Front Row

Ten years ago, Jude Kelly founded WOW – the Women of the World foundation – aimed at celebrating women and girls and the challenges they face in society. The former artistic director of London’s Southbank Centre discusses this weekend’s WOW Festival in collaboration with the BBC, the first to take place online because of the pandemic.Emma Thompson reads one of her favourite poems. It's by Liz Lochhead, the former Scottish Makar, and called Photograph, Art Student, Female, Working Class.How do you set about writing a musical? In the first of a new series, Front Row follows a team of creatives led by writer Poppy Burton Morgan and composer Ben Toth, through every stage of the process of developing House Fire, a new musical about the climate crisis. With art galleries across the world closed, access to art for pleasure and education is severely limited and sorely missed, but some art organisations and games companies have developed games to help art lovers continue to engage with art at home. Gabrielle de la Puente of The White Pube, a collaboration of two art critics, joins Tom to review the Pompidou Centre’s single-player game Prisme 7 and the online multiplayer game Occupy White Walls. Main image: Jude Kelly Image credit: Ellie kurttzPresenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Julian May

Alicia Keys, the 15-time Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, best known for her hit Girl On Fire and her vocal on Jay-Z’s Empire State of Mind, discusses her early years growing up in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, and her success in the music industry at a very young age, which she describes in her new autobiography, More Myself.Vanessa Redgrave shares her VE Day poetry performance from the recital Voices of Remembrance, cancelled due to the lockdown, and describes the significance of the anniversary to her.Playwright Simon Stephens on his online adaptation of acclaimed stage work Sea Wall, starring 'hot priest' Andrew Scott (Fleabag, Sherlock Holmes), and performed in one room with only three cuts in single take, using a locked-off camera.BBC Sounds recently released a selection of free audiobooks of GCSE English Literature texts, including a wide range, from The War of the Worlds to The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. As part of Radio 4’s education initiative we’re asking writers to record introductions to the books, and today novelist Richard T Kelly offers his guide to the Sherlock Holmes mystery The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Emma Wallace Studio Manager: John Boland

BBC Director of Content Charlotte Moore – who oversees the BBC’s TV channels, and Stephen Lambert – producer of hit shows including Gogglebox, consider the effects of the lockdown on the TV landscape, and how it will look in the coming months.Will Pound is a virtuoso harmonica player who has been nominated three times for Musician of the Year at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, and who has played with Paul McCartney and Robbie Williams. His new album is a collection of 27 tunes from each of the member European Union member states. He tells Kirsty about the discoveries he's made in this musical exploration, and performs live.Next year the Royal Albert Hall is set to celebrate its 150th birthday, but its CEO, Craig Hassall, fears that social distancing measures could lead to financial disaster. He discusses his concerns for one of the most famous music venues in the world. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Timothy Prosser

Jeremy Deller is one of Britain’s most celebrated artists, best known for his works We’re Here Because We’re Here and The Battle of Orgreave. Mostly collaborative, his work spans music, documentaries, posters, installations and historical re-enactments. From convincing a brass band to cover techno music for his Acid Brass project, to touring a bombed car from the Iraq War around the US, his work encompasses politics, history and social anthropology. His latest projects include Everybody in the Place, a BBC4 documentary exploring rave culture, and Putin’s Happy, a short film following pro- and anti-Brexit protestors in Parliament Square 2019. Deller won the Turner Prize in 2004 and represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2013. He joins Tom Sutcliffe to discuss his career and how he is producing art during the lockdown.Main image: Jeremy Deller Image credit: Jeremy DellerPresenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Lucy Wai

Continuing his weekly live performances as Front Row’s Lockdown Artist in Residence, Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson performs live from the empty Harpa concert hall in Reykjavik. Tonight Víkingur will play The Arts and the Hours by Rameau, an interlude from the 18th Century French composer’s final opera, Les Boreades. George The Poet is a London-born spoken word performer of Ugandan heritage. His podcast 'Have You Heard George’s Podcast?' has won armfuls of awards and his work as a recording artist and a social commentator has now been recognised at the Visionary Honours Awards for championing diversity and inclusion in the arts, entertainment and showbiz.Elizabeth Newman, director of the Pitlochry Festival Theatre, is directing David Greig's new play Adventures of the Painted People remotely, the actors all separately isolated. Towards the end of the first week she tells John Wilson how the work is going. She explains too the unique situation of her theatre, in a small community in the Scottish Highlands, its financial predicament and how through imaginative creative initiatives it is continuing its role. Professor John Mullan is celebrating the merits of reading, or re-reading, the novels of Jane Austen during lockdown. Today, the title that’s many people’s favourite, thanks not least to countless adaptations: Pride and Prejudice.Presenter John Wilson Producer Jerome Weatherald Studio Manager Tim Heffer

Award-winning film-maker, artist, and writer Miranda July is known for making art out of the everyday and overlooked aspects of life. It was her 2005 film, You, Me and Everything We Know, that brought her to public attention. As a monograph dedicated to her work is published, she joins Front Row to discuss a protean career which has seen her push at the boundaries of making art. In 1982 post-punk group, The Fall, led by charismatic frontman Mark E. Smith, released their fourth album Hex Enduction Hour. At the time the group were struggling for attention and success outside their small but devoted following that included Radio 1 DJ John Peel who regularly championed their music. Hex Enduction Hour changed all that and five decades on is still regarded as a masterpiece. Former Fall drummer, Paul Hanley has written a new book, Have A Bleedin Guess, about the making of the album and is joined by music critic Kate Mossman to discuss the album's significance.For a new occasional series Front Row is commissioning audio diaries from Britain’s cultural leaders about the work they're doing to continue to connect with their audiences and to ensure their institutions will be able to open again once this crisis ends. First up is Gemma Bodinetz, Artistic Director of the Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse theatres.English folk group, The Unthanks, released a new album, Diversions Vol 5: Live and Unaccompanied, just before the lockdown. The album marked a return to the unaccompanied vocal harmonising that made the group’s name. They were supposed to be on tour, instead they’ve launched a new series of daily performances - At Home With The Unthanks - on their Facebook page. Singer Becky Unthank gives a live performance from her home in Tynedale Valley, Northumberland.Presenter: Katie Popperwell Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Writer and director Alice Wu talks to Samira Ahmed about her new film, The Half of It, a queer love triangle that draws on the Cyrano de Bergerac story. Set in small town America, the film explores the Asian American experience and navigating love, friendship and fitting in at High School. Among the anxieties associated with the coronavirus pandemic many readers are finding it more and more difficult to concentrate on a book. But the modern adult's ability to concentrate has been under pressure from the myriad sources of digital text we confront daily. To explore the psychology and neurology of modern reading, Samira is joined by author and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce and academic Maryanne Woolf, author of Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. When the baritone Peter Brathwaite's opera engagements were cancelled because of the pandemic he took up the Getty Museum's challenge to remake paintings with household objects. He searches for works featuring black people and what began as a pastime has developed into a serious artistic project winning wide attention. He tells Samira Ahmed what has drawn him to this, how he goes about it and what he has learned.The Stranglers' keyboard player Dave Greenfield died on Sunday having been infected with the coronavirus. He wrote their best-known song, Golden Brown, which, involving a harpsichord an eddying melody and varying time signatures, is an unusual work for a punk band. Composer and Radio 3 presenter Hannah Peel explains the allure of this sophisticated piece, which depends on a strange rhythm shift, from 12/8 to 13/8.And The Nan and Elsie Transcripts, a micro-psychodrama recorded remotely by members of the BBC's Radio Drama Company.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May

Violinist Nicola Benedetti talks about her new Virtual Benedetti Sessions of free online tuition, and her new album of music by Edward Elgar, including his violin concerto.A new BBC initiative - Music Memories - has been launched to help friends and family of dementia patients communicate with them through music. We're joined by Sarah Metcalfe, from Playlist For Life, and by Sebastian Crutch, Professor of Neuropsychology at the UCL Institute of Neurology.Creation Theatre has found a way of involving the audience in their live streamed production of The Tempest, with actors performing in their own homes, whilst the audience respond live from their homes. Critic Charlotte Keatley explains and reviews this new interactive production.David Crosby and Chrissie Hynde remember how the killing of four Kent State university students 50 years ago today inspired the classic protest song, Ohio.Producer: Timothy Prosser Presenter: John WilsonMain image: Nicola Benedetti Image credit: Andy Gotts

Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson, Front Row’s Lockdown Artist in Residence, continues his weekly live performances from the empty Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik. Tonight he plays an energetic piece by the American minimalist composer Philip Glass, Etude No.9.What has been the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on our mental health and how might being creative at home help our mental wellbeing at this challenging time? Dr Daisy Fancourt is leading the UK’s biggest study looking at the impact the coronavirus crisis has had on our mental health. She explains their findings so far and the potential impact craft can have on mental wellbeing. And embroiderer Ekta Kaul and maker Joe Hartley discuss how their own practice has changed under lockdown, the online tutorials they’ve been running and how you can start making at home yourself.We mark the loss of the great afrobeat drummer Tony Allen whose death has been announced at the age of 79 with an interview for Front Row from 2014. And novelist Sara Collins and critic Karen Krizanovich review Hollywood, the Netflix series from Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy, and the new Lionel Shriver novel The Motion of the Body Through Space.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Sarah Johnson Studio manager: Matilda Macari

Oscar-winning director Damien Chazelle discusses The Eddy, his new Netflix musical drama mini-series set in a multi-lingual Paris jazz club, written by Jack Thorne. Dame Emma Thompson reads one of her favourite poems and discusses her new short film Extinction, made during the Extinction Rebellion protests. With cinemas closed and many film releases on hold, what power does lockdown streaming have to change the industry? After the success of Universal's Trolls World Tour as a digital-only release, it says it will continue to put films out via both cinemas and streaming after restrictions are lifted. In response, world leading cinema chain AMC has said it will boycott Universal films, makers of hits like James Bond. Meanwhile the Oscars will for the first time include digital-only films in next year's awards. To discuss the significance of this, Kirsty is joined by film critic Larushka Ivan Zadeh.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Jerome Weatherald Studio manager Duncan Hannant