Front Row

Paula Hawkins’s novel The Girl on the Train sold 23 million copies and was made into a film starring Emily Blunt. Now she has written A Slow Fire Burning, a who-and-why-dunnit about damaged people trying to move on with their lives, set along the Regent’s Canal in London. She talks to Front Row about starting with character, creating suspense, and how she reflects on the success of The Girl on the Train. Alan Warner’s 1998 novel, The Sopranos, won the Saltire Society’s Scottish Book of the Year Award when it came out. It has gone on to be adapted for the stage where it won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy in 2017. Now it’s been adapted for the cinema with a new title – Our Ladies. Critic David Benedict assesses whether the film adaption will also be in the running for prize. And he also talks to Kirsty about whether theatre critics are being too kind to productions in a post-lockdown world.As defending British champion Natasha Baker wins a Silver medal in the Paralympic Dressage freestyle ev

Jason deCaires Taylor has been working in underwater art for 15 years. Today, he joins us to discuss his new museum Musan, built in the Mediterranean sea off the coast of Cyprus. The Answer Me This podcast began in 2007. Presenters Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann have been answering questions from listeners about anything and everything over the subsequent 400 episodes. And now they've decided to call it a day. We find out how podcasting has evolved over the years. Fred D'Aguiar's book Year of Plagues: A Memoir of 2020 chronicles the year when he was diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer, when Covid 19 affected the whole world and when institutional racism in the US led to the establishment of the Black Lives Matter movement.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Hilary DunnImage: Sculptures by Jason deCaires Taylor, at Musan, Ayia Napa, Cyprus Credit: @jasondecairestaylor / www.underwatersculpture.com

Following the announcement of the death of the musician Charlie Watts, tonight’s Front Row is an archive edition featuring John Wilson in conversation with the band he was a member of - The Rolling Stones. The programme was recorded in 2012 to mark 50 years since the band’s first performance. In it, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Ronnie Wood reflect on life in the Rolling Stones as they prepare to return to the stage.

Music journalist David Hepworth reflects on the life and drums of Rolling Stone Charlie Watts who has died aged 80.Natalya Romaniw is a soprano on her way to stardom. With numerous Madame Butterflies, Mimis and Tatyanas under her belt, Natalya was on the brink of international fame when the pandemic hit and took her momentum. Now she’s preparing to sing the eponymous Tosca in Puccini’s masterpiece, and she tells Tom how she’s preparing for one of opera’s most iconic roles and performing post-lockdown.We hear from another of the five museums and galleries shortlisted for the prestigious £100,000 Art Fund Museum of the Year 2021. This year’s prize will reflect the resilience and imagination of museums during the pandemic, and today John Tanner, Project Manager at Experience Barnsley talks about five exhibits in the museum that speak for the townOnce Upon A Time in Nazi Occupied Tunisia is a darkly comic play about just that. Two young couples in Tunis, one Jewish the other Muslim, find their long-standing fr

American conductor Kalena Bovell makes her Proms debut with the Chineke! Orchestra this week. She tells Samira about her path into conducting, and why it’s so exciting to be performing music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor at the Royal Albert Hall.Following the death of singer Don Everly over the weekend, Bob Stanley joins us to reflect on the importance, sound and influence of the Everly Brothers. Award winning playwright and screen writer Jack Thorne has delivered this year’s McTaggart Lecture at The Edinburgh Television Festival. He argues that representation of disabled people on both sides of the camera are currently woefully inadequate and calls for more to be done to increase their presence, representation and visibility at all levels of TV.The fate for artists in Afghanistan at the moment is uncertain and may be dangerous. Poet Reza Mohammadi is the head of the Afghan Writers’ Union and he talks to us from Kabul about the fate he and others might face and what he intends to do to protect their artistic fre

Michael Sarnoski is the director and co-writer of Pig, starring Nicolas Cage and a pig that is brilliant at finding truffles – until it’s stolen. Cage’s trip to the culinary hot spots of the big city to find his pig reveals more about his past and explores ideas of grief, redemption, and what to value in life. The director joins Front Row to talk about casting Cage – and casting the right pig.The singer-songwriter Moses Sumney has an extraordinary and distinctive voice and his songs challenge traditional ideas about love or identity. At the BBC Proms tomorrow night he’ll be performing songs from his albums Aromanticism and græ in new arrangements with Jules Buckley and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He talks to Front Row about his voice, words and music. Mike White’s new HBO / Sky Atlantic television comedy drama series The White Lotus is a look at how the other half lives as it follows a group of hotel guests holidaying in a luxurious Hawaiian paradise, starring Jennifer Coolidge, Murray Bartlett, Connie Bri

At last, Cinderella has made it to the ball. After postponement, rearrangement, and postponement again because of, first the lockdown, then social distancing requirements, Andrew Lloyd Webber's new musical, Cinderella, opened last night. Emerald Fennell takes a radical approach to the fairytale: in her version Prince Charming is missing, presumed dead; the beauty industry is satirised and the banality of surface allure exposed. Still, there is pazzazz aplenty: big numbers, big frocks and big hair; a leather-clad chorus of dancing hunks; some close-hauled corsetry. What does it add up to? Has it been worth the wait? John Wilson was there, as was critic Sarah Crompton, and they discuss the show and Sarah gives her verdict on the most important live showbiz event of the year.Award-winning guitarist Sean Shibe has recorded a new album of music that has comforted him over the Pandemic, and puts his own spin on Spanish music that is so often associated with the classical guitar. He explains what he put this selecti

This year's Edinburgh Festival is a smaller affair than normal but it's packed full of delicious cultural goodness. We speak with film director Isaac Julien about Lessons of The Hour- a 10-screen film about the former slave and emancipationist Frederick Douglass who visited Edinburgh many times.Just These Please is a four-piece comedy group who have had more than 6m views on YouTube for their sketches and whose Edinburgh Fringe show has sold out.Poet and playwright Hannah Lavery has many works at the festival - Lament for Sheku Bayoh is a play about a young black Scottish man who died in police custody in 2015. She has also co-written Eavesdropping, a guided audio walk around Edinburgh. Siobhan Miller won her first singing prize at the age of 13 and is the only three-times winner of Scots Singer of the Year. She's playing a gig at the festival with her band and has a new album All Is Not Forgotten, and she plays live for us at The BBC site in Infirmary Street, Edinburgh.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Oliver

The Edinburgh Festival is a much more pared-down event this year because of Covid, but despite this there is still plenty on offer. Comedian Henning Wehn is filling the Edinburgh Corn Exchange and he'll be discussing the challenge of preparing for a festival with all live comedy events cancelled for so many months.Playwright Frances Poet discusses the world premiere of her unsettling play Still at the Traverse Theatre. Edinburgh-based writer Arusa Qureshi will being us her observations of how the festival city is different this year. And the Orkney four-piece folk band will be performing live from the BBC's outdoor stage.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Jerome Weatherald

Dr Ahmad Sarmast, founder and director of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music tells John Wilson of his fears and hopes for music-making as his country falls under the control of the Taliban.Some things can only be expressed in song. That’s the idea behind The Song Project at the Royal Court Theatre where five of our foremost female playwrights - E.V. Crowe, Sabrina Mahfouz, Somalia Nonyé Seaton, Stef Smith and Debris Stevenson - collaborate with composer Isobel Waller-Bridge, choreographer Imogen Knight, designer Chloe Lamford and the Dutch singer Wende, who will be performing the songs. These explore the hopes and anxieties women face, diving into the messiness of birth, death, rage, grace, friendship, motherhood, mothers, loss and ageing. So, the whole of life and its end, then. Chloe Lamford and Wende talk to John Wilson about the project and Wende, accompanied by Nils Davidse sings, live, one of the songs.The Manchester Collective are making their debut at the Proms tomorrow. Founder Adam Szabo e

Last year, Icelandic pianist Vikingur Olafsson was Front Row's artist-in-residence from Reykjavik. Finally this week, he's able to join John Wilson in the studio, where he talks playing at the Proms and how great it is to be back performing in front of live audiences. He shares stories from his new Mozart album (including a childhood tantrum against the child prodigy), and plays Mozart and Cimarosa live in the studio.A storm has blown up over poet Kate Clanchy’s recent reaction to a review on GoodReads of her book Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me. The reviewer pointed out racist and ableist tropes in the book. Clanchy has now apologised for getting things wrong but initially accused the reviewer of lies. John is joined by Amy Baxter, founder of Bad Form, which describes itself as ‘a literary review celebrating black, Asian and racialised community writers’. Amy also works as an Editorial Assistant at publishers Hachette, and with her is the poet Anthony Anaxagorou. They consider what the story revea

In 1962 the USA and USSR engaged in one of the most terrifying acts of brinksmanship the world has seen. But few people know of the role played by an ordinary British businessman in bringing the Cuban Missile Crisis to an end. New film The Courier, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, tells the true story of Greville Wynne, recruited by MI6 to penetrate the Soviet nuclear programme. Director Dominic Cooke talks to Tom about creating this Cold War spy thriller.Deceit is a new four-part drama on Channel 4 documenting the investigation launched by the police in the wake of the Rachel Nickell murder on Wimbledon Common in 1992. It stars Niamh Algar as an undercover officer who tried to reel in the man the police believed was guilty, Colin Stagg. The writer and creator, Emilia di Girolamo, joins Front Row to talk about sexism, classism and how access to hours of original interview recordings helped her craft the script.Lily Allen is making her West End debut in 2.22 A Ghost Story, in which she plays Jenny, a mother con

Russian composer Igor Stravinsky died 50 years ago this year. Yet his influence is still felt today, whether it's the pounding rhythms of The Rite of Spring or the musical borrowings of The Rake's Progress. Radio 3's Kate Molleson explains how Stravinsky changed the musical landscape, and just why we should be celebrating a composer born nearly 140 years ago.Aurora Orchestra are preparing for their appearance at this year's BBC Proms. And the preparations involve memorising The Firebird, to play on stage without sheet music. Conductor Nicholas Collon and bassoonist Amy Harman discuss what memorising adds to the performance, and whether learning Stravinsky has any extra challenges.Dancer Francesca Velicu earned an Olivier Award for dancing the role of the Chosen One in Pina Bausch's version of The Rite of Spring at English National Ballet. How does it feel to dance to the death?Conductor Sir Simon Rattle has had a lifelong love affair with Igor Stravinsky. He tells John Wilson how he got hooked at an early ag

Paradise opens at the Olivier auditorium of the National Theatre tomorrow. It's a new version of a play that had its premiere, and was acclaimed, in 409BC - Philoctetes by Sophocles. Just before the final preview begins, writer Kae Tempest tells Kirsty Lang why this ancient story of a wounded soldier, in constant pain, abandoned on an island, grips them today.John Boyne’s new novel is a humorous and scathing takedown of the world of social media through the lens of a particularly grotesque family. He talks to Kirsty about how the Twitter backlash to one of his previous books inspired The Echo Chamber, and his new-found love of writing in a comic style.GIANT, the largest artist led-space in the UK has opened in Bournemouth. Its director Stuart Semple joins us to discuss the inaugural exhibition, Big Medicine, and his hopes for the future of art in his hometown.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Hilary Dunn

Phil Wang joins us to discuss his stand up show, Philly Philly Wang Wang that he filmed at the London Palladium over the pandemic. Exploring race, romance, politics, and his mixed British-Malaysian heritage, he talks about his addiction to making people laugh, as well as explaining why he doesn't fear getting cancelled. Shape Open have created an online exhibition featuring the work of 24 disabled and nondisabled artists working across Europe and North America, and has disability as its theme, and particularly the experience of the individuals during lockdown. One of the artists, Abi Palmer, discusses the exhibition All Bound Together and the work she's made for it.Nearly 20,000 pages of lost manuscripts by French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline have emerged, causing controversy - and a lawsuit. Céline was one of France’s most important 20th century literary figures. He was also a virulent anti-Semite, described by Le Monde as “one of the Nazis’ most famous French friends”. The whereabouts and provenance of the

Sir Tom Stoppard's Olivier Award-winning play Leopoldstadt closed because of Covid in March 2020. Tomorrow it returns to the same stage and the same cast will tell again the story a Jewish family, in Vienna in the first half of the 20 century. They fled the pogroms in the East and later suffered terribly under Nazi rule. The plot has parallels with Stoppard's own family - all four of Stoppard's grandparents perished in concentration camps. He talks about returning to the theatre, if he has revised the play in the interregnum, and if he is tempted to revisit his earlier plays. We hear from the first of the five museums and galleries shortlisted for the prestigious £100,000 Art Fund Museum of the Year 2021. This year’s prize will reflect the resilience and imagination of museums during the pandemic, and today we hear from Catherine Hemelryk from the Centre of Contemporary Art in Derry-Londonderry.Ryan Bancroft has just finished his first year as the Principal Conductor for BBC National Orchestra of Wales, a

Sarah, Duchess of York, talks to Nick Ahad about her debut Mills and Boon novel, Her Heart for a Compass, based on the life of her ancestor, Lady Margaret. She talks about the parallels between her own life and her heroine’s, including finding freedom in America. She discusses the impact of newspaper headlines on her mental health, her plans to make a feature film about Prince Albert's mother Louise, and what she makes of TV series The Crown. Composer Max Richter’s new album ‘Exiles’ is a combination of new works, new recordings and new orchestrations of some of his most popular pieces. He talks to Nick about what writing for an orchestra can add, and how he uses his music as activism.

On the anniversary of the Beirut port explosion, we talk to representatives from both The British Museum and The Archaeological Museum at the American University of Beirut, who are working together to restore eight ancient glass vessels which were severely damaged.We review Vivo, a new full length cartoon film on Netflix featuring compositions by and the voice of Lin-Manuel Miranda. Does it reach Hamiltonian levels of greatness or is it a less spectacular creation?The DCMS has announced that UK musicians and performers do not need visas or work permits for short-term tours in 19 EU countries. What does this mean for touring performers? Is it all good news and what about those EU member states that haven’t agreed?Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Oliver Jones

Booker Prize shortlisted Turkish writer Elif Shafak has a new novel: The Island Of Missing Trees. Set in Cyprus it follows lovers who risk everything in a divided island. And one of the narrators is a fig tree. Shafak explains about melding passionate ecological and political information and messages.Jonathon Heyward makes his Proms debut this week conducting the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. He tells Samira why he loves working with youth orchestras, isn't so keen on being labelled a ‘young conductor’, and how much he’s looking forward to getting on to the podium at the Royal Albert Hall. In Stillwater, the new film starring Matt Damon, he plays Bill Baker, an Oklahoma oil rig worker determined to secure the release of his daughter Allison, in prison in Marseille for the murder of her flatmate and lover, Lina. Frustrated by legal, language and cultural barriers his own conduct strays beyond the legal. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh reviews the film which is controversial because of the parallels of its plo

Yesterday the audience was on its feet – more than once - to applaud the cast, the band and the design of Anything Goes at the Barbican Theatre in London. On Front Row today Samira Ahmed talks to Kathleen Marshall, the director and choreographer about the appeal of the show today, and to Sutton Foster, the American star making her UK debut as Reno Sweeney, who gets to sing some of Cole Porter’s greatest songs including I Get a Kick Out of You which she has recorded especially for Front Row.Co-written by Tim Renkow and Shaun Pye, the BBC Three black-comedy series Jerk revolves around the character Tim who uses the fact that he has cerebral palsy to try and get away with anything. Tim Renkow joins us to discuss the new second series and representation of disability in television.It was announced at the end of last week that Scarlett Johansson is suing Disney for breach of contract over the Marvel film Black Widow, with its scaled-back cinema release. Rebecca Rubin from Variety in New York considers the case and