Music Matters Folgen

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.

Tom Service talks to Stephen Johnson about his new book, 'The Eighth: Mahler and the World in 1910', in which he explores the meaning and context of one of the most gigantic and profound symphonies ever written. Music Matters also hears from three UK music institutions, who reveal the financial and artistic challenges they face as they start to plan for life after lockdown. Tom speaks to internet guru Jaron Lenier, too, who explains why COVID-19 is likely to produce profound changes in the way we consume music online. We hear, as well, about recent research by British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow Bettina Varwig, as she describes how audiences’ auditory experience of music in 18th-Century concert halls became a more introspective, private and physical – and how the consequences of this shift during the Enlightenment are still felt to this very day. And we take a look at how new Geospatial information provided by the Ordnance Survey can be used to search the nation’s topography for spaces such as natural amphitheatres that may be suitable for performance in the era of coronavirus.