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Wood: Festival goes out on a limb

6:12pm Thursday 16th May 2013

Tim Hughes talks to Robin Bennett ahead of this weekend’s Wood festival

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Seth Lakeman tells all about his storytelling style

4:31pm Thursday 16th May 2013

He has been credited with making folk music cool. The energetic Devon lad whose adrenaline-fuelled virtuoso guitar and fiddle-playing and captivating songs have the power to enthral audiences everywhere from his local pub to the fields of Glastonbury.

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Festival to offer the best of English music

4:41pm Thursday 16th May 2013

There are probably few villages more quintessentially English than Dorchester-on-Thames with its ancient abbey and narrow, twisting main street lined with olde worlde houses and pubs. So it makes the perfect setting for the English Music Festival, established in 2006 to showcase the very best of English music, old and new. Festival founder and director Em Marshall-Luck is particularly keen to unearth long-forgotten gems and restore them to the mainstream repertoire. So it’s no surprise to find that this year’s programme includes the usual handful of world premieres, as well as many pieces that were popular in their day but have since faded into obscurity.

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The Noble art of guitar

4:36pm Thursday 9th May 2013

Nicola Lisle meets Oxford guitarist Manus Noble

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Once upon a (prime) time for Leona Lewis

4:33pm Thursday 9th May 2013

Her victory on X Factor saw the nation fall in love with this strikingly beautiful and powerful-voiced singer.

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OMD: Unique band are manoeuvring smartly

3:09pm Thursday 2nd May 2013

OMD were like nothing else on the planet. Tim Hughes talks to the group’s frontman

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Rudimental: Band touch bass with positivity

2:55pm Thursday 2nd May 2013

Tim Hughes is impressed by a down-to-earth Rudimental as they hit chart heights

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Preview of the Newbury Spring Festival

12:00am Thursday 2nd May 2013

What does opera composer Richard Wagner have in common with clarinettist Acker Bilk? The answer is that both appear in the billings for this year’s Newbury Spring Festival. So what, I ask festival director Mark Eynon, does he think Wagner would have made of Acker Bilk, and his music?

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Preview of the May Music Festival

10:20am Thursday 25th April 2013

TV’s favourite physicist is the stand-out name at this year’s May Music Festival, Oxford’s annual showcase for science and the arts.

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Sholto Kynoch goes solo on his Steinway

10:14am Wednesday 24th April 2013

It was a tough job but someone had to do it. When SJE Arts decided they needed a Steinway piano for their new concert venue, it involved a trip to Spain — and Sholto Kynoch who went out there to try it out.

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Highlights: Danish dreampop, Welsh country and Original Rabbit Foot swing

11:50am Thursday 18th April 2013

Our guide to the week's best gigs

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Peace in our time

11:04am Thursday 18th April 2013

Tim Hughes meets indie-rockers Peace - tipped as one of the year’s biggest acts

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Preview of Singing For Freedom

9:47am Thursday 18th April 2013

Imagine your grandfather and uncle being brutally murdered by the Taleban when you are just three years old, and then your parents and baby brother go missing, presumed tortured and killed.

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Oxford Early Music Festival previewed

12:00am Thursday 18th April 2013

It can’t be every day that a group of teenagers climb on to a Cowley rooftop and sing classical music. But that’s what sisters Kate, Helen, Emma, and Laura Ashby, plus their brother Nick, decided to do as youngsters.

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Beth Orton: Songbird's sweet dreams

5:49pm Thursday 11th April 2013

Tim Hughes talks to singer, guitarist and mother Beth Orton, who is going back on the road with her new album

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Songbird Beth Orton's sweet dreams

3:40pm Thursday 11th April 2013

When you have recorded as many records as Beth Orton, you can be forgiven for forgetting what they all sound like. After all, you can only fit so many songs into a show.

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Trevor Pinnock on a concert mixing European cultures

12:00am Thursday 11th April 2013

St John the Evangelist, Oxford’s wonderful new concert venue, is nothing if not eclectic. Having just played host to 1970s prog rock legends Caravan, now it goes to the opposite end of the spectrum with an evening of music from 18th-century Europe, featuring works by Handel, Bach, Scarlatti, Buxtehude, Marais and Rameau.

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Coope Boyes and Simpson: Singers happy to make political points

4:56pm Thursday 4th April 2013

Meet a trio determined to keep alive memory of Great War victims

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Hollies on a roll with hits tour

3:23pm Thursday 4th April 2013

Tony Hicks sits in his summerhouse, surveys the scene across his immaculate garden and reflects on his role in rock ‘n’ roll history. It’s another cold spring morning but the sun is bright, and the views across the valley from Henley-on-Thames are beautiful.

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Preview of The Pilgrimage Concerts by The Sixteen

12:00am Thursday 4th April 2013

City bankers scurry past, mobile phones clamped to their ears. But their free ears could catch the famous sounds of Allegri’s Miserere soaring up from beneath their well-polished shoes. For in the bright and airy basement of the Dutch Church, just behind the Bank of England, the Sixteen choir is busy rehearsing the work for their Choral Pilgrimage 2013.

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