A world star of African music, Baaba Maal is a glamorous, ground-breaking musician, a showman, singer, dancer and story-teller. He brings an ancient music to a global audience in a new form: a fusion of West African classical music with Western contemporary rhythms and instruments. This film travels with Maal to his home town in Senegal to discover the influences and inspirations that have shaped his music. It is alive with his powerful, haunting vocals and mesmeric rhythms.
John Eliot Gardiner
Sir John Eliot Gardiner is one of the world’s most highly-regarded conductors of operatic and orchestral music. He first made his name in the field of Early Music, then, in 1990, he founded the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, a period instrument orchestra dedicated to playing classical and Romantic music. This programme focuses on Gardiner’s work with this orchestra, which brings a new and exciting perspective to some of the best-loved symphonic music.
Jonathan Miller
Jonathan Miller is one of the world’s most sought-after directors of plays and operas. In this programme, he talks illuminatingly about his ideas on bringing classic works to life for today’s audiences, focusing on Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Mozart’s Così fan tutte. This film of Miller rehearsing this opera at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden gives a fascinating insight into his way of working and shows how he puts his ideas into action.
Edward Albee
Albee is one of America’s most important modern dramatists. In this overview of his work, he talks candidly about his writing and discusses one of its central themes: the essential stripping away of illusion and self-delusion in order to live the extraordinary experience of life to the full. Filmed in New York, the programme is illustrated with extracts from stage and screen versions of his plays including Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Delicate Balance and Three Tall Women.