大象传媒

With his new memoir 鈥楩ormation - Building a Personal Canon, Part I鈥� hitting bookshops, and a new collaborative album with the tenor Ian Bostridge released this week, the American Jazz pianist Brad Mehldau joins Kate Molleson to discuss his childhood in small town New England, his forays into the New York Jazz scene of the 1990s, his encounters with kind musical heroes and future collaborators, and what it means to be a musician.

Telling the story the 18th-century 鈥淚rish giant鈥� Charles Byrne, whose corpse was stolen to order and put on public display, Kate speaks to composer Sarah Angliss about the World Premiere of her new opera Giant at this year鈥檚 Aldeburgh Festival. She explains how she鈥檚 treating this surprisingly tender tale of grave robbing and dissection.

As Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month gets under way, Music Matters learns about a new project to highlight the invaluable recorded collection of gypsy and traveller voices archived within the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. We speak to the University of East Anglia鈥檚 Dr. Hazel Marsh about the impetus to make collections, housed at the English Folk Dance and Song Society, more accessible to Gypsy and Traveller people seeking engagement with their cultural heritage, and hear from the Scottish Traveller Ian McGregor.

Celebrating two decades of music making with Les Si猫cles, Kate hears from conductor Fran莽ois-Xavier Roth as he prepares to tour with the orchestra to the Barbican, Edinburgh International Festival and 大象传媒 Proms. With new albums of works by Ravel and Ligeti about to be released this month, too, he tells Kate about the energy of discovery which drives the ensemble鈥檚 prolific recording activity, and why performance needs to be dangerous.