Front Row

Original version

BBC Radio 4 LW

Magazines & Reviews

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music.

BBC Radio 4 FM

Front Row: Cellist Abel Selaocoe, Art & History, Curlews In Music

14/09/2022

Cellist Abel Selaocoe, Art & History, Curlews In Music

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Cellist Abel Selaocoe, Art & History, Curlews In Music

Abel Selaocoe plays live, seeing art and history from a new perspective, curlews in music

Cellist Abel Selaocoe plays live in the studio, seeing art and history from a new perspective, and the curlew in music

Genre-defying South African cellist Abel Selaocoe speaks to Samira and performs a piece from his new album Where Is Home (Hae Ke Kae), which will be launched at a performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. He is about to become Artist In Residence at London's Southbank Centre. His inventive and virtuosic compositions and performance style fuse Baroque repertoire with traditional African music, combining classical cello with body percussion and voice.

A rich crop of recent books shows that art is being viewed from a new perspective. Michael Bird, author of This Is Tomorrow: Twentieth Century Britain And Its Artists, and Frances Spalding, who has written The Real And The Romantic: English Art Between Two World Wars, join Front Row to talk about not the history of art, but art as history.  

The calls of curlews are memorable, mysterious, and musical. They have appeared in music and poetry over the ages, and they continue to fascinate artists. Simmerdim: Curlew Sounds is an unusual new album - two CDs, one of music inspired by curlews, the other a series of soundscapes capturing their calls, recorded in places where these threatened birds are still to be found. The musician Merlyn Driver, whose idea Simmerdim was, explains his compulsion to make the records.   

Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Sarah Johnson

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Front Row

Cellist Abel Selaocoe, Art & History, Curlews In Music

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 4 LW

About BBC Radio 4