Front Row

As the Prime Minister sets out his roadmap to ending the Covid lockdown we get reaction from Dominique Frazer, Founder of the Boileroom, a music venue in Guildford, and Hamish Moseley, Managing Director of an independent film distribution company Altitude Film Entertainment, and ask if this offers them enough information to start to plan for the year ahead.Radio Wales DJ Huw Stephens discusses is three part documentary, The Story of Welsh Art, which looks as visual art in the country more associated with poets and singers. As Nick, a prequel to The Great Gatsby is published, we speak to it's author Michael Farris Smith on why the rather retiring character Nick Carraway deserved a backstory and Professor of Literature Diane Roberts joins to discuss the appeal of the genre. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Simon RichardsonMain Image: Huw Stephens holding a painting by Richard Wilson called Snowdon from Llyn Nantlle. Credit: BBC

Leicester Curve’s recent award-winning revival of the musical The Color Purple, based on Alice Walker’s novel, has been reimagined, filmed and is being streamed for audiences. Dreda Say Mitchell and David Benedict review. David Rodigan joins us to celebrate the life of the great Jamaican musician U-Roy, who died recently. He was a master of the toasting mic style – the precursor of rapping, MC-ing and freestyling. Niven Govinden studied film before becoming an award-winning writer. In his sixth novel Diary of a Film his cinematic knowledge is filtered through the lens of creative anxiety, queer desire, and European city walking. In it, an auteur and his lead actors arrive at a prestigious film festival to premiere his latest film. Alone one morning at a backstreet cafe, he strikes up a conversation with a local woman who takes him on a walk to uncover the city's secrets, historic and personal. A story of love and tragedy emerges, and he begins to see the chance meeting as fate. Every year the Arts Foundation makes awards of £10,000 to assist artists with living and working costs - helping them to carry on creating. All five of the 2021 winners are talking about their work on Front Row. The fourth is John Barber, Arts Foundation Fellow for Choral Composition. He tells John Wilson about the range of his music making, from a retelling of the Persephone myth for 1500 voices, 10 years running Woven Gold, a choir made up of refugees and asylum seekers and professional musicians, to pieces for small choirs such at The Sixteen. So much choral music is rooted in religious texts and liturgy. But Barber is not religious and he explains his concern with composing music for voices from a secular perspective.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May Studio Manager: Donald MacDonald

Dame Sarah Connolly sings the role of the goddess Fricka in the Royal Opera House's production of Wagner's The Ring Cycle, currently being broadcast on BBC Radio 3. She discusses the challenge of performing this 15 hour operatic epic. Chris Brandon on writing the new BBC crime drama series Bloodlands - which stars James Nesbitt as a detective - is exec produced by Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty and Bodyguard), and which draws on Brandon's own upbringing in Northern Ireland. Visual artist Jessie Brennan presents our latest #FrontRowGetCreative challenge: today it's "blind drawing", which invites us to take a more intimate view of a person or object. You'll need the help of someone you're bubbling with, or you could draw a pet or object.We pay tribute to the artist Victor Ambrus, who has died at the age of 85. A refugee from Hungary, Ambrus became known for his illustrations of children's books - folktales, history and animal stories - and for his appearances on the TV show Time Team. His powerful images of battles were influenced by his own experience of the Hungarian Uprising.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Oliver Jones

Is listening to K-Pop like buying sweatshop-made clothes? From rigorous childhood performance academies to long, labour-intensive contracts for young idols, does the South Korean music industry have an exploitation problem? High profile suicides, sexual harassment claims and industry standards are complicating the nature of the industry and the fandom as it booms in the English speaking world. Musicologist Haekyung Um and journalist Taylor Glasby weigh in. Poet Kate Fox talks about her new collection The Oscillations, exploring distance and isolation in the age of the pandemic, refracted through the lenses of neurodiversity and trauma in poems that are bold, funny and open-hearted in their self-discoveries.Artistic Director of Bristol Old Vic Tom Morris and Matt Hemley from The Stage discuss the viability of touring UK stage shows in Europe post Brexit as the National Theatre announce today that their planned European tour of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time will not go ahead.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Hilary DunnMain image: The K-pop girl group BlackPink on stage Image credit: Rich Fury/Getty Images

In 2006 a friend of the actor and writer Lorien Haynes died. Haynes's grief has found unusual expression - in a romantic comedy starring Sian Clifford and Nikesh Patel. In Good Grief the central character is dead. Director Natalie Abrahami has created an unusual hybrid of film and theatre, shot in what looks like a rehearsal studio, with a set of cardboard boxes - one marked 'cupboard'. Between scenes we see the crew setting lights and microphones. The critic Alice Saville reviews.Comic novelist Shalom Auslander talks to Tom about his latest novel, Mother for Dinner. Seventh Seltzer is a Cannibal-American who has done everything he can to break from his past, but in his overbearing, narcissistic mother's last moments he is drawn back into the life he left behind. At her deathbed, she whispers in his ear the two words he always knew she would: Eat me. The book explores ideas of legacy, assimilation, the things we owe our families, and the things we owe ourselves.As the National Gallery in London announces plans for its 200th anniversary in 2024, we discuss how museums and galleries might be different in a post pandemic future. With National Gallery Director Gabriele Finaldi and David Anderson, Director of the National Museums of Wales.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Timothy Prosser

As the nation waits for the vaccine and lockdown restrictions to ease, what can literature teach us about the art of waiting? Writer Rebecca Stott, critic Alex Clark and poet Anthony Anaxagorou discuss the art of waiting, whether cheerfully or 'with a green and yellow melancholy… like Patience on a monument' as Viola says in Twelfth Night.Lolita Chakrabarti’s play Hymn begins at a funeral where two men meet, and begin to form a remarkable bond. Lolita discusses her play that uses music and dance to chart the developing bond between these men. The play that begins streaming live from the Almeida Theatre this week.What do you remember of The Silence of the Lambs? It was released 30 years ago yesterday - on St Valentine's Day. The critic Michael Carlson looks back at this horror classic which uses elements of the rom-com genre, and argues we are wrong to think Lecter is the central figure. Clarice Starling, the FBI trainee, played by Jodie Foster, is the focus, and the film plays out from her perspective. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Simon RichardsonMain image above: Adrian Lester as Gil in Hymn Image credit: Marc Brenner

British jazz pianist and broadcaster Julian Joseph joins us to look at the life and music of his good friend; pianist and composer Chick Corea. Chick began his career in the early 60’s, released his first album in 1968 and over more than 5 decades he played with just about every big name in jazz, winning 23 Grammy awards and was still composing and performing new work just months ago – most recently a concerto inspired by the music of Bela BartokElusive pop sensation Sia makes her film directorial debut with Music, the story of a troubled older sister learning to love and live with her autistic younger sister. It’s released in the UK this week under a barrage of criticism from the autistic community which has seen Sia apologise for depicting a potentially lethal restraint technique, and for casting a neurotypical actress (long-time collaborator Maddie Ziegler) as the autistic eponymous character. TV writer and author of Drama Queen: One Autistic Woman and a Life of Unhelpful Labels Sara Gibbs joins film critic Tim Robey to review the film. They also take a look at the film Democrats presented during Donald Trump's second impeachment trial on 9 February for its cinematic technique and editing.When Riva Lehrer was born in 1958 with spina bifida, most children like her were not expected to survive. In her Barbellion prize winning memoir, Golem Girl, she recounts her life as a disabled person, using her paintings as a companion to her words. She joins us today to discuss the paradox of visibility, and how she uses art to amplify the lives of those who are usually left unseen.Every year the Arts Foundation makes award of £10,000 to assist recipients with living and working costs - helping them to carry on creating. All five winners are talking about their winning projects on Front Row. The third is Shneel Malik, a bio-architect. Her work Indus is a wall of tiles impressed with what look like the veins of leaves, down which water pours. It is strikingly beautiful - and very practical. The channels of the veins hold a micro-algae gel that purifies the water, contaminated by toxins in processes such as textile dyeing by small enterprises in India. It prevents pollution and allows the water - a scarce resource - to be recycled. Shneel Malik explains her work and its potential. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Tim Prosser Studio manager: Duncan Hannant

Screenwriter and novelist Ben Hopkins talks to Tom about his ambitious new novel, Cathedral. It's a portrait of the construction of the medieval period's greatest buildings, featuring a cast of intriguing characters all vying for power - from the bishop to his treasurer to local merchants and lowly stone cutters.Faith, Hope and Glory is a new drama series on Radio 4 which sees British playwrights Roy Williams, Rex Obano, and Winsome Pinnock chart the history of postwar Britain through the intersecting lives of three women. Starting in 1946, a week of 15 minute dramas which set the scene: Hope and Jim’s baby, entrusted to Eunice to take home to Antigua, is lost at Tilbury Docks, and found by Gloria and Clement, a celibate couple, who decide to keep her and call her Joy. The series continues with three 45 minute plays. Winsome Pinnock and Rex Obano join Tom to discuss the series.Luke Jerram is the next artist to feature in #FrontRowGetCreative, where artists encourage you to try your hand at a piece of art. Today, he focuses on sound, which has been an important component to much of his work, from installing 2000 pianos in public spaces in 65 cities around the world to etching the sound of his own voice on the engagement ring for his wife (which actually plays!).Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Hilary Dunn

Documentary-maker Adam Curtis crafts densely-constructed, visually-fragmented work so packed full of ideas and images that you can’t take your eyes off the screen for a moment. He pulls together disparate images and soundtrack to create a mesmerising hypothesis. He discusses his newest work, Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, which debuts on BBC iPlayer this Thursday.Welcome to Your Fantasy and The Missing are two new true crime podcasts swelling the ranks in a genre which continues to feature highly in both Spotify and Apple podcast charts. Crime writer and true podcast fan Denise Mina, Natalia Petrzela, presenter and co-producer of Welcome To Your Fantasy, and true crime podcast maker Hannah Maguire, co-host of RedHanded, discuss the continuing appeal of this format.We’ve another in our continuing series, Moments of Joy, showing how art can brighten dark times. Today it’s the turn of writer Max Liu, who celebrates a moment in Annie Baker‘s drama The Flick, which defies theatrical conventions to great effect. It also reminds us of the unacknowledged value of small talk.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May

Tom Hanks stars in Paul Greengrass's new film, News of the World. Hanks plays Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a Civil War veteran who crosses paths with Johanna (Helena Zengel), a 10-year-old taken in by the Kiowa people six years earlier and raised as one of their own. Gavia Baker-Whitelaw gives us her verdict on the western. Songwriter Roger Cook discusses Thursday’s world premiere of Next Year in Jerusalem, the title song of a musical he wrote with Lionel Bart 47 years ago. Roger is now hoping to revive the musical they never managed to stage at the time, and shares an exclusive recording of one of the songs, sung by him and Lionel Bart.Mary Wilson was a founding members of The Supremes, one of the most successful and influential girl groups of all time to spring from the Motown stable. To celebrate her life, Kevin Le Gendre looks at what she achieved and her influence on the British beat group scene at the time.Jean-Claude Carriere, who died yesterday, aged 89, had an extraordinary career. He published his first novel in 1957. His first screenplay was filmed in 1962. He carried on writing novels and films - he acted, too - until 2019. He worked with Jacques Tati and wrote most of Luis Bunuel's later films, including The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and That Obscure Object of Desire. He collaborated with Peter Brook on one of the most important productions in 20th Century theatre, the nine-hour-long stage version of The Mahabharata. Critic Christopher Cook assesses Carriere's cultural significance, paying tribute to a great French artist and intellectual. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Jerome Weatherald