Front Row

Jacob Collier has won a Grammy Award for each of his first four albums. In fact, he has five Grammys altogether. He’s back home in London after his recent UK tour and has just brought out a new single, Never Gonna Be Alone. Jacob and his musical collaborators Lizzy McAlpine and Victoria Canal perform the song live in the Front Row studio.Following the attack on Sir Salman Rushdie at the weekend, the writer, human rights activist and PEN International president, Burhan Sönmez, considers the threats faced by writers across the world, from individuals on social media to imprisonment and torture by the state.15th August 2022 is the 75th anniversary of the Partition of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan. We speak to director Abdul Shayek and writer Ishy Din about their play, Silence, which is adapted from Kavita Puri’s book Partition Voices: Untold British Stories, about how they dramatise the real-life stories of those who witnessed this brutal moment in history.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Jero

Live from Edinburgh, with a review of Alan Cumming's one man show, Burn, which sets out to update the biscuit-tin image of Robert Burns. Plus Counting & Cracking - the epic, multilingual life journey of four generations, from Sri Lanka to Australia. To review the Edinburgh International Festival performances, Kate Molleson is joined by Arusa Qureshi, writer and editor of Fest Magazine, and Alan Bissett, playwright, novelist and performer.Plus we speak to Scottish film director Charlotte Wells about her critically acclaimed new film Aftersun, as she returns to her home town to open this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival.Presenter: Kate Molleson Producer: Emma WallacePhoto: Burn - Alan Cumming; picture credit - Gian Andrea di Stefano

Both journalist Charlotte Higgins and playwright David Greig are fascinated by the Roman occupation of Britain. Higgins’s book Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain, an account of her travels to the Roman remains scattered about Britain, is really about how we today relate to Roman Britain. It seems an unlikely subject for a play but Greig has adapted it for the stage and they both talk to Samira Ahmed about the project. Did the Romans bring civilisation to these islands? Were they violent imperialists? Did British history really begin once they had left? And what of the society that was here already when the Romans arrived?Front Row celebrates the life of author and illustrator Raymond Briggs who has died aged 88. He became famous for his books The Snowman, Father Christmas, Fungus The Bogeyman and his parable of nuclear war When The Wind Blows – all of which were also made into films or TV programmes.American documentary maker Immy Humes has spent the last five years mining the archives for photograp

Kate Molleson and guests live from Edinburgh Festival. Comedian and impressionist Matt Forde talks about capturing the essence of political figures in his show Clowns To The Left Of Me, Jokers To The Right.Mezzo Soprano Anne Sofie von Otter performs songs by Rufus Wainwright and Franz Schubert on the eve of her Edinburgh International Festival concert.Playwright Uma Nada-Rajah on her topical new farce for the National Theatre of Scotland. Exodus is about the race for political leadership and immigration policy. International festival director Fergus Linehan and Chief Executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society Shona McCarthy swap notes on innovation, survival and legacy for one of the world's biggest arts festivals. Presenter: Kate Molleson Producer: Nicki PaxmanPhoto: the cast of Exodus. Picture credit: Brian Hartley

Nope is the latest film from Oscar-winning writer-director Jordan Peele, whose breakthrough was the critically acclaimed 2017 horror Get Out. Tom Sutcliffe speaks to Jordan about reinventing genre- from black horror to sci-fi-western- and examining the exploitation of black talent in Hollywood's history.When the trombonist Peter Moore plays at the Proms next Tuesday it will be the first time that the trombone has featured as a solo instrument at the Proms in twenty years. The former Young Musician of the Year and now Professor of Trombone at the Guildhall School of Music performs live in the studio.Ari Folman, director of the Oscar-nominated film Waltz with Bashir, has a new animated movie coming out this month. Where Is Anne Frank is based on the diary written by Jewish teenager Anne Frank, while she and her family lived in hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam during World War Two. Film critic Tara Judah joins Tom to review the film for Front Row.Jan Patience, visual art columnist for the Sunday Post, has been

Tom Sutcliffe and guest reviewers Bidisha and Amon Warmann discuss Bullet Train, starring Brad Pitt. It's a vivid mixture of comedy and violence from director David Leitch, and is based on a thriller by Japanese author, Kōtarō Isaka. We also discuss Mohsin Hamid's latest novel, The Last White Man - a fable about what happens when white people's skin begins to turn brown. Conductor Semyon Bychkov conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Proms in a programme of a programme of Czech and Russian music. He left the USSR for the USA in 1975 and is currently Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Czech Philharmonic. He talks music and politics too - he's spoken out and taken part in protests against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but has also criticised the dropping of Russian works from concerts around the world. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Paul Waters

Huw Stephens reports from the National Eisteddfod of Wales in Tregaron, Ceredigion, talking to Archdruid Myrddin ap Dafydd, winner of this year’s Novel Prize Meinir Pierce Jones, and folk singer Owen Shiers. In 1965 the jury recommended that the Pulitzer Prize for Music should be awarded to the jazz composer and band-leader Duke Ellington. But he did not receive the honour. The music historian Ted Gioia has started a petition calling for him to receive it posthumously now. Carolina Eyck brings the eight seasons of Lapland’s Sami people to the Proms, courtesy of a concerto written for her and her instrument - the theremin. She talks to Shahidha about the joy of playing a musical instrument that has fascinated audiences since its creation just over a century ago and that she plays with just the movement of her hands in the air.Presenter: Shahidha Bari Producer: Julian MayImage: The National Eisteddfod of Wales Photographer credit: Alun Gaffey

Disabled-access ticket booking – for concerts, comedy clubs, theatre, festivals, and more. Carolyn Atkinson reports on problems with new initiatives to make access to the arts much easier for disabled people: the big delays to the National Arts Access Card, and inconsistencies in purchasing ‘companion’ tickets.Will Ashon is a novelist and non-fiction writer whose latest book, The Passengers, is a compilation of voices he recorded with 180 people he came across through chance and random methods – voices who share their hopes, fears and experiences that shaped their lives. Will tells Tom Sutcliffe what the combination of thoughts and tales say about Britain today. Artists Jane Darke and Andrew Tebbs were inspired by the Marianne North Gallery at Kew - in which the walls are covered with North’s natural history paintings made on her travels around the world. They created something similar, looking at the plants insects and animals of a single small parish in Cornwall, St Eval, where Jane lives. The 100 paintings

Beyoncé's Renaissance: we discuss Beyoncé's house and disco inspired new album – her first solo material in six years - and her huge significance as an artist and cultural icon. Nick is joined by Jacqueline Springer – curator, music journalist and lecturer- and by the writer and editor Tara Joshi.The Arctic is Don Paterson’s new collection of poems. The title refers not to the polar region but the third worst bar in Dundee, the resort of survivors of various apocalypses. Other poets are a presence, too, in Paterson’s poems ‘after’ Gabriela Mistral, Montale and Cavafy. Nick Ahad interviews Don Paterson about this poetic cornucopia.David Byrne is the artistic director and chief executive of London’s New Diorama, the Stage newspaper’s Fringe Theatre of the Year. He joins Nick to explain his decision to present no public programme for the rest of the year.Free-for-All is a programme that does what it says on the tin – all artworks on the walls of the Touchstones Gallery have been made by people from Rochdale. Art

Panah Panahi is the son of acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi. Panah's film Hit the Road is a road movie with a difference as a family travel through Iran without acknowledging the real purpose of their trip. It's reviewed by Diane Roberts and Leila Latif. They've also been reading Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra, a novel set in wartime Hollywood where a new arrival is trying to escape her past.As the newly formed Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra prepares to perform at the BBC Proms on Sunday, Tom talks to conductor and founder Keri-Lynn Wilson and double-bass player Nazarii Stets, who has recently been allowed to leave Ukraine to join the orchestra’s world tour. And Matthew Sweet joins Front Row to mark the passing of Bernard Cribbins, the much-loved and admired actor and comedian famous for Jackanory, The Railway Children and Dr Who.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Kirsty McQuire

Sister Act the Musical is returning to the London stage, after two years of Covid delays and thirty years after the much loved Whoopi Goldberg film. Tom Sutcliffe met the stars of the new Hammersmith Apollo production, Beverley Knight who plays singer on the run Deloris and Jennifer Saunders who takes on the role of Mother Superior, to discuss mixing secular and sacred musical traditions with comedy and choreography. Curve Theatre, Leicester, has commissioned a series of plays called Finding Home to mark 50 years since the Ugandan Asian exodus initiated by the then President Idi Amin. Many of those who fled came to family and contacts in Leicester. Reporter Geeta Pendse talks to some of the writers and performers and visits Leicester Museum to hear the stories of what happened in August 1972. Story Trails is a new project that uses virtual reality to reveal hidden local histories in fifteen places across the UK. Film maker David Olusoga, who is the project’s creative director, explains how the UK’s larges

The Mercury Music and Booker Prize lists - we discuss the albums and books nominated this year for these two major prizes. We're joined by writer and critic Alex Clark, and Ludovico Hunter Tilney, music journalist for the Financial Times, to discuss today's announcements.Queer Britain – the dedicated LGBTQ+ museum, recently opened in London’s King’s Cross. We speak to curator Dawn Hoskin, and to director and founder Joseph Galliano.The complex picture of museum economics. Why are museums facing closure, even as they pick up significant lottery heritage funding? Samira Ahmed talks to Eilish McGuinness, Chief Executive of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and Kim Streets, member of the English Civic Museums Network and Chief Executive of Sheffield Museums Trust about the different approaches to museum funding.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Nicki PaxmanPhoto: Ollie Alexander stage costume, Glastonbury 2019. Photo by Rahil Ahmed.

Singer and fiddle player Bella Hardy talks about her new album – her tenth – Love Songs, which sees this adventurous musician return to where she began, with the traditional songs she’s known all her life.Thomas Lynch is an American poet with strong connections to Ireland. He is, too, an undertaker, a career that has informed his verse and essays, which dwell on life and death, faith and doubt, and also place. From his ancestral cottage in County Clare Lynch talks to Shahidha Bari about these things and reads from Bone Rosary, his New and Selected poems, just out.The Birmingham 2022 Festival is the biggest celebration of creativity ever in the region, showcasing the work of artists within the Commonwealth. Ahead of the Commonwealth Games starting this week, the arts festival Executive Producer Raidene Carter and artist Beverley Bennett share their continued vision and excitement with Shahida Bari.Presenter: Shahidha Bari Producer: Julian May Photo: Elly Lucas

Notre-Dame On Fire, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, is a film dramatising the events of the horrifying night on April 15, 2019 when the cathedral that symbolises so much in France and beyond started to burn. Milk Teeth is the second novel from Jessica Andrews, whose debut Saltwater won the Portico Prize in 2020. It explores appetite, control and desire in a young woman from the north of England who finds herself in the heat of Spain. The writer Sarah Hall and the journalist Agnès Poirier review both.Ahead of her upcoming Proms performance in the Royal Albert Hall, composer and vocalist Jennifer Walshe joins Tom Sutcliffe to perform one of her original compositions live in the studio. Walshe’s soundscape has been described as transcending the contemporary classical music world and she explains her approach to composing original works.And Sam Leith, literary editor of The Spectator magazine, joins Tom to remember the comic book writer Alan Grant, whose death was announced today. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Produc

Where The Crawdads Sing: director Olivia Newman on bringing the multi-million copy best-selling novel to the big screen. Cinema Inferno: the new catwalk production by Leeds theatre company Imitating the Dog for fashion house Maison Margiela - combining theatre, film, and fashion show. Is this the future of haute couture? On Sonorous Seas: Hebridean artist Mhairi Killin on her multi-media exhibition on the Isle of Mull. Fusing sound, video, whalebone artefacts, and poetry, the work is inspired by research into military sonar in Scottish waters and recent mass strandings of whales. Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Reflecting on his 50 years in fashion, designer Jean Paul Gaultier sits down with Samira Ahmed to talk about his life, Madonna, London and how it has inspired his new show at the Roundhouse Fashion Freak Show.An all party parliamentary report has been released documenting the current state of music touring. The Chief Executive of UK Music Jamie Njoku-Goodwin and Jack Brown of the band White Lies join the discussion. Much Ado about Nothing is this year’s Shakespeare play, with a production in Stratford in the spring, one that opened at the National Theatre yesterday, another at Shakespeare’s Globe, running into winter, and one at The Crucible in Sheffield which will open in September. Front Row brings three directors – Simon Godwin (National), Lucy Bailey (Globe) and Robert Hastie (Crucible) – together to discuss the fascination of this funny, but disturbing, love story with Samira Ahmed. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Nicki PaxmanPhoto Credit: Mark Senior

Karl Bartos, musician and composer, on his life in the German band Kraftwerk - as told in his new memoir The Sound of the Machine.Playwright and screenwriter Lucy Kirkwood on her play Maryland - devised in response to normalisation of violence against women, and originally staged at Royal Court Theatre in London in 2021, it has now been adapted for BBC TV screens. The Spooky Men’s Chorale: the strangely comedic but musically marvellous and popular Australian male voice choir stop off in the middle of their UK tour to sing and talk to Samira Ahmed about Georgian polyphony, Swedish folk band Abba, and not being a men’s group. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian MayImage credit: Markus Wustmann

The new film Persuasion based on Jane Austen’s novel starring Dakota Johnson and directed by Carrie Cracknell has already attracted a lot of attention for its blend of 21st century millennial dialogue and Austen’s own words. And Peter Morgan, writer of The Crown, returns to the stage for his new play Patriots which looks at the rise of the oligarchs in Russia, in particular Boris Berezovsky, played by Tom Hollander, helping to secure the rise of Putin, played by Will Keen. Guardian foreign correspondent Luke Harding and film critic Hanna Flint join Shahidha to review both.Durham’s International Brass festival, which has been going for more than 20 years, is showcasing bands from as far afield as Cuba, Italy and Ghana. Among this year’s high profile artists taking part are Mercury Prize and Brit Award nominees, a MOBO-winning CBBC star, and an avant garde rock band fronted by the Poet Laureate. The BBC’s Sharuna Sagar went to Durham to see how this traditional style of music is being embraced by new generat

In the late 16th century, the Merseyside town of Prescot had the only purpose-built, indoor theatre outside London. Now the Shakespeare North Playhouse, a £38 million architectural representation of a Shakespearean stage, opens there this weekend. Samira Ahmed is joined by Laura Collier, the theatre’s creative director and the writer and performer Ashleigh Nugent who have co-curated Open Up, the opening festival.Front Row is hearing from the five museums nominated to be this year’s Museum of the Year and tonight it’s the turn of Tŷ Pawb in Wrexham. Reporter Adam Walton takes a tour of the museum and finds why the museum is at the heart of the local community. Danny Brocklehurst is the Bafta-award winning writer behind Shameless, Clocking Off and Brassic. He joins Samira to discuss turning to more family friendly fare in The Railway Children Return. In his sequel, set 50 years after the classic 1970 film, Jenny Agutter’s Bobbie is a grandmother and former Suffragette, and the titular children are evacuees from

Oscar winning Joker composer Hildur Guðnadóttir talks about her new commission for the BBC Proms, inspired by political division, and the difference between writing for films and games, ahead of the first BBC Prom devoted to gaming music. To discuss the government's National Plan for Music Education for schools in England, Tom is joined by Catherine Barker from United Learning, Colin Stuart from the Incorporated Society of Musicians, and Jimmy Rotheram, a music teacher at Feversham Primary Academy in Bradford. Curb Your Enthusiasm director Robert Weide on his decades long friendship with the American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, which has resulted in his new feature documentary film, Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Timothy Prosser