Slung Low’s work has been an inspiration for Kate Whitley, the composer and founder of the Multi-Story Orchestra; she tells us how in making the connections between an arts organisation and the communities where they work, there are resonances for the whole of classical music culture.

Food and Music are undoubtedly two things that bring people together. We talk to author Pierpaolo Polzonetti about the importance of food in opera with reference to his new book, ‘Feasting and Fasting in Opera - From Renaissance Banquets to the Callas Diet’, and to mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston about her online resource and cookbook, ‘Notes from Musician’s Kitchens’. Plus, we find out what she really eats on stage…

And we talk to conductor Giovanni Antonini about his 'Haydn 2032' project, in which he aims to record all 107 Haydn symphonies by 2032, and immerse ourselves in the world of Haydn’s life-affirming music.

Producer: Martin Webb

Image: © Simon Fowler

The Italian pianist Beatrice Rana joins Tom Service to discuss her immersion in Beethoven’s late piano sonatas during Italy’s lockdown, and her relationship with one of the most famous works in the canon – the composer’s ‘Emperor’ concerto. She reflects on how the circumstances of Chopin’s life are articulated in his Scherzi, and on thanking audiences for being part of performances.

With Robert Nathaniel Dett’s Oratorio, The Ordering of Moses, receiving its first outing in the UK with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus on Wednesday, some 85 years after the live broadcast of its premiere at Carnegie Hall, Music Matters is joined by the conductor Joshua Weilerstein, soprano Nadine Benjamin and researcher, horn player, and conductor Dwight Pile-Gray to explore what Dett’s music can tell us today.

As Lindisfarne Castle welcomes back visitors after its winter recess, we speak to the sound artist Paul Rooney and cellist Gyða Valtýsdóttir about their collaboration on a new project, Song (After Nature) – a contemporary soundscape installation which will be heard throughout parts of the 16th-century stronghold. They reveal how the calls of Lindisfarne’s resident grey seals provide the creative impetus for their work. We hear, too, from the scholar Hannah E. Collins about a frequent guest at the castle, Guilhermina Suggia, and the role the cellist played as a trailblazer for female performers in the early 20th century as well as the legacy she left.

And, we speak to the pianist Lucy Parham and author Gillian Opstad, ahead of the launch of her new book Emma and Claude Debussy – The Biography of a Relationship, and learn more about the composer’s marriage to one of the titans of early 20th-century Parisian life, Emma Bardac, and the role she played in supporting his creative output.

Sara Mohr-Pietsch talks to Ruth Slenczynska, the last living pupil of Rachmaninoff, from her home in Pennsylvania ahead of releasing a brand new solo piano album entitled My Life in Music. She reminisces about her childhood as a prodigy, connecting with her audiences, and performing still in her ninth decade.

The writer, musician and composer Richard Thomas, and contemporary BAFTA and multi award-winning artist, photographer and filmmaker Alison Jackson, join Sara to discuss their new collaboration at the Birmingham Rep – The Covid Variations: A Piano Drama – which takes the form of a unique film-and-concert-in-one depicting everyone from Donald Trump to the Royal Family, and provides an imaginary glimpse into the lived experience of celebrities during the pandemic.

As Mali's military leaders expel the French ambassador for comments made by the French foreign minister about the transitional government, ethnomusicologist Lucy Duran and the BBC’s reporter Lalla Sy explain more about the fragile situation inside the former French colony following the imposition of sanctions by the Economic Community of West African States. We hear, too, from Malian musicians including the singer and guitarist Vieux Farka Touré, the balafon virtuoso Fodé Lassana Diabaté, and kora player Ballaké Sissoko, as they describe how years of civil war, military coups, and insurgencies by Islamist militants are collectively impacting music making in the country.

And, as we celebrate the centenary of the publishing of James Joyce’s modernist masterpiece, Ulysses, scholar Katherine O’Callaghan explains the musical references which litter the work and how music informs Joyce’s language, while the composer Betsy Jolas remembers accompanying James Joyce at the piano as he sang.