The American director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall has been nominated for nine Tony awards, winning three times for Broadway productions of Wonderful Town, The Pajama Game and Anything Goes. She was the first woman to complete a trio of achievements - directing a play, directing a musical and choreographing a musical on Broadway.

She also won an Olivier Award for her 2021 production of Anything Goes in London. It was the first big musical to open after numerous Covid lockdowns, and received an ecstatic welcome from audiences and critics alike, hungry to get back into a theatre and enjoy a hugely uplifting show. More recently she has directed Irving Berlin’s Top Hat in Chichester.

Her musical choices include Mozart, Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Duke Ellington.

Dame Rachel de Souza is the Children’s Commissioner for England. She’s the fourth person to take on this role, which was established in 2004 to promote and protect the rights of all children.

Daniel Katz is a renowned art dealer, collector and gallery owner who has very much beaten his own path through the tangled forests of the art world.

Although he left school at the age of 14, his energetic curiosity brought him early success, making a profit of £15 on the first bronze he bought, and discovering something quite unexpected inside a grandfather clock.

Danny is an expert on European sculpture, but has also branched out into new fields, including antiquities, Old Masters, Impressionist paintings and Modern British Art. He’s worked closely with museums, exhibitions and libraries around the world.

Danny's choices include Schubert, Debussy, Sibelius and Bernstein.

Jay Griffiths first wanted to be a writer – an entity she believed to be a “god-like” creature - when she was just four years old and already captivated by words.

She has also written very honestly about her experience of bipolar disorder in her book Tristimania: a Diary of Manic Depression. More recently, she’s reflected on the deep connections we have to animals and their ability to alleviate fear and trauma, under the title How Animals Heal Us.

Jay's music selections include Sibelius, Rodrigo, Vivaldi and Debussy.

Gabriel Zuchtriegel is the director of Pompeii, one of the world’s most important ancient historical sites. It sits at the base of Mount Vesuvius, the still active volcano which erupted in 79AD and buried the city under volcanic ash and pumice, preserving a unique snapshot of life there nearly 2000 years ago.

Gabriel grew up in Germany, where ruins and ancient myths first sparked his interest in our ancient past, and led him to study archaeology. Prior to Pompeii he oversaw Paestum, a site about 60 miles south of Vesuvius, celebrated for its three ancient Greek temples, dating back to about 500 BC.

More recently, he has written a book called The Buried City: Unearthing the Real Pompeii - and new finds continue to be unearthed, as around a third of the site is still buried.

Gabriel's music choices include Schubert, Mozart, Vivaldi and Bach.

The American singer songwriter Suzanne Vega released her first studio album almost exactly 40 years ago – and it soon found an audience, particularly here in the UK where it sold more than 300, 000 copies.

Listeners responded to her understated, acoustic sound and thoughtful lyrics, in songs such as Marlene on the Wall and Luka. Another of her songs, Tom’s Diner, took on a life of its own. It’s been sampled by dozens of artists and one remix became a global hit.

Suzanne recently released her tenth studio album, Flying with Angels, and will be embarking on a major tour with dates in England and Scotland later this year.

Producer: Clare Walker

Hilary Cottam is a writer, innovator and social entrepreneur who wants to find solutions for some of the most intractable problems of our time - from the design of prisons to how we provide care for the elderly and might end long-term unemployment.

The comedian, writer and podcaster Adam Buxton first burst onto our TV screens 30 years ago. He and his friend Joe Cornish created The Adam and Joe Show, which featured pranks, songs and re-enactments of famous films like Titanic and Trainspotting using their childhood stuffed toys.

Along with work on radio and film, an eye for the weird and wonderful quirks of music videos, and a multi-award winning interview podcast, he has also written two memoirs. The first, Ramble Book, included a very poignant account of his father’s final months, when he lived with Adam and his family until his death at the age of 91.

Adam's musical choices include Ravel, Grieg and Thelonious Monk.

Philip Hoare is an award-winning writer whose books often describe the lure of the sea, the strange and beautiful creatures that live in it and the inspiration artists have found in its murky depths.

His book Leviathan won the Samuel Johnson Prize: it drew on his lifelong obsession with whales, which began with the gigantic skeletons in the Natural History Museum and continued with his own encounters with them at sea.

His most recent book, William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love, traces Blake’s enduring influence on numerous poets, writers, film-makers and musicians. He’s also written about Noel Coward, the British socialite Stephen Tennant and the Netley Military Hospital on Spike Island, near Southampton.

His musical choices including Prokofiev, Britten and Copland.

Producer Clare Walker

The theatre director Emma Rice is renowned for her bold stagings of much-loved films and books including Brief Encounter, Wuthering Heights and the Red Shoes.

For twenty years she worked as an actor, director, and eventually artistic director of Kneehigh, an international touring company based in Cornwall, known for its energetic productions with an inventive use of music and puppetry.

In 2016, Emma became artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, the reconstructed Elizabethan theatre on the south bank of the Thames - although her tenure there ended after two years following disagreements with the board.

She has since founded her own touring theatre company, Wise Children, whose recent productions include The Buddha of Suburbia and Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest.

Emma's musical passions include Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Mozart and Bach.