The Essay

Radio 3 presenter Jumoké Fashola celebrates the singer-songwriter whose music and life story helped her to find her own voice, the American Nina Simone

Radio 3 presenter Ian Skelly celebrates the composer who helped him see humanity as integrated with nature, the Frenchman Jean Mouton

Radio 3 presenter Elizabeth Alker celebrates the first "unclassified" composer, the Russian Sofia Gubaidulina

Radio 3 presenter Hannah French celebrates the composer who liberates her from "imposter syndrome", the Venetian Barbara Strozzi

Radio 3’s veteran jazz broadcaster Geoffrey Smith concludes his series on perceptions of jazz in Britain, told through his own experience as an American settling in the UK fifty years ago. In 1963 the great tenorist Sonny Rollins provided one of the high points of Geoffrey's jazz life in a gig at the Minor Key in Detroit. Fresh from the famous sabbatical which produced his album The Bridge, he was in towering form. Nearly four decades later in October 1999 Rollins came to London for a performance at the Barbican just a few days after the fatal rail crash outside Paddington station. At the start of the concert he announced he wanted to dedicate it to the people who had died, "in hopes that they are somewhere listening." Then he played with unforgettable power and invention - Rollins at his best, than which there is nothing greater in jazz. And in the succeeding years, every time he returned to the Barbican, he produced a concert at that same peerless level, leaving his audience crying for more. Geoffrey Smith reflects on the connection this great American musician forged with his British audience over this series of astonishing performances.

Writer and broadcaster Geoffrey Smith continues his series on the changing perceptions of jazz in Britain, by taking a closer look at the celebrated British pianist and composer Stan Tracey. Stan was an abiding presence in Geoffrey's jazz media life, as reviewer and interviewer, and Geoffrey thinks of him not just as a paragon of British jazz, but of jazz in Britain. He was the real thing, a jazz muso to the bone, totally committed to the music. And to him that's what it was. He once told Geoffrey that when he went out to a gig, he didn't say to himself "I'm going to play some jazz", but "I'm going to play some music." Jazz was his music virtually from the time he heard it, trailing down the stairs from the flat above his family home. His route to jazz keyboard went through an accordion - with which he happily played pass-the-hat gigs in pub - to achieving his own style on piano, following trips to New York as a member of shipboard bands in ‘Geraldo's Navy’. He later became house pianist at Ronnie's Scott's and a musician's favourite - the great Sonny Rollins once asked, "does anyone here realise how good he is?" Geoffrey pays tribute to a British player with an unmistakably quirky, determined personal style.

Geoffrey Smith continues his series on changing perceptions of jazz in Britain, focusing on the visits of two celebrated American artists, Duke Ellington and Bud Freeman.Britain has always been a favourite destination for American jazz stars. It played a key role in the career of Duke Ellington, whose visit here in 1933 generated such enthusiasm among the musical elite that it convinced him to attempt more ambitious musical works. Equally smitten by the mix of British history, culture and style was the legendary Chicago saxophonist Bud Freeman, whose British affinity took roots in the 20s when he and his fellow Chicago jazz pioneers adopted the Prince of Wales as their model for dress and behaviour, and honoured him with their composition, Prince of Wails. Bud settled in London in the late 70s, when Geoffrey became his regular companion for city strolls and got to know him well.

Writer and broadcaster Geoffrey Smith continues his series on the changing perceptions of jazz in Britain, focusing on the audience. In a culture obsessed with interpreting social signs, the British are fascinated by jazz as style, attitude, behaviour. In the 1920s, jazz was the vogue music of the Bright Young Things: the Prince of Wales himself was fond of sitting in on drums with visiting Americans. On the other end of the political spectrum, the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm saw the music as the epitome of working class art. And the fixation with the purity of jazz's folk roots drove the trad jazz boom of the 1950s, a playing style that was once seen as a sign of hip progressive politics. For Geoffrey, all this signifying makes it harder to get through to the music.

Veteran jazz broadcaster Geoffrey Smith reflects on the changing perceptions of jazz in Britain. He questions the term 'jazzer' and highlights the genre's serious identity as American classical music. The podcast explores the challenges of living the jazz life and the speaker's personal experience with jazz and its transition into fusion. It also discusses the origins of jazz in Britain and its association with non-conformity and rebellion against societal expectations.

Writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns ends his series of essays on cities influenced by African migration in Cape Town.Making his way around a city he knows intimately, respects abundantly and loves profusely, Lindsay asks what it means to be Capetonian. From the city's tragic racial history and its legacy, to the wave of migration from elsewhere in Africa, this is a place whose identity is constantly shifting. And as he concludes his series of essays, Lindsay ponders his own ambivalent feelings towards this demographic, political, social, spiritual change. Producer: Giles Edwards