Front Row

As Blur and Gorillaz front man Damon Albarn joins the Orchestra of Syrian Musicians to open the Glastonbury Festival, John talks to Damon and Lebanese-Syrian rapper Eslam Jawaad about working and performing with the orchestra.In Inspiring Impressionism, the National Galleries of Scotland will stage the first ever large-scale exhibition to examine the important relationship between the landscape painter Charles-François Daubigny and the Impressionists, including Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh. Curators Lynne Ambrosini and Frances Fowle discuss.The Bethlem Museum of the Mind in South London is one of five museums and galleries in the UK to make the shortlist for Museum of the Year. In the third of our reports from the shortlisted venues, John Wilson visits the museum which cares for an internationally-renowned collection of archives, art and historic objects relating to the history of mental healthcare and treatment. The Jamaican guitarist and composer Ernest Ranglin is probably best known for Millie Small's

Artist Carsten Höller discusses his latest project, the world's longest and tallest tunnel slide, attached to Anish Kapoor's ArcelorMittal Orbit in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, East London. Then Kirsty gives it a go...The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk is the latest stage production from the Cornish theatre company Kneehigh tells the story of the 20th century artist Marc Chagall and his wife and muse, Bella. Director Emma Rice and writer Daniel Jamieson join Kirsty.Jupiter Artland in Scotland is one of five museums and galleries in the UK to make the shortlist for Museum of the Year. In the second of our reports from the shortlisted venues, the Museum's founders, husband and wife team Robert and Nicky Wilson, explain what they hope to achieve with this still relatively young gallery.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Jerome Weatherald.

Ralph Fiennes and director Rupert Goold discuss their new production of Shakespeare's Richard III at the Almeida Theatre in London.Kevin Spacey stars as the former US president in the new film Elvis & Nixon, which focuses on the untold real-life story of the meeting between the two men. Michael Carlson reviews.Author Marina Lewycka and playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak join Samira to discuss the art of writing fiction about the refugee experience. As refugees once themselves, both have contributed to an anthology of writing called A Country of Refuge, being published to coincide with Refugee Week.One of Pakistan's most famous qawwali singers Amjad Sabri has been killed today in Karachi. Ziad Zafar joins us to explain Sabri's place in Pakistani culture and what may have led to his death.

Susan Sarandon stars as an interfering mother in The Meddler, with Rose Byrne as her long-suffering daughter. Critic Kate Muir reviews. The Meddler is released on 24 June, certificate 12A.Derby Museums acquires two Joseph Wright landscapes for its collection after bidding anonymously at a New York auction house. Executive Director Tony Butler explains why he thinks bold acquisitions are the way forward amid shrinking budgets in regional museums.Carys Bray, author of A Song for Issey Bradley, discusses her new novel The Museum of You, in which a 12-year-old girl creates a museum at home dedicated to her mother, who was killed in a road accident shortly after she was born.Painters' Paintings: From Freud to Van Dyck is a new exhibition exploring great paintings from the point of view of the artists who owned them. Inspired by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's Italian Woman - left to the National Gallery in London by Lucian Freud following his death in 2011 - the exhibition includes over eighty works, spanning more t

Independence Day, starring Will Smith, redefined the summer blockbuster. Now, twenty years on, writer, director and producer Roland Emmerich returns to the movie with a sequel - Independence Day: Resurgence. John Wilson talks to Roland about why he decided to make the film despite his dislike of sequels, spending huge film budgets and getting diverse actors on screen.Chris Riddell, the Children's Laureate, has been announced as the winner of The Kate Greenaway Medal 2016 for the book The Sleeper and the Spindle. Chris is the illustrator and the story is by Neil Gaiman. Chris has won this prestigious prize for illustration in a children's book for an unprecedented third time. Fretwork are a group of musicians who have been performing early music on the viol, a predecessor to the modern violin and cello, for 30 years. Founding member Richard Boothby and new recruit Emily Ashton join us to demonstrate why the viol isn't an outdated piece of musical technology.The Border is the first Polish series to be shown on

John Wilson talks to Sir Trevor Nunn, as he returns to his hometown of Ipswich to direct A Midsummer Night's Dream. With this new production Nunn will have directed all of Shakespeare's 37 plays. Singer-songwriter Jake Bugg talks about his third album, On My One, and plays his new song The Love We're Hoping For live in the studio. Natasha Walter, known for her non-fiction books The New Feminism and Living Dolls, discusses her first novel, A Quiet Life, inspired by the wife of Cambridge spy Donald Maclean.

The film Tale of Tales is a fantastical interweaving of fairytales, based on a collection of stories published by the 17th Century poet Gianbattista Basile. It stars Salma Hayek, Toby Jones, Vincent Cassel and John C Riley and is directed by Matteo Garrone, who previously made Gomorrah. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh reviews.Playwright Mike Bartlett, who won Olivier Awards for his plays King Charles III and Bull, discusses his new play Wild, based on an Edward Snowden-like character who faces the consequences of leaking thousands of classified documents about US operations at home and abroad.Charlotte Mullins reviews the exhibition of drawings by 19th Century spiritualist Georgiana Houghton at the Courtauld Gallery in London. Layers of watercolours and gouache, painted, she believed, under the influence of a spirit, Houghton's work has long been neglected. Now her abstract works have been reexamined as precursors of the work of artists such as Kandinsky and Mondrian. Suburra portrays a dark and rain-soaked Rome, where m

Ashley Pharoah, writer of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, discusses his latest creation for BBC TV - The Living and the Dead. Set in rural Somerset in 1894, this supernatural drama follows Nathan Appleby, a reluctant gentleman farmer who is obsessed with proving the existence of the afterlife, as he investigates hauntings, paranormal happenings and ghostly visitations.Writer Sarah Crossan has won the 2016 Bookseller YA prize for her novel One. It's the story of conjoined twins, written in verse. Ros Barber's debut novel The Marlowe Papers is a fictional account of the life of Christopher Marlowe, also written in verse. They talk to Kirsty about writing novels which take the form of series of poems.Sound artist Chris Watson, who has worked alongside David Attenborough on many of his BBC nature series, discusses his new project The Town Moor - A Portrait in Sound. Over the course of a year he documented the sounds of the ancient and vast grazing common at the heart of Newcastle, and will be presenting the audi

Tate Modern opens its new £260m extension to the iconic former power station on London's South Bank on Friday. Architect Amanda Levete, who has remodelled the V&A, and the art critic Andrea Rose visit the Switch House to discuss the opportunities the new space offers for international and female artists.Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard is performing Messiaen's two-hour celebration of birdsong, Catalogue d'Oiseaux, at the Aldeburgh Festival this Sunday from dawn to dusk. We join him in front of the piano for a tour of the different bird calls in the piece and he reveals how Messiaen's personal connection to nature informed his work. Emma Cline discusses her debut novel The Girls which is tipped to be the summer bestseller. It follows teenager Evie Boyd who gets caught up in cult that will eventually lead to murder, in a narrative loosely based on the Manson murders of the '60s. As the publishers Penguin prepare to relaunch their series Modern Poets for the first time this century, Samira takes soundings on th

Wrong Crowd is Tom Odell's second album, the follow-up to his number one album Long Way Down. The singer-songwriter talks about avoiding writing about luxury hotel rooms since his success, and drawing more on childhood memories for inspiration.The structural engineer Ove Arup is the subject of a new exhibition at the V&A in London. The co-curators discuss the work of the philosopher and designer, who was responsible for the construction of a number of high-profile buildings including the Penguin Pool at London Zoo and Sydney Opera House.July marks the hundredth anniversary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme. It's an event that playwrights have often grappled with and there are three plays on stage now; Frank McGuinness's Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, Furious Folly, an immersive, outdoor piece, co-created by Mark Anderson, and First Light which tells the story through the lives of two young soldiers shot at dawn for deserting. The writers and directors explain how they app

Andy Hamilton is co-creator of Power Monkeys, a new Channel 4 comedy that responds to the daily events in the EU referendum campaign. He tells us about the last minute rewrites required on the day of broadcast and the challenge of re-creating the interior Donald Trump's plane.Two Terence Rattigan's plays have opened this week: The Deep Blue Sea starring Helen McCrory at the National Theatre in London, and Ross at the Chichester Festival Theatre with Joseph Fiennes. Henry Hitchings reviews both productions and the current Rattigan revival. Studio Ghibli, the legendary Japanese animation house behind Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle, has ceased in-house production. So is its latest film a fitting swansong? Marc Eccleston reviews When Marnie was There, an adaptation of a 1967 book by British author Joan G Robinson about a reclusive girl who discovers an otherworldly new friend. Poet Blake Morrison and composer Gavin Bryars tell us about their celebration of the train journey between Goole and Hull that wil

Frances Morris became the first female Director of Tate Modern only a few months ago, but has been instrumental in developing its collections for many years. Next week she will open a new 260 million pound extension to the iconic former power station on London's Southbank; boasting four new galleries. The new space is a great opportunity to display more international works and more female artists alongside old favourites and, she says, will make us view contemporary art in a whole new way.Sculptor Anish Kapoor on his epic set design for English National Opera's new production of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. Embrace of the Serpent, directed by Colombian film maker Ciro Guerro, is inspired by the true stories of two European explorers who travelled through the Amazon in parallel journeys, decades apart, hunting for a mythical plant. Hannah McGill reviews.

Guy Garvey talks to John Wilson about the Meltdown festival he's curating at London's Southbank Centre, featuring Femi Kuti, Laura Marling and a Refugee special.John is joined by Lisa McInerney, the winner of this year's Bailey's Prize for Women's Fiction, live from the ceremony.Michael Crawford returns to the West End stage in The Go-Between, a new musical based on LP Hartley's classic novel. Matt Wolf reviews.And Mexican curator Pablo León de la Barra discusses the exciting new art coming out of Latin America.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy Prosser.

Ben Kingsley discusses his role as a driving instructor in his new film Learning to Drive.The director and choreographer Casey Nicholaw, whose credits include The Book of Mormon, on bringing Disney's Aladdin to the West End stage.The sculptor Richard Wilson, co-ordinator of the 2016 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, discusses his selection for the world's largest open submission exhibition, and its focus this year on celebrated artistic duos.Outcast is a new TV series based on the comics by Robert Kirkman that follows a young man plagued by demonic possession. Kim Newman reviews.Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Jerome Weatherald.

Playwright Peter Shaffer is remembered by theatre critic Michael Billington and director Thea Sharrock, who worked with him on the revival of Equus in 2007. In a rare interview, American novelist Don DeLillo talks to Samira Ahmed about his new novel Zero K which explores cryogenics, immortality and death. New Blood, is the latest series from Anthony Horowitz, creator of Foyle's War and the Alex Rider novels. In it, two junior investigators for the police and the Serious Fraud Office, Rash and Stefan, are brought together on television for the first time, linked by two seemingly unrelated cases. Beth Orton has ditched the acoustic guitar and folk songs for her new album Kidsticks which is mostly composed from electronic loops, drum machines and keyboards. She describes the freedom of creating music without any expectations.

Jimmy McGovern is a writer well-known for bringing controversial stories to our televisions with dramas like Hillsborough and Accused. He has now written Reg, a feature-length film for BBC One, which tells the true story of Reg Keys, who decided to run against Tony Blair in the 2005 election as a protest against the Iraq War. He explains why he decided to bring the tale to our screens.James Schamus has been behind some of the most successful independent films of the last 15 years including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain, Lost in Translation, Atonement and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as a producer, screenwriter and former head of Focus Features. Now he makes his directorial debut with Indignation, based on Philip Roth's novel. While in London for the Sundance Film Festival, he came into Front Row to talk about his first directing role and the future of independent film-making.Playwright Alexi Kaye Campbell, author of the 2008 multi-award winner The Pride, has set his latest play

Nile Rodgers, Ambassador for BBC Music Day, talks to John Wilson about his decades in the music industry, from pioneering disco with Chic to creating the massive hit Get Lucky with Daft Punk.Jesse Eisenberg and Kunal Nayyar on The Spoils, a darkly comic play about roommates written by Jesse in which he stars alongside Kunal, known for TV series The Big Bang Theory.Alex Clark reviews the film Race, about the African American athlete Jesse Owens who won a record-breaking four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.A new exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery for Modern Art - Surreal Encounters: Collecting the Marvellous - throws the spotlight on four key collectors of the modern art movement. Curator Keith Hartley.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy Prosser.

Versailles is the new high-budget, 10-part BBC2 drama series which is already creating controversy ahead of its first broadcast. Boyd Hilton reviews the period costume drama set in the court of Louis XIV with its themes of sex, murder and conspiracy.The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is one of five museums and galleries in the UK to make the shortlist for Museum of the Year. In the first of our reports from the shortlisted venues, the Museum's director Martin Roth explains how to choose a record-breaking exhibition like the Alexander McQueen and why the V&A is planning to expand into the Olympic Park, Dundee and China. A Jewish Italian family ends up among Mussolini's most ardent supporters in Louisa Young's new novel Devotion, the latest in her series begun by the WWI novel My Dear I Wanted To Tell You and The Heroes' Welcome. She charts the political awakening of the next generation as another war looms, and tells Kirsty Lang why she found the Italian experience so compelling. The credits to the f

Nina Stibbe's latest novel Paradise Lodge follows Lizzie Vogel as she skips school to work at a residential care home. The book draws on the author's own experience as a teenager and is the second of a trilogy of Lizzie Vogel novels. Nick Hornby's TV adaptation of Stibbe's highly successful first book Love, Nina - based on the author's time as a nanny to a literary north London family - is currently on BBC1 on Saturday nights starring Helena Bonham Carter.Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling team up in The Nice Guys, the neo-noir crime buddy comedy film directed and co-written by Shane Black in which the unlikely pair investigate the apparent suicide of a fading porn star in 1970s LA.Michael Pennington talks to Samira about his new book King Lear in Brooklyn, a combination of an analysis of the play and its characters, alongside his experiences playing the role for the first time - in Brooklyn, New York.Moby's memoir Porcelain details the electronic musician's life before he released his album Play in 1999 and beca

Singer-songwriter Charlotte Church discusses her 'musical fairy tale' which receives its premier next weekend at the inaugural Festival of Voice in Cardiff. The Last Mermaid is inspired by The Little Mermaid and tackles the challenging issues facing our world.Tracy Chevalier has just edited a collection of short stories inspired by the line, 'Reader I Married Him' from Jane Eyre. She and Lionel Shriver, who's contributed, discuss the importance of one of the most famous lines in literature.The Young Adult fiction genre has been a major growth area in publishing over the last decade and as more titles flood the market this year, 3 of the top selling YA authors, Juno Dawson, Patrick Ness, Holly Smale join John Wilson to discuss what defines this area of fiction and where it allows them to go as writers that adult fiction and children's doesn't.Welsh folk musician and BBC Wales presenter, Frank Hennessy, teams up with fellow Hennessys band mate, Iolo Jones, and Appalachian musicians Rebecca Branson Jones and Tre