This Cultural Life Folgen

The work of composer and conductor John Adams blends the rhythmic vitality of Minimalism with late-Romantic orchestral harmonies. He emerged alongside Philip Glass, Steve Reich and other musical minimalists in the early 1970s, and his reputation grew with symphonic work and operas that tackle recent history including Nixon In China, the Death Of Klinghoffer and Dr Atomic. He is the winner of five Grammy Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Music, and is one of America’s greatest and most performed living composers. Born and raised in New England, Adams learned the clarinet from his father and played in marching bands and community orchestras during his formative years. He began composing at the age of ten and heard his first orchestral pieces performed while still a teenager. He tells John Wilson about the huge influence the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein and his televised Young People's Concerts had on him. He also reveals how jazz band leader and composer Duke Ellington influenced how he writes for the orchestra, and how Charles Dickens inspired him to embrace accessibly in his compositions.Producer: Edwina PitmanExtract from Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concert, What Does Music Mean? CBS, 18 January 1958, © The Leonard Bernstein Office

Irish novelist Anne Enright is the author of seven novels, including The Gathering, winner of the Booker Prize in 2007. Her 2012 novel The Forgotten Waltz won the Andre Carnegie Medal for Fiction and her novel The Green Road won The Irish Novel of the Year in 2015, the same year that she was appointed as the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. Her latest novel The Wren, The Wren has been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024.Anne tells John Wilson how her childhood home in the suburbs of Dublin, and holidays spent at the Pollock Holes in Kilkee inform her writing. She recalls her book-devouring household and first reading Ulysses while on a cycling holiday at the age of 14. The play Top Girls by Caryl Churchill was also a creative influence, particularly in the way Churchill wrote dialogue for women who were at the time, so underrepresented on stage. Anne also cites the influence of the writer Angela Carter, both as a writer of contemporary fiction and as her tutor and mentor at the University of East Anglia. Producer: Edwina PitmanArchive and readings used:Extract from The Gathering, read by Anne Enright Extract from The Wren, The Wren, read by Charlotte Pyke Extract from Top Girls by Caryl Churchill, BBC, 1992

Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado is best known for his captivating black and white photographs. He has documented scenes of hardship and desperation in times of war and famine; he has explored global labour and migration; and he has captured the wonders of the natural world. Salgado has worked in more than 120 countries over the last 50 years, and is now regarded as one of the all time greats of photography. His images are in the collections of museums and galleries around the world, he won the prestigious Premium Imperiale arts prize in 2021 and was the 2024 recipient of the Sony World Photography Award for outstanding achievement.Raised on this a cattle farm in eastern Minas Gerais state, an early formative experience was leaving home for the city of Vitória in 1960. It was here, watching ships dock from all around the world, that he first felt the desire to travel. It's also where he met his wife Lélia who is his curator and editor. He began a promising career as an economist but switched to photography in the early 1970s, after he and Lélia bought their first camera on holiday. Joining the Magnum agency, the international cooperative of photographers, in 1979 allowed him to refine his craft with the help and advice of photography greats such as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Salgado tells John Wilson about some of his most famous photo series, including those on the theme of manual labour which he called Workers; and Exodus, the stories of global migration. Covering the Rwandan genocide in 1994 as well as years of photographing refugees from wars, natural disasters and poverty finally took its toll on Salgado's health. He stopped photographing and returned to Brazil, where he and Lélia began reforesting his father's farm, now transformed into a National Park of lush vegetation called Instituto Terra. The success of this venture led to Salgado returning to photography, this time seeking out beauty and landscapes in series called Genesis, his love letter to the planet. Producer: Edwina Pitman