Front Row

James Bay is a multi-award-winning singer-songwriter and guitarist. He has released two albums, Chaos and the Calm, and Electric Light; for which he has won multiple Brits and been nominated for three Grammys. He was recording his third album when lockdown happened, but has been keeping busy - providing guitar lessons of his greatest hits on Instagram. He joins Kirsty Lang to perform his song Hold Back the River and to provide his top tips for beginner guitarists.Chilean director Pablo Larraín was Oscar-nominated for his film Jackie, about the life of Jackie Kennedy. Larraín discusses his latest film Ema, about a young reggaeton dancer in modern-day Chile who goes to great lengths to get her adopted child back after rashly handing him back to the state.The director Gurinder Chadha pays a tribute to the Indian actor Irrfan Khan who had died aged 53. Best known in Britain for his roles as the policeman in Slumdog Millionaire and Pi as an adult in The Life of Pi, Khan was a huge star in India, appearing in many films. He played the title role in Maqbool, a version of Macbeth set in the Mumbai underworld, and starred the Bollywood musical Life in a ...Metro. Graeae, the UK’s leading disabled-led theatre company has launched an eleven-week programme of online activity to provide audiences with a rich variety of work whilst the country is in lockdown. It has a deliberately in-your-face title: Crips Without Constraints – A Play, A Podcast, A Picture - and the intention is to embrace the need to isolate and at the same time celebrate the creativity of Deaf and disabled artists. Kirsty is joined by screenwriter, dramatist and Graeae patron Jack Thorne and one of the playwrights for this season, Kat Golding.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Julian May

Panamanian-American baritone Nmon Ford on fusing house music with opera and the legend of Orfeus to create a unique new work which was set to premiere at London’s Young Vic last week.Sinéad Gleeson pays tribute to the great Irish poet Eavan Boland, who died yesterday at the age of seventy five. Boland's poems often drew connections between the lives of Irish women past and present. Author Kit de Waal revisits a novel she has always struggled with - Thackeray's Vanity Fair, and she talks about The Big Book weekend - her new online literary festival (8 -10 May) which is part of the BBC's Culture in Quarantine initiative. Composer Alex Woolf has written a series of pieces for the musicians of the London Mozart Players to play in their own homes. Tonight on Front Row we give the world premiere of Homespun Miniatures No.2, for violin and cello. Main image: Nmon FordPresenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Timothy Prosser

Randy Newman is most widely known as the Oscar winning composer of the Toy Story films and he has won armfuls of Grammys too for his Southern States-inflected music. His latest release, ‘Stay Away’, is a charity single to raise money for the New Orleans’ Ellis Marsalis Center, in memory of the revered jazz musician and founder of the Marsalis dynasty who died from Covid 19.Latin Rocks On is a new book of song lyrics translated into ancient Latin. It’s author Sarah Rowley tells us why it’s a great way to learn the language and which songs work particularly well.Ola Ince’s new production of Romeo and Juliet was due to open at the Globe last week, launching its summer season. Its stars Alfred Enoch (Harry Potter, How To Get Away With Murder) and Rebekah Murrell (Nine Night) perform a scene from the iconic play for Front Row live from their homes. The Citadel, AJ Cronin’s groundbreaking novel about medical life in the 1920s, pre-NHS, returns to Radio 4 next week. The drama’s producer Gary Brown discusses its resonance today, and the technical challenges they faced recording it under lockdown. And Dr Christopher Peters, a cancer and general surgeon, reflects on his decade as a medical advisor for TV dramas from Trauma to Holby City, Eastenders, and Death in Paradise.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins Studio Manager: Matilda Macari

For Front Row’s Friday Review, BBC journalist Sophie Raworth and the novelist Naomi Alderman discuss the new TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s extraordinarily successful novel Normal People. They also review the new collection of short stories by Frances Leviston, The Voice in my Ear.Pianist Víkingur Ólafsson, Front Row's Artist in Residence during the lockdown, continues his weekly live performances from the Harpa Concert Hall in Iceland. This week Víkingur will play the sublime Andante from Bach's Organ Sonata No.4, transcribed for piano by August Stradal. The poet Seán Hewitt's discusses his first collection, Tongues of Fire, which contains poems about encounters in the natural world, with owls, trees and plants. He signed his book contract the day his father died and the pervading grief makes this a collection for our condition today. Theresa Lola, the Young People's Laureate for London, has launched an online initiative encouraging young people to write something that describes what is bringing them calm during the lockdown, Say your Peace. For Front Row's Culture Club, Theresa and Seán offer tips on how to begin writing a poem - and how to know when it's finished.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Timothy Prosser

Oliver Hermanus's new film about a gay teenage conscript and his brutal experience of being in the South African army during Apartheid is called Moffie, a common Afrikaans anti-gay slur. He tells us how a fear of homosexuality fuelled the problem of toxic masculinity that is still so prevalent in the country, and why he used such a provocative title for his film. This week is Lesbian Visibility Week and we’ll be considering how far LGBTQ+ campaigning progress has extended to the visibility of lesbians and lesbian relationships across books, film and TV, with Erica Gillingham, bookseller at London’s Gay’s The Word bookshop and Emma Smart, programmer for the BFI’s Flare Festival of queer cinema.Tonight is World Book Night, the annual celebration of books and writing that aims to encourage more adults to read for pleasure. Sharon D. Clarke, best known to TV audiences as Grace O'Brien in Doctor Who, will be joining Samira to read an excerpt from one of World Book Night’s specially chosen titles, Bedtime Stories for Stressed Out Adults. Digital copies of the book are available free via a link on the Front Row website. As the recent Thursday evening tradition of ClapForCarers continues shortly after we come off air, composer Anna Meredith discusses Handsfree, her instrument-free, 'body-percussion' piece which involves extensive clapping, which has been performed many times around the world and was included as part of the 2012 Proms Season.Main image: Kai Luke Brummer (Left) and Ryan de Villiers in the film Moffie Image credit: Daniel Rutland Manners/Curzon Artificial EyePresenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Jerome Weatherald Studio Manager: Donald MacDonald

Arts Minister Caroline Dinenage on the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis. We put questions to her from arts organisations around the country.Tomorrow marks the anniversary of Shakespeare’s birthday. To celebrate, actor Paapa Essiedu performs the iconic “To Be or Not To Be” soliloquy from Hamlet for us live from his home. Paapa played Hamlet in Simon Godwin’s highly acclaimed 2016 production at the RSC, which transplanted the action from Denmark to West Africa. It will be available to watch on iPlayer from tomorrow as part of the BBC’s Culture in Quarantine series. How can personal tragedy inspire comedy? Alice Fraser and Darren Harriott discuss talking about the death of a parent on stage – why do it, how do they make it work, and what has been the audience’s reaction.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Simon Richardson Studio Manager: Tim Heffer

Organist Anna Lapwood, who is Director of Music at Pembroke College Cambridge, performs a Bach chorale prelude, live on the new organ she has installed in her living room. She talks about her virtual Bach-a-thon, for which musicians post videos of themselves playing Bach, and her new role as conductor of the NHS Chorus-19 - a virtual choir of over 700 NHS staff across the UK. Front Row announces the shortlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020, and critics Alex Clark and Sarah Shaffi comment on the six novels that made it through from the longlist of 16. Gareth Evans, co-creator of the new Sky drama series Gangs of London, discusses how video games and his background in martial arts films influenced the look and feel of his story of a city being torn apart by the turbulent power struggles of the international gangs that control it.And the curlew. There are eight species of curlew. Or there were. Neither the Eskimo and the Slender-Billed curlew has been seen for decades. Out of the remaining six species, three are at risk of extinction. To draw attention to their plight, 21April has been designated World Curlew Day. These beautiful waders, with their elegant curved bills and haunting song, have long inspired musician and poets. The poet Jeremy Hooker lived in an area of rural Wales mid Wales. Every year the curlews came and he tried to capture them and their calls in language. We hear his poem, Curlew. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May Studio Manager: John Boland

Leading baritone Roderick Williams was halfway through an ENO run of Anthony Minghella’s production of Puccini's Madame Butterfly at the London Coliseum when it was closed due to the coronavirus. Now at home under lockdown, he joins us to for a special live performance of The Toreador’s Song from Bizet's Carmen in a rather different setting – on Skype from his kitchen.Scots Makar Jackie Kay on a new international poetry project, WRITE where we are NOW, which is inviting poets across the world to respond to the Coronavirus pandemic. It was launched today by Carol Ann Duffy and the Manchester Writing School. After Season Two divided critics, Mik Scarlet reviews Season Three of smash hit spy-action thriller Killing Eve. The story sees two fiercely intelligent women, equally obsessed with each other, go head to head in an epic game of cat and mouse.C Pam Zhang's debut novel How Much of These Hills is Gold is about the gold rush in the American West. It focuses on the missing stories of American history - of the thousands of Chinese Americans who came to build the railroads and to work in its mines. C Pam Zhang joins us from her home in San Francisco.We pay tribute to the French chanteur Christophe, who has died, by playing his first single from 1965, Aline. Producer : Dymphna Flynn Presenter : Samira Ahmed Sound Engineer: Matilda Macari

Adam Macqueen talks to Kirsty about his debut novel, Beneath the Streets, a counterfactual thriller set in London in the 1970s which imagines what might have happened had Liberal politician Jeremy Thorpe successfully arranged the murder of his ex-lover Norman Scott. The story, the historic version of which was recently dramatized by Russell T. Davies for television, features a cast of real-life characters including Prime Minister Harold Wilson, his senior adviser Lady Falkender, gay Labour peer Tom Driberg and the investigative journalist Paul Foot.Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson is Front Row’s Artist in Residence during the lockdown, performing live for us each week on the concert grand in the empty Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik. Tonight he plays an enigmatic piece by the French 18th Century composer Rameau, called La Cupis.Bryony Shanahan is joint artistic director of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. Dave Moutrey is Chief Executive at the venue HOME and Director of Culture for Manchester City Council. They talk about the challenges they face now their institutions are closed. What about their staff and their finances? Will things ever be the same again and what of their own working lives? What do they do, day to day, now?Last night the National Theatre streamed its popular production of Treasure Island and it is available, free, until next Thursday. When the show opened in the Olivier auditorium audiences were amazed by the set - it's a ship, a pub, a cave and a strange, pulsating island. And a pirate's corpse. It's impressive still on television. Kirsty talked to the designer, Lizzie Clachan on the set during a rehearsal just before the show opened, and we revisit this tonight. The Front Row Masterclass series continues. Amanda Litherland, presenter of 4 Extra’s Podcast Radio Hour and novelist and nature writer Melissa Harrison (who has just launched her own nature podcast The Stubborn Light Of Things) join Kirsty to talk about how to make your own podcast.The great American actor Brian Dennehy has died. His was a wide ranging career in films, on television and in the theatre. He was hailed for his performance as Willy Loman in the 50th anniversary production of Death of a Salesman, for which he won both a Tony and a Laurence Olivier Award. He spoke about his approach to this role in a programme called Playing the Salesman, and we hear some of his thoughts.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Julian May

Comedian Angela Barnes is the new host of Radio 4’s stalwart show The News Quiz. Fresh from recording the first episode of the new series, we ask how they’re keeping it funny when the only story is a deadly virus, and what it’s been like making the show under lockdown when there’s no audience to laugh at your jokes.When the coronavirus pandemic struck, Women’s Prize-winning novelist and games writer Naomi Alderman was in the middle of a new writing project. The subject? A piece of speculative fiction about a global pandemic. Alderman joins us to talk about the dilemmas a novelist faces when unpublished work is overtaken by real events.John Mullan on the delights of Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen's first published novel, that juxtaposes pain and pleasure to powerful effect. And how the physical qualities of viruses are re-created by two very different artists: Luke Jerram – the latest in his Glass Microbiology series of glass sculptures is a replica of Covid 19 - and the political cartoonist Martin Rowson. They talk to Front Row about the terrible beauty of viruses and the human attributes we project onto them. Image: Covid-19 glass sculpture by Luke Jerram Image credit: Luke JerramPresenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Sarah Johnson