Countertenor Christopher Robson reflects on his life in music - from playing in a Salvation Army band, via the stage of the Coliseum singing Handel, to working with Damon Albarn.

Christopher Robson found his voice by chance during a singing lesson as a teenager. Up to that point he had proved himself a musical child, playing cornet in a Salvation Army band and singing during services, sometimes reluctantly and often with his brother Nigel. But from the moment he discovered falsetto - the ability to soar above the usual range of the male voice - his ambitions led in a different direction. What followed resembles, at times, the life of a rock star rather than an opera singer.

In this intimate portrait, recorded at the London Coliseum, Christopher looks back on his rocky route into the music business, roles in iconic productions, such as Nicholas Hytner's Xerxes, his life in Germany and collaborating with Damon Albarn on his opera Dr Dee.

Produced by Alan Hall

An intimate portrait of the songwriter, singer and frontman of the new wave rock band XTC, Andy Partridge.

Brought up on a council estate in Swindon, Andy Partridge's escape from the poverty of his working class upbringing followed a classic path - art and music. At 15, he enrolled in what he calls the 'art floor' of the local college - Swindon didn't boast an actual art college. Then, he discovered the magnetic power of carrying around his Dad's old guitar. He didn't even have to play it to find himself the centre of attention.

In the years that followed - and in the wake of the punk explosion - he tasted celebrity and success with his band XTC. His curious vocal style and angular compositions were distinctive and influential. XTC built a cult status with songs such as Making Plans for Nigel and Senses Working Overtime, as well as albums including the acclaimed Skylarking.

But Swindon didn't lose Andy for long, despite the lure of London and New York. He lives there still, now with his American partner. And he's still writing songs - including for the recent album by the reformed Monkees.

In this programme, he talks about the trajectory of his career and the 'art blood' that has consistently flowed through his veins.

Produced by Alan Hall

An intimate portrait of the iconic but elusive English folksinger Annie Briggs.

Annie Briggs was a leading figure in the English folk revival of the early 1960s, inspiring Bert Jansch (famously, in Blackwater Side), Sandy Denny, The Watersons and many more. But she was a restless spirit, travelling through the British Isles and Ireland, finding songs and living close to the earth.

As Sandy Denny depicted her in The Pond and the Stream:

And so she remains, now a grandmother living by the water in the west of Scotland. She's always resolutely resisted celebrity and commercial success, withdrawing from the folk scene in the early 1970s, but her legacy - her voice and her attitude - continue to inspire and to carry a link to life as it was once lived in 'the imagined village'.

Annie talks to Alan Hall about childhood holidays singing along with the waves, writing songs while living on a beach in west Ireland, her garden and the wildlife that she shares it with, and the ballad tradition she discovered as a teenager and that she 'belongs to'.

Producer: Alan Hall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in September 2016.

The voice of Marta Sebestyen is closely associated with the folk traditions of Hungary and its neighbouring regions.

Through her work with the band Muzsikas, she helped revive the cultural phenomenon of Tanchaz, dance house, which preserved music and dance traditions and, during the Soviet era, provided a beacon for national identity - perhaps most vividly in the dissenters' song The Unwelcome Guest.

Her mother had studied with the folklorist and composer Zoltan Kodaly and Marta inherited her passion for music and village culture, collecting and recording songs from across the Balkans, some of which have found their way onto the soundtracks of films, such as The English Patient and Only Yesterday.

Marta talks about her relationship to the music of her homeland, its political connotations and the quality of the voices of village singers she's most admired.

Producers: Simon Broughton and Alan Hall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in September 2014.

A portrait of the English lyric tenor Ian Partridge, in his own words and recordings.

It's not difficult to identify something classically, characteristically English about the lyric tenor Ian Partridge - his reticence and modesty, his boy chorister background and acclaimed performances of composers such as Roger Quilter, Benjamin Britten and Prince Albert.

He still lives in the same part of south London where he was born in 1938 and he spent over 50 years in a musical partnership with his sister, the pianist Jennifer Partridge. But the refined, passionate quality of Ian's voice has been a passport into other worlds - touring internationally, collaborating with celebrated composers and recording definitive interpretations of, for example, Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin, Schumann's Dichterliebe and Ralph Vaughan Williams' On Wenlock Edge.

Ian reflects on a lifetime in music that began lying under the family piano as his mother played popular songs of the 1930s and 40s and led ultimately to being appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Producer: Alan Hall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in September 2016.

Elly Stone - a modest 87 year old New Yorker ("born and dragged up"), whose sublime voice will forever be associated with the songs of Belgian chanteur Jacques Brel - talks about her life in music.

In My Childhood, Song for Old Lovers, The Old Folks and Carousel she brings a new perspective to Brel's familiar emotional intensity and piercing social commentary.

20 years after her stage retirement, she offers a rare insight into her life and what music has meant to her - in a quiet New York studio, out on the streets of her bustling city and at Sardi's, the famous theatre restaurant.

Running through Elly's own story - from troubled childhood, through Broadway success, to marriage, motherhood and mid-life epiphany - there's a musical counterpoint that can be traced in the songs she famously made her own in the musical revue Jacques Brel's Alive and Well and Living in Paris.

Producer: Alan Hall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in December 2014