Private Passions

Robert Cohan is the founding father of contemporary dance in Britain. Born in Brooklyn in 1925, he was first struck by the power of dance whilst on leave from serving in France during the Second World War, when he was taken to see a ballet at Sadler's Wells. Back in New York in 1946, a single modern dance class at the Martha Graham studio convinced him of his vocation. He worked with Graham for almost two decades before moving to London in the late sixties, to found what became the London Contemporary Dance Theatre. Cohan defined the style of British contemporary dance with his breadth of vision, challenging physical style and inspirational teaching. And virtually all the major figures in 20th-century choreography have been influenced by Cohan - Siobhan Davies and Richard Alston to name just two. Ahead of his 90th birthday celebrations at The Place, Robert Cohan talks to Michael Berkeley about the music that's inspired him during his extraordinary career. He movingly recalls his time on active duty in France, including the time when a can of ham and eggs saved his life by deflecting shrapnel. He reveals the sometimes tempestuous reality of working with Martha Graham, and shares his plans for his tenth decade in dance. He shares his love for Elgar, Vivaldi and Prokofiev, but also celebrates the music of less well known composers Barry Guy, Alan Hovhaness, Jon Keliehor, and Eleanor Alberga. Produced by Jane Greenwood. A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Andy McNab is very lucky to be alive today; in fact from the beginning his life has been characterised by exceptional risk and danger. As a baby, he was found abandoned in a Harrods carrier bag on the steps of Guy's Hospital. By the time he was a teenager, he was in trouble with the police. Joining the army at 16, he served in the SAS, and in 1991, during the First Iraq war, he led a secret mission to infiltrate behind enemy lines. It was a disaster: he was captured, and tortured savagely. Three of his fellow soldiers didn't survive. Andy McNab's account of his captivity and eventual escape, Bravo Two Zero, became a world-wide best-seller and launched him on a career as a writer. Since then there have been more than 30 thrillers, with sales totalling 32 million. So the baby who was left in a carrier bag is not just a survivor, he's hugely successful.In Private Passions Andy McNab reveals the central place of music in his life, and particularly his passion for opera. Opera, he says, is the only thing that makes him cry: he chooses Wagner, Verdi and Puccini. McNab reveals too his love of the calm reflective music of Gregorian chant, which he first heard sung by the Benedictine monks of Belmont Abbey, when he was training for the SAS in Herefordshire. He talks movingly about his imprisonment and torture, and about how the particular sounds of that time are burned into his memory: the jangle of keys, the rattle of doors. To escape those dark memories, he chooses one of the most joyful pieces of music ever written: Handel's Messiah. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Michael Berkeley's guest is Anna Meredith - one of Britain's leading composers coming up from the younger generation. She is hard to label as she composes and performs both acoustic and electronic music, and her work has been performed everywhere from the Last Night of the Proms to flashmob events in the M6 services. She studied at York University and the Royal College of Music, and alongside numerous awards, she's been Composer in Residence with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and a judge for BBC Young Musician of the Year. She was recently commissioned as part of the BBC Ten Pieces initiative to write a piece which will be played to primary school children across the country, to introduce them to classical music.In Private Passions she talks to Michael Berkeley about the music which inspires her, and explains why composers now still have a lot to learn from 16th century madrigals. She celebrates Sibelius and his extraordinary 5th symphony, and Holst's music for wind band, unfashionable though it may be. She introduces work by a new generation of composers too: Emily Hall, Richard Ayres and Owen Pallet. And she reveals why she goes into schools to inspire teenage girls by playing Bjork, and reflects on what it means to be a woman composer now:My music tends to be quite bombastic, and I've heard people say "It doesn't sound very female", or "What's a nice girl like you doing writing music like that?" When I'm doing electronic music I do all the computer stuff myself and sometimes there's an assumption that there must be a guy somewhere behind the scenes working all the software magic...A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Writer Ben Okri chooses his favourite music and talks to Michael Berkeley about the power of stories and their central place in human life.The author of the Booker Prize-winning The Famished Road, he has written many other acclaimed novels - the latest being The Age of Magic - and he's also published collections of poetry, short stories and essays.A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Ben Okri has been awarded an OBE as well as numerous international prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa and the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum. His choices of music include Wagner, Beethoven, Miles Davis, Pachelbel's Canon, and one of his poems set to music by Paul Simon's son Harper.Producer: Jane GreenwoodA Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Nicky Clayton is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Professor of Comparative Cognition at Cambridge, and she's done more than any other scientist to transform the way we think about animal intelligence, and particularly the intelligence of birds. She's spent her career observing rooks and jays and other members of the corvid family, watching them as they play tricks on each other, and sing and dance together.Her work has challenged the assumption that only humans have the intelligence to plan for the future and reminisce about the past, that only humans can understand the minds of others. She says that she's spent most of her life wondering what it would be like to be a bird: 'to fly, to see colours in the ultraviolet, and to sing as beautifully as they do'. Alongside her scientific research, Nicky Clayton has a passion for tango, and has collaborated with Ballet Rambert as a scientist in residence.In Private Passions she talks to Michael Berkeley about the creative inspiration she finds in music. Her musical choices include Ravel, Janacek and Bruckner, and Astor Piazzolla's Tango for an Angel; as well as Messiaen's Catalogue of the Birds, and the call of a reed warbler.Produced by Elizabeth BurkeA Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Henrietta Bowden-Jones has spent the last three decades studying the mind.Born in Italy to an English father and an Italian mother, she has dedicated her career to helping people overcome addictions - both in the lab as a researcher in neuroscience, and as a psychiatrist treating everyone from homeless drug addicts to city traders with gambling problems.She shares with Michael Berkeley musical memories of growing up in Milan with an opera-loving nanny; the shock of being sent to an English boarding school as a teenager; her love of art as well as science; and how her pioneering work on addiction has helped thousands of people rebuild their lives. Her music choices include Mozart, Dvorak and Reynaldo Hahn's charming Venetian songs. Producer: Jane GreenwoodA Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

If you want to know how to wield a Spartan spear, or whether Athens really was the cradle of democracy - or indeed what ancient Greek music might have sounded like, Paul Cartledge is the man to go to. He has probably done more than anyone else in the past three decades to advance knowledge of ancient Greek culture - both in academic circles and in the public arena. He was until very recently the first A G Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge, a chair founded to study a thousand years of Greek cultural achievements and to highlight their lasting influence on society today. Paul talks to Michael Berkeley about why ancient history is relevant to us today; why the myths of the classical world have been such an enduring inspiration for composers; why democracy would work better without political parties; and the pitfalls of being a historical advisor to Hollywood. And Paul shares with Michael his passion for music that stretches back to his childhood, including Brahms, Bach, Rossini, Stravinsky - and Bob Dylan. Producer: Jane GreenwoodA Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

On Private Passions Michael Berkeley's guest is the charity CEO and cancer blogger, Kate Gross, who sadly died on Christmas morning, at the age of only 36.Michael Berkeley writes:'Kate Gross was an unforgettable guest on Private Passions: so bright and charismatic, full of life and curiosity about the world, despite being gravely ill when we met last autumn. And indeed, all through her life she was the kind of person everybody envied. Hugely successful in her career, by only 27, she had risen so quickly up through the civil service that she was briefing Tony Blair before Prime Minister's Questions; by 29 she had left the civil service to set up Blair's African Charity, the Africa Governance Initiative, managing an annual budget of 5 million pounds. But then her life fell apart. On the plane back from America, she collapsed, and went straight to hospital when she landed. It was then that she was diagnosed with Stage 4 bowel cancer: a terminal diagnosis.This was how in 2012 Kate Gross the CEO turned into Kate Gross the cancer blogger. Her blog - which became a book, Late Fragments, published by William Collins - chronicled her life in and out of hospital over the last two years. It's very moving, but also sharp and funny. Sadly she died before the book was published. But her family are happy for this programme to be broadcast; Kate knew it would be her memorial.'In Private Passions, Kate talks about the music which has sustained her: Schubert's final Piano Sonata; Mozart's 'The Magic Flute'; Bernstein's 'West Side Story', Dvorak's 'Songs my Mother Taught Me' and Ralph Fiennes reading T.S.Eliot's 'Four Quartets'.

James Bond, Simon Templar... Michael Berkeley's guest today can only be Roger Moore. He played Bond for twelve years, in seven films, more than any other actor. And before that he was a much-loved figure throughout the 1960s as The Saint. In fact he's rarely been off the big and small screens since he began his acting career in 1945, working as an extra alongside his idol Stewart Granger in Caesar and Cleopatra.What's less well known about Roger is his passion for music. He counts many musicians among his friends and has chosen music performed by two of them - Julian Rachlin and Janine Jansen, who reflect his passion for strings. His other great love is opera, and he entertains us with stories about music from his heroine Joan Sutherland, as well as La Traviata, a piece of music connected with one of his earlier film roles. And he shares the secret of how, after 86 years of mostly star-studded living, he?s managed to keep his feet on the ground. Producer: Jane Greenwood.

Dame Vivienne Westwood needs little introduction; her name and her brand are known across the world. Indeed, in the Far East she's made it into the top ten most recognised global brands, with Coca Cola and Disney. Her fame rests not just on her fashion designs, daring and sexy and original as they are: because Vivienne Westwood is also the co-creator, with Malcolm McLaren, of punk - that revolution of music and fashion that changed Britain back in the mid-70s. What is less well known is her passion for classical music, and for going to concerts - 'it's brilliant, it's only £10, much cheaper than going out to a discotheque'. In Private Passions, she talks to Michael Berkeley about the music which has inspired her creations, and about creating costumes for the opera. She describes the hardship of her early days as a designer, when she was so short of money that she lived in a caravan with her two small sons. She remembers the heady days of punk, and marching up and down King's Road dressed entirely in rubber. ('Rubberwear for the office' was the concept, and it was very comfortable, she claims.) She tells the story of how she met her husband Andreas, who now designs with her, thanks to a cow. And why there is nothing more attractive than a man in a suit. Especially when he's bending over.Her music choices include the climactic orgy from Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe; ballet music by Stravinsky and Milhaud; Bach's St John Passion; Handel's Alcina; Larry Williams; and Musorgsky's Pictures at An Exhibition: 'If there are any punks out there - just listen to this - it will blow your mind!'Produced by Elizabeth Burke.