This Cultural Life

Acclaimed American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato talks to John Wilson about the works and events that have made her the performer she is. A Grammy and Olivier award-winning opera star, Joyce is renowned for her range, control and dramatic performances on stages around the world. She reveals her most formative influences including her teenage love of Billy Joel; the struggle to perfect her singing technique; her breakthrough role as Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville; and the film and opera of Dead Man Walking, which ultimately led her to take part in life-changing work in Sing Sing maximum security prison.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Dancer and choreographer Akram Khan is one of the world’s most acclaimed and influential figures working in contemporary dance today. Born in London to Bangladeshi parents, Akram is renowned for his radical productions in which classical Asian music and movement is fused with modern styles. He’s won many awards, was made an MBE in 2005, and choreographed and performed in the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony. He tells John Wilson about his teenage role in Peter Brook's epic production of The Mahabharata, which toured the world; the importance of collaborating with with leading creative figures from outside the world of dance including Anish Kapoor and Juliette Binoche; and reveals how an extraordinary chance encounter changed his artistic outlook.Producer: Edwina Pitman

German-born British composer Max Richter tells John Wilson about his earliest musical influences, including the revelatory experience of first hearing Bach’s Double Violin concerto. He reveals how, growing up in Bedford in the early 1970s, a contemporary music-loving milkman would deliver albums by the likes of Philip Glass, John Cage and Steve Reich, musicians who helped inspire Max to pursue his interest in composition. He recalls the raw energy and political engagement of punk bands like Stiff Little Fingers and The Clash whose gigs he saw as a teenager; and how hearing German synthesiser-pioneers Kraftwerk on a BBC nature documentary sparked his interest in electronica. Max also pays tribute to the Italian composer Luciano Berio who tutored Max in Italy and honed his compostional skills. Max Richter is one of the world’s most successful contemporary composers, selling more than a million albums and clocking up over a billion streams. His melodic, evocative compositions have been heard in television soundtracks and films scores, including Arrival, Shutter Island, Mary Queen of Scots, Bridgerton and many more. His albums include Memoryhouse, The Blue Notebooks, the eight hour long composition Sleep, and Recomposed which reworked Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. He has also composed for theatre and ballet. Producer: Edwina Pitman

Since her breakthrough in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm, Nicole Kidman has played a hugely diverse array of roles - in arthouse films like Lars Von Trier’s Dogville and blockbusters including Paddington. She talks to John Wilson about the influence of some of the filmmakers with whom she worked, included Jane Campion who directed her in Portrait Of A Lady, and Stanley Kubrick who became a close friend after she starred, with her ex-husband Tom Cruise, in Eyes Wide Shut. Nicole Kidman recalls the making of Baz Luhrmann's musical Moulin Rouge and The Hours, the film for which she won the best actress Academy Award for her role as Virginia Woolf. She also discusses the excitement and fear she experienced on the London stage in the plays The Blue Room and Photograph 51.Producer: Edwina Pitman

As leader of rock band The Police, and as a multiple-Grammy winning solo artist, Sting has sold more than 100 million albums worldwide over his four decade career. In conversation with John Wilson, Sting explores some of the people and places that helped shape his creativity. He recalls his working class upbringing in the Tyneside shipbuilding communities, and how hearing The Beatles inspired his musical ambitions as a child. Sting explains why, at the height of their international success, he split The Police in the mid-eighties. He also reveals how Miles Davis and other jazz musicians, and classical composers including Bach and Prokofiev, inspired his new musical direction as a solo artist. Producer: Edwina Pitman

Víkingur Ólafsson tells John Wilson about the experiences and influences that have had a major impact on his life as one of the world’s foremost classical pianists. Víkingur traces his characteristically gentle style of playing right back to his earliest childhood lessons on his parents’ grand piano, and remembers angry struggles to learn a Mozart sonata. He explains why the Icelandic banking crash of 2008 had a huge impact on his work, and how the opening of the Harpa Concert Hall in 2011 helped launch his international career. Víkingur also reveals how a recent meeting with 95 year old Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtág made him reassess his cultural life.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Author Douglas Stuart talks to John Wilson about some of the aspects of his life that inspired him to write his multi award-winning debut novel Shuggie Bain. The book tells the story of a young boy growing up in poverty in Glasgow in the 1980s, and is based on Stuart's own childhood and relationship with his mother who struggled with alcohol addiction. He also discusses his career as a fashion designer and his latest work Young Mungo.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Kwame Kwei-Armah shares some of the influences that have had a significant impact on his career in the theatre. He became a household name playing paramedic Finlay Newton in BBC One's Casualty, while at the same time pursuing a career in writing. His award-winning plays including Elmina's Kitchen and Statement of Regret have been staged at the National Theatre. He tells John Wilson about his early years at stage school, how seeing a production of Joe Turner's Come and Gone by August Wilson changed the way he saw what theatre could do, and how Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave put him on a different path.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Musician Evelyn Glennie talks to John Wilson about her career and some of the key cultural turning points of her life. From growing up in rural Aberdeenshire and becoming profoundly deaf at a young age, she traces her route to fulfilling her ambition of being the first full-time solo percussionist. She recalls her early musical influences; her teacher, the renowned percussionist James Blades at the Royal Academy of Music, and her electrifying 1992 BBC Proms performance of James MacMillan's percussion concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Author and columnist Caitlin Moran talks to John Wilson about some of the works and events that have had the biggest influence on her writing career.The eldest of eight children, she was home-schooled and raised on a council estate in Wolverhampton. At just 16 years old she published her first novel, became a music journalist, and started writing regular columns in the national press. She explains why Sue Townsend's brilliantly funny The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ fuelled her desire to become a novelist, how the British music press allowed her to hone her craft as a journalist, and how a letter from Lenny Henry changed her life.Producer: Edwina Pitman