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Front Row

Mark-Anthony Turnage, Clocks exhibition, Colum McCann, Martin Simpson

Duration: 30 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 FMLatest broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 LW

Available for over a year

Mark-Anthony Turnage discusses composing his first piano concerto which gets its UK premiere on Thursday at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. He reveals how difficult he found it to write, and where he drew his inspiration from.

As the Clockmaker's Museum - which holds the world's oldest clock and watch collection - is rehoused at the Science Museum, Kirsty takes a look round with the keeper of the collection, Sir George White.

Colum McCann speaks to Kirsty Lang about his new collection of short stories, Thirteen Ways of Looking. When he was composing them Colum was physically assaulted so badly that he was hospitalized. He describes how that attack affected his writing.

The guitarist and singer-songwriter Martin Simpson grew up in Scunthorpe where the steelworks there made a profound impression on him, and everywhere he has travelled he has been conscious of that industry. His song 'Home Again' expresses this, and his premonition that, one day lights of the furnace that illuminated his childhood would dim - and now they are about to. We hear his song while he reflects on its genesis. Show less

Contributors

Presenter:
Kirsty Lang
Interviewed Guest:
Mark-Anthony Turnage
Interviewed Guest:
George White
Interviewed Guest:
Colum McCann
Interviewed Guest:
Martin Simpson

About this data

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