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Front Row: Mandolin player Avi Avital, Marina Abramović, Possessor reviewed

27/11/2020

Mandolin player Avi Avital, Marina Abramović, Possessor reviewed

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Mandolin player Avi Avital, Marina Abramović, Possessor reviewed

Avi Avital on the wonders of the mandolin and its repertoire.

Mandolin player Avi Avital, performance artist Marina Abramović, what the latest allocation of tiers means for theatres, and Brandon Cronenberg's horror Possessor reviewed.

Avi Avital., the world's leading mandolin player, on his new album The Art of the Mandolin, in which he performs music specially written for the instrument by Vivaldi, Beethoven and Scarlatti through to contemporary composers David Bruce and Giovanni Sollima. 

Yesterday the Government announced which areas of England will be in Tiers 1, 2 or 3.  For theatres and live performance venues in Tier 3 it's disappointing news as they will have to remain closed.  What will be possible in Tier 2?  Matt Hemley of The Stage joins us to look at the picture across the nation including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and we hear from Chris Stafford of the Curve Theatre in Leicester.

Marina Abramović, the celebrated performance artist, discusses her takeover of a whole evening of Sky Arts next weekend. The five-hour series of programmes she’s curating and directing will delve into a hundred years of performance art, and guest Jarvis Cocker will explore meditation according to the ‘Abramović Method’.

Possessor is a sci-fi psychological horror film written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg, son of visionary film-maker David Cronenberg, starring Andrea Riseborough. Film critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and crime novelist Abir Mukherjee review. 

Presenter:  Kirsty Lang
Producer:  Sarah Johnson
Studio Manager:  Matilda Macari

Main image: Avi Avital
Image credit: Christoph Kostlin

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