Sound Sources - 13/07/2025
Some of the most important and genre defining movements in rock and pop have their roots in classical music's avant garde. And some of the most innovative songwriters and musicians are those who dig deep into the concert halls, conservatoires and rehearsal rooms for new ideas and techniques to push their own music even further. Join Elizabeth Alker, author of the forthcoming book, Everything We Do is Music, for this very personal investigation of what makes great contemporary music.
She’ll be backed up by musicians with a similar philosophy – you’ll hear from her guests Paul McCartney, Sonic Youth founder Lee Renaldo, Suzanne Ciani - the first woman to solo-compose the soundtrack to a Hollywood movie, composer Jean-Michel Jarre, DJ and producer Marea Stamper aka The Blessed Madonna and musician Nils Frahm.
As the daughter of a pair of classically trained musicians and teachers, Elizabeth grew up playing the clarinet, saxophone, recorder and piano. But as a child she was as likely to hear a record by Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday or Mike Oldfield as a Chopin nocturne, a Satie gnossienne or a violin concerto by Shostakovich. Hopping between musical genres is natural to her, as borne out by a career combining rock journalism for BBC Radio 6 Music and hosting BBC Radio 3's Classical Live and Unclassified. For her - as the composer Steve Reich once told her - "good music is good music".
In this programme Elizabeth will share what she's learnt on her own trajectories from classical conservatoire to club dancefloor, between the concert hall and the sweaty rock venue joining the dots from Musique Concrete to The Beatles, from Stockhausen to Sonic Youth, from John Cage to Nils Frahm, from Pauline Oliveros to techno. You will never hear their music in quite the same way.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002fm1s
Blah Blah Cafe, the Jean-Michel Jarre forum
