Piers Plowright described himself as a 'radio man'. He'd grown up in a home where the wireless was moved into the living room of an evening for family listening.

Others have called Piers, who died in July 2021, the Godfather of the British Radio Feature.

His thirty-year BBC career began in 1968 as a trainee in English By Radio, after which he migrated via drama to documentaries. There, his programmes received radio's highest accolade, the Prix Italia, on three occasions. Yet he remained always modest, a practised listener, a supporter of colleagues, a composer of sound, silence and word, and - for all his erudition and love of culture - a mischievous spirit.

All of this is felt in his many programmes (see below). In a medium described as having no memory, the quality and distinctiveness of Piers' radio programmes - and the grace of the man - are long remembered.

You are invited to lend your ears to some of his work in this tribute from colleagues and admirers:
Melvyn Bragg, his close friend from student days and distinguished broadcaster,
Dr Cathy Fitzgerald, an award-winning feature-maker and presenter
Seán Street, poet and Professor of Radio
Marta Medvešek, the young Croatian recipient of the 2021 Prix Europa for radio documentary
Matt Thompson, a younger colleague who fell under Piers' spell in the BBC documentaries department
Julie Shapiro, formerly Artistic Director of the Third Coast Festival in Chicago, which awarded Piers the Audio Luminary Award in 2006
Martin Williams, a celebrated producer and amateur radio historian
Redzi Bernard, producer and co-host of the Telling Stories podcast
Tony Phillips, former production colleague and radio commissioning executive.

Including interview excerpts with Piers from Roger Kneebone's Countercurrent podcast and Victor Hall's Pocketsize Studio
and extracts from the following programmes in the BBC Sound Archive:
Stepping Stones (R4, 2015)
A Fine Blue Day (R4, 1978)
Splashpast! (R4, 1993)
Mirooo (R3, 1993)
Mr B - a portrait of James Bellamy (R4, 1991)
Setting Sail (R4, 1985)
One Big Kitchen Table (R4, 1989)
Mr Fletcher, the Poet (R4, 1986)
Nobody Stays in This House Long (R4, 1983)
What Are They Looking At? (R3, 1997)

First broadcast 18th December 2021, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Alan Hall

Piers Plowright, Soundsmith

Listen to the music of decomposing mushrooms, look through a photographer's lens at a surprising streak of streaking in the 1970s, and explore the world of a Danish hospital clown who opens up a pocket of a different reality.

Josie Long presents short documentaries and audio adventures about the joys that lurk beneath the surface of things.

Mushroom Music
Featuring Mati Araoz
Produced by Seb Masters

A Different Reality
Featuring Boaz Barkan
Produced by Nanna Hauge Kristensen

The Streak!
Featuring Ron Harr
Including original compositions by Alan Goffinski
Produced by Alan Goffinski

Image credit Karamell https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mushroom_Forest.jpg

First broadcast 21st March 2023, BBC Radio 4
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall

S34: Short Cuts: Dig For Joy 2/6

'Taste' is a highly individual cultural attribute, an indicator of personality and refinement. For Zakia Sewell, a DJ and broadcaster, it's most viscerally - and most precisely - expressed through music, revealing so much about each of us and about the world we've built around ourselves.

She starts her deconstruction of what we mean by 'taste' by comparing notes with her friend Flo Dill, with whom Zakia co-hosts the NTS Breakfast Show, to talk about niche audiences and musical 'cheese'.

She then visits two temples of musical connoisseurship. At Wigmore Hall, possibly the world's finest chamber music venue, she meets John Gilhooly who sometimes has to put his own preferences to one side in programming concerts. At Honest Jon's, the famous Portobello Road record shop where she used to work, Zakia interrogates the musical predilections of her old boss, Alan Scholefield.

Image credit: Buster Grey Jung

First broadcast 13th June 2023, BBC Radio 4
Presented by Zakia Sewell
Produced by Alan Hall

Taste: The Self 1/4

Transcript: https://iremembertranscript.tiiny.site

In 1969 when the artist Joe Brainard stumbled upon a simple writing device, he had sleepless nights of frantic writing, charting out his memory in hundreds of fragments – all beginning with the words I Remember – from coldcream on his mother’s face to the experience of falling in love.

In a letter to his friend, the poet Anne Waldman, he reported ecstatically, "I feel very much like God writing the Bible. I mean, I feel like I’m not really writing it, but that it is because of me that it is being written".

Brainard was never driven by nostalgia, but found that the more precisely he described his memories, the deeper the reader could relate. In this process Joe discovered that I Remember was not about him, but about everybody. The book became a classic, used in writing classes across the world and loved by many.

For this montage of memories, radio producer and poet Pejk Malinovski interviewed ten of Brainard’s close friends and admirers - poets and novelists like Ron Padgett, Ann Lauterbach, Edmund White and Anne Waldman, whose own lives have been shaped by Brainard’s masterpiece.

First broadcast 1st October 2023, BBC Radio 3
Produced by Pejk Malinovski

I Remember Joe Brainard

Transcript: https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/Lights_Out/LightsOut_DeadEnds.pdf

“Should we delete the sex tape?” Should we get rid of the crime scene photographs? How do I find a true image of my mum amidst the recordings, fragments and images she left behind?"

Exploring an archive of home videos, photographs, memories and news reports, Talia Augustidis reflects on how we choose to remember someone. Told through five chapters, each part focuses on a single image of her mum, who died when Talia was three.

Dead Ends is an exploration of what privacy and control is afforded to people who sit at the heart of our news stories, as accidental absences and fragments of memory piece together these self-contained narratives of loss.

Talia collected the tape for Dead Ends over several years. In 2022 she received a Content is Queen micro-grant, which allowed her to begin piecing these stories together.

Original music composed by Jeremy Warmsley

First broadcast 16th October 2023, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Talia Augustidis

Lights Out: Dead Ends 1/6

A remnant from the Cold War becomes an accidental haven for wildlife, a poet and a tree surgeon search for the roots of a metaphor, and a musician searches for an anchor to home. Josie Long presents short documentaries and audio adventures about the ground beneath your feet.

Always Moving
Cello performed by Joe Reynolds
Engineered by Yuri Shibuichi
Composed and produced by Tendertwin (Bilge Nur Yilmaz)

Memorial Landscape
Featuring Kai Frobel
Translator Jana Kosok
Produced by Tom Phillips

Poet / Tree
A conversation between Matthew Reid and Raymond Antrobus

First broadcast 24th October 2023, BBC Radio 4
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft

S36: Short Cuts: The Soil 6/9

"I noticed that language seems to fail us. How do you write about the foundations of our existence? That is how mythology enters very naturally into the story, because history is about ideas, religions, empires, wars and culture. Mythology is about the fundaments. Sun, moon, wind, oceans, great floods and tragic gods... We are living in mythological times, where we are shaking the fundaments." - Andri Snær Magnason

Drawing on ideas in his book, On Time and Water, the Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason and the Scottish artist Katie Paterson explore how our imagination can help us hold the moment we live in. From handfuls of dust to watching geological time mark the landscape, this documentary flows from the night skies into the deepest known point in our oceans.

Archive recording from Raddir - Voices: Recordings of Folk Songs courtesy of the Árni Magnússon Institute
'Vatnajökull (the sound of)' recording courtesy of Katie Paterson

Recording of the journey to Okjökull by Guðni Tómasson
Music composed and performed by Phil Smith and Zac Gvi

First broadcast 20th November 2023, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Eleanor McDowall

Lights Out: Dust 6/6

Truth teller, space crone, world builder, wit - the American science-fiction writer Ursula K Le Guin (1929-2018) conjured entire galaxies through the magic of words.

But as she transported readers across space and through time, she opened portals into our own society and pointed to a fundamental truth: “There are different ways to do almost everything, there isn’t just one right way. And God did not ordain it to be such, and so, forever”. We hear archive recordings of Le Guin herself alongside interviews with people who knew, loved or were inspired by her.

Afterwords looks back over Le Guin’s life to ask why she felt moved to ask those questions, and re-examines some of them to glean what we can learn from her writing today. Many of her worlds were built around fundamental questions: what if we removed gender imbalances from society? What if we removed ownership? What if we treated the environment, and other people, with respect? What if we valued different aspects of our being? How would that change society?

With contributions from the writers Katherine Rundell and So Mayer, anthropologist and drag artist Cheddar Gorgeous, collaborator, friend and musician Todd Barton, and Ursula's youngest child, Theo Downes-Le Guin.

Including sound archive from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, The Nation, UC Berkley's Townsend Center for the Humanities, Thurston Community Library, Portland Community College and the National Book Foundation.

Photograph by Rod Searcey. Copyright © by Rod Searcey

First broadcast 26th November 2023, BBC Radio 3
Produced by Redzi Bernard

Afterwords: Ursula Le Guin 3/3

Audio-makers from around the world take over The Essay to offer a series of Radio 3's innovative Between the Ears features in miniature – each inspired by one of the five senses.

Producer Neena Pathak has been conducting a smell experiment with her dad, Jitendra. As his health declines, she prompts him with different smells that yield a flood of memories from years ago to more recent. You'll hear a journey through past and present that shows one way to mourn and celebrate someone still living.

Neena Pathak is a writer, producer and editor whose work has appeared in podcasts like Invisibilia, The Daily, This American Life, Still Processing, and Another Round. Her work has been honoured by the Pulitzer Prize Board, National Press Foundation, Asian American Journalists Association, Hearsay International Audio Festival, and Third Coast International Audio Festival.

Sound Designer: Chloe Prasinos
Editor: Eleanor McDowall
Special thanks to: Schuyler Swenson, Joanna Leigh Simon, Stella Tan, Eleanor Kagan, Michael Simon Johnson, Sangeeta and Vilas Mandlekar, Uma Pathak, and the Monson Arts Residency.

First broadcast 27th November 2023, BBC Radio 3
Produced by Neena Pathak

Between the Ears: Miniatures: Smell Smelling 1/5

Audio-makers from around the world take over The Essay to offer a series of Radio 3's innovative Between the Ears features in miniature – each inspired by one of the five senses.

Hidden Touch - written, composed and narrated by Suvi Tuuli Kataja, Elli Salo - explores the rituals and culture of death through everyday and mythical traditions. The audio work follows Laru Yliskoski, an undertaker, on the last journey of the deceased and shows how the dead are cared for after death.

”Relatives often want to put something in the coffin. It can be anything. An unfinished cross. Liquorice pastilles in the breast pocket. Children's drawings.”

Hydrophone artist, music: Jussi Liukkonen

Suvi Tuuli Kataja is a director, screenwriter and sound designer whose work has been acclaimed at international festivals, including Prix Europa, BANFF World Media Festival and at home in Finland.
Elli Salo is a playwright and dramaturg. She has worked in a variety of roles in radio and sound, theatre, literature and film and her work has been translated into several languages and received awards in Finland and abroad.

First broadcast 29th November 2023
Produced by Suvi Tuuli Kataja and Elli Salo

Between the Ears: Miniatures: Hidden Touch 3/5

Time unravels in this hypnotic audio journey...

In this edition of Slow Radio, we tumble inside the delicate mechanism of the clock - our attempt to contain and mark the steady rush of time itself. Musical and rhythmic, this surreal audio composition moves between the meditative beat of a single timepiece through to a cacophonous eruption of melodious chimes and cuckoos. The Clock will air just after Big Ben's midnight chimes play out on the BBC, 100 years after London's most famous clock was first broadcast on New Year's Eve 1923.

Featuring audio first recorded for the documentary Time Flies on BBC Radio 4, as well as new recordings and compositions built from the sounds of Big Ben's internal mechanism and ringing bells.

First broadcast 1st January 2024, BBC Radio 3
Produced by Eleanor McDowall

Slow Radio: The Clock

Josie Long presents short documentaries that go back to the start. The musician Lucinda Chua traces the journey of a rose, a connection is forged between a young woman now and a trapeze artist on New Year's Eve 1942, and a touching personal archive illuminates the journey of a word.

Muscles and Mysteries
Produced by Teresa Kristoffersson

First Words
Produced by Kalli Anderson 
Featuring the voices of Kalli's parents, Kathy Hunt and Lance Anderson, as well as Kalli's husband, Zack Finkelstein, and their two children, aged 12 and 8.

Reclaiming The Rose 
Produced, narrated and music by Lucinda Chua
Chinese Narration by XiaoQiao
Poetry in English and Chinese by He Sun

First broadcast 30th January 2024, BBC Radio 4
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall

S37: Short Cuts: Roots 4/6

Word spirits, back rooms and a reply all-pocalypse - Josie Long presents short documentaries that emerge from the internet.

Word Spirits
With thanks to Caroline Hesse, Donovan McGrath, Mary Dolejsi, Nicole Reinsch, Nalini Kumari, Zen Priest & Buddhist Scholar John Stevens (for permission to include his Classical Aikido Kototama Chant), and Critical Sound Explorer & Artist Matt Parker (for permission to include excerpts from The People's Cloud / Field Recordings of Internet Data Centres): https://www.earthkeptwarm.com
Additional mixing by Maitreya
Produced by HJ Radia

The Back Rooms
Produced by Mae-Li Evans

The Bello Tolls for Thee
Produced by Nadia Mehdi

First broadcast 6th February 2024, BBC Radio 4
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall

S37: Short Cuts: The Net 5/6

On the final Thursday of August each year, the patrons of The Hand In Hand pub in Kemptown, Brighton, get together to remember those regulars, friends and family members who have died in the past twelve months. Landlady Jennifer Left started the night in memory of two dear friends who passed away suddenly in the space of a few weeks; and over the years since, Staggering in the Dark has become a well-loved feature in the community’s calendar and consciousness. Poets, pianists, comedians and singers crowd into the tiny space to offer performances in honour of the dearly departed. The night lurches between riotous glee and pin-drop quietude as spontaneous singsongs and bawdy odes weave around hushed sonnets of remembrance. This mosaic for radio combines the companionship of barroom scenes with forays into the reflective inner worlds of those present on the night, in a sonic exploration of what it is to grieve, collectively and in private.

FEATURED PERFORMANCES:
This Window by Elena Stevanoska
Torch Song by Mark Campbell
Not Dead by Daisy Asquith
The Dangers Of Making Love To A Girl With A Broken Heart And A Bucket Fanny by Felix Orlo
Call When You Get Home by M. Butterfly
Half-Finished Sudokus by Bramble Wallace
My Love by Mark Campbell
Empty Chairs by Joe Bunn
Alleluia by Angus Rogers 
Sister by Elena Stevanoska

Photo by Lisa Wormsley

First broadcast 18th February 2024, BBC Radio 3
Produced by Phil Smith
With original music and arrangements by Phil Smith and Joel Whitaker

Staggering In The Dark

Doctor Gwen Adshead is a forensic psychiatrist working with the UK’s most violent offenders, many of them serving life sentences at Broadmoor Prison for murder. Gwen believes that empathy starts with a recognition that there is a capacity for evil in all of us.

"My experience is that evil states of mind can be potentially found in everyone, and evil begins on the inside with a turning away from all that is healthy and beautiful in our lives," she says. She believes that for her patients, “no matter what their history”, therapeutic treatment works.

Gwen speaks with the writer and convicted murderer Erwin James who died shortly after recording this interview. Together they reflect on Erwin’s life story and how he came to commit the crime he did. Erwin describes his own relationship with therapy in prison and he asks Gwen about her relationship with Christianity and how it has supported her. ‘Faith and grace have kept me hopeful in my work with people who seem to have abandoned all hope’ she says.

Producer: Sarah Cuddon
A Falling Tree production for BBC World Service

(Photo: Dr Gwen Adshead. Credit: Andy Vox)

The Killer's Counsel

Chrononormativity, duppies and post-colonial thought. Josie Long presents short documentaries and audio adventures exploring beyond the past, present and futures.

Language in the Land of Duppies: Exploring the origins of Jamaican folklore as a gateway to understanding the legacy of slavery on the island.
Produced by Laura Carty
Special thanks to Alexander Powell, Carmen Johnson, Natalia Downer, Kandice Thompson and Jean Smart.

All my friends are turning into Stars
Written and performed by David Amber Devereux
With Dr Matthew Temple, Research Fellow,
Universidad Diego Portales
Additional voices by Lou Sutcliffe and Alessa Catterall
Featuring quotes from De Profundus by Oscar Wilde, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and In A Queer Time And Place by Jack Halberstam

Interjections on the future: There is not currently any obvious path to reconstructing a popular faith in political, economic and even some social institutions but while it might not always feel like it today, the unwinding of colonial modernity is underway and accelerating.
Produced by composer and researcher, Sara Rahman.
Featuring psychiatrist Isabel Valli and writers and artists Fer Boyd and Maedeline Stack.

First broadcast 13th February 2024, BBC Radio 4
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Produced by Axel Kacoutié

S37: Short Cuts: Hereafter 6/6

In 1971, when experimental composer Gavin Bryars chanced upon the voice of an anonymous old man - "a tramp" - on a spool of discarded tape, he had no idea where his impulse to make a piece of minimal 'pop art' would lead.

Gavin shares the story of Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet through the original vinyl recording on Brian Eno's Obscure label and the Mercury Prize-nominated CD version featuring Tom Waits to the adoption of the piece by the homeless community.

With Vince, Dee and Brian from the homeless choirs Streetwise Opera and Choir With No Name, Pam Orchard of The Connection At St Martin's, composer Jocelyn Pook and Revd Richard Carter from St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square.

First broadcast 14th April 2024, BBC Radio 3
Produced by Alan Hall

Never Failed Me Yet

It's 25 years since London suffered three vicious nail bomb attacks - holdalls filled with 4-inch nails and hand-made explosives planted in Brixton market, Brick Lane and in the bar of the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho, intended to cause damage to those in the immediate vicinity and to the notion of a tolerant, diverse capital city.

The attacks are recorded in photographs shared at the time by the press - of London streets strewn with damaged buildings and injured people, an x-ray of a toddler with a nail embedded in his skull, the wedding photograph of two victims (one killed, the other severely injured) and the police mugshot of the perpetrator, a far right terrorist who hoped to start a 'racial war in this country'.

Fragments looks again at these images - some taken by Chris Taylor who happened to be on assignment in Soho's market photographing vegetables - to consider what it means for an instant to be captured and to endure in our memories and understanding of traumatic events.

Including contributions from photographer Chris Taylor; Jonathan Cash, who survived the Soho attack, Emdad Talukder, who was injured in Brick Lane and business owner Leo Epstein.

Music composed by Alan Hall, with Eleanor McDowall (chimes) and Alan Hall (trumpet)

Photo credit: ChrisTaylorPhotography.com 

First broadcast 14th April 2024, BBC Radio 4
Producer: Alan Hall

Fragments: The London Nail Bombings

Third generation southern jazz musician Will Thompson joined the Louisiana National Guard to fund his way through studies at the University of New Orleans. Then, in April 2004, instead of graduating, he found himself deployed to Iraq. 

During his tour of duty Will documented his experiences in recordings of the sound of calls to prayer, radio bulletins, the nightly 'music' of mortar attacks and the gentle conversation of his comrades on the rooftop of the US Military compound. Before his tour of duty was over, he released this collection of music and found sound, calling it his Baghdad Music Journal. 

Shortly before returning to New Orleans hurricane Katrina struck. He's now back, staying in a FEMA trailer park and completing his studies at Ellis Marsalis' jazz department. This is the story of a musician and reluctant soldier.

First broadcast 21st December 2006 BBC Radio 4
Produced by Alan Hall

William Thompson IV's War

A grand piano slowly climbs the stairs in Glasgow, a man in Brighton keeps finding his upright pianos going missing, a piano decays slowly in the woods while a grandson finds himself thrust into the role of a ship's pianist. Josie Long presents short documentaries and audio adventures with a piano at their heart.

Pianos Aren't His Forte
Featuring Mark Campbell
Produced by Phil Smith
Including piano performances from Mark Campbell and Songs Without Words composed by Felix Mendelssohn and performed by Vassily Primakov from the Free Music Archive

Piano in the Woods
Written and produced by Ross Sutherland
Featuring performances from the project Piano in the Woods by the improviser, artist and curator Sam Bailey. You can learn more about the project at pianointhewoods.com

Two, Three, Hup
Produced by Steve Urquhart
Featuring piano performances by Steve Urquhart

First broadcast 30th April 2024, BBC Radio 4
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall
Curated by Axel Kacoutié and Eleanor McDowall

S38: Short Cuts: A Piano 1/6

Two men on different continents share a love of butterflies, a swimming instructor seeks solace in the water and we dive inside an inner landscape. Josie Long presents short documentaries and audio adventures that emerge from the earth, water and sky.

Psalm
Featuring Emil Blicher Bjerregaard and Mudar Salimeh
Inspired by the poem Psalm written by Wisława Szymborska 
Music by Simon don Eriksen and Gregor Quendel
Mix by Lærke Soedring Nielsen
Produced by Nanna Hauge Kristensen

My Body is of Earth
Created by Zara Zimbardo and Lily Sloane 
With editorial support from Keisha "TK" Dutes and sound consultation from Adriene Lilly

Finding Freedom in the Water: Gaza’s Swimming Teacher
A version of this story first aired on BBC World Service's Outlook in March 2023 ('My Life in Seven Swimming Pools') and in an updated version in April 2024 ('Finding Freedom in the Water: Gaza's Swimming Teacher) presented by Jo Fidgen
Sound design by Joel Cox
Interpreter Youssef Taha
Producer Louise Morris

First broadcast 7th May 2024, BBC Radio 4
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall
Curated by Axel Kacoutié and Eleanor McDowall

S38: Short Cuts: Earth, Water, Sky 2/6

In water, on wheels or explained over the phone - Josie Long presents short documentaries about moving our bodies.

Field Notes
Featuring Hannah Kezema
Produced by Jess Shane and Kristine White

Instructions for Returning to My Body
Gamelan music courtesy of Nusantara
Produced by Kia Miakka Natisse

The Pink Flamingo
Featuring Peter Prijdekker
Sound Recording by Edd Kentish
Produced by Hunter Charlton and Vicki Carter

First broadcast 14th May 2024, BBC Radio 4
Curated by Axel Kacoutié and Eleanor McDowall
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall

S38: Short Cuts: Body Movements 3/6

Leonard Cohen's muse when he turned from poetry to song-writing was a beautiful Norwegian woman immortalised in the song So Long, Marianne - this is their story, based on the award-winning programmes made for NRK by Kari Hesthamar. 

"...both of the interviews had a dreamy quality and listening to the two voices of Leonard and Marianne all these years later made for a programme you want to hear again and again." - BBC Radio 4 Pick of the Week 3.8.08 

"...a melancholic and incredibly moving memoir."  - Radio Times

First broadcast on 2nd August 2008 BBC Radio 4
Produced by Alan Hall

Leonard And Marianne

An hour east of Dallas, you'll find the small town of Poetry, Texas. Pejk ventures out to uncover the poetry of Poetry.

"...a goosebumpy wonder, all layers of sound-texture, mesmerising voices and a lyrical narration by Malinovski as he described the town in ordinary terms elevated into something hypnotic by the key word: 'For a traveller, there's nowhere to sleep in Poetry.'" - The Guardian, 18th May 2012

First broadcast on 14th May 2012 BBC Radio 4
Produced by Pejk Malinovski

Poetry Texas

When we think of the sound of sport on TV or radio, it's generally commentary. But what's around the commentary? Broadcast sport would be nothing without the crowds, the kicks, the thwacks and the grunts. This programme is about those sounds and why they matter.

During the World Cup of 2010, the Vuvuzelas made many people realise that the sound of a sports event, something they took for granted, does matter.

Dennis Baxter's job is to think about the sound of sport, and he is our guide. For nearly 20 years he's worked on the Olympics, defining how the broadcast will sound, always trying to increase drama and excitement. For him, closer is generally better. If he can put a microphone on an athlete, he will.

At the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, the TV coverage is enhanced by microphones on the cox in each boat. Whilst Wimbledon has a special sonic drama all of its own, as we learn from Bill Whiston who mixed the Bafta-nominated sound of the 2008 finals.

When good sound isn't available, it's not uncommon for a prerecorded sound to be added to cover the shot. Is this cheating or merely giving us what we expect?

The experience of "live" events can be highly produced, very different from the experience of being there. Is this enhanced sound so very different from that of a film or a video game? We meet a Hollywood sound effects specialist and a video game sound designer to find out what they do to create a sense of authenticity and excitement. Are they raising our expectations of how "real" sport should sound?

As we approach the 2012 Olympics, this programme will make you think more about what you hear when you watch sport.

First broadcast on 30th April 2011 BBC Radio 4
Presented by Dennis Baxter
Produced by Peregrine Andrews

The Sound of Sport

In 1931, during the Depression, an unknown young black woman took her new-born son to a Pittsburgh orphanage. And so began jazz pianist Horace Parlan´s life. At the age of five, he was struck by polio and lost the use of three fingers on his right hand, yet somehow, against the odds, he managed a long career as a professional musician. Now, aged 84, he lives in a nursing home outside Copenhagen, Denmark.

His journey through life was always guided by music – and still is. From the spirituals of his upbringing to his experiences as a musician in 1960’s New York City. Then, in 1972, he moved to Denmark and joined Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon, Oscar Pettiford and other Afro-American jazz musicians who had found a haven there during those turbulent years. Most of his colleagues left, but Horace stayed, marrying a Danish woman, Norma, with whom he shared his life for 37 years.

Despite his disability Horace found his own sound as a pianist and played with some of the biggest names – Charles Mingus and Archie Shepp among them. But now, blind for eight years, wheelchair-bound and widowed two years ago, he spends his days in a small coastal town outside Copenhagen. His long piano fingers are stiff - he no longer plays - but he spends every day surrounded by music and looks forward to regular trips to Copenhagen’s legendary Montmartre Jazz Club. Rikke Houd presents a portrait of Horace Parlan.

First broadcast 14th July 2015, BBC World Service
Produced by Rikke Houd

A Portrait of Horace Parlan

"A dancer dies twice", the legendary choreographer Martha Graham said, "once when they stop dancing, and this first death is the more painful."

This is a documentary about first deaths and last dances, about what happens when an instrument as finely tuned as a dancer's body begins to change.

From the music which prompts a twitch of muscle memory to the comedown which follows a burst of performance adrenaline, we hear stories of the last dances and what comes next from Gabriella Schmidt, Isabel Mortimer from Dancers' Career Development, and former principal ballerinas Natasha Oughtred and Wendy Whelan.

We eavesdrop on the training of young dancers at the Royal Ballet School as they shape muscle and bone into elegant lines, diving into the visceral excitement of pounding pointe shoes and powerful leaping bodies. And we visit Sage Dance Company and the Company of Elders as they work with dancers who move with grace and beauty in defiance of their changing bodies.

From the first anxious glance in the mirror to the last touch - how does the language of our bodies change as we age?

Produced by Eleanor McDowall
First broadcast 4th April on BBC Radio 4

A Dancer Dies Twice

The musician John Grant on Reykjavik, a city he fell in love with on tour. "In 2011 I was asked to come and play in Reykjavik...three months later I was living here...I go where I feel welcome and safe, and this is one of those places for me."

John Grant is an accomplished linguist - he speaks German, Spanish, French and Russian, amongst others. Icelandic, however, has been a real challenge.

"The combination of sounds, the phonetics of Icelandic, are beyond evil...I get giddy about synthesisers and language grammar."

But it soon becomes clear that John is now fluent. Talking with the owner of one of his favourite coffee shops, she reminds him that within two days of living there he could make himself understood.

John guides us around his adopted city, paying particular interest to book shops, architecture and interesting stair wells. It's a very different landscape from Michigan, where he grew up:

"The world was hostile and there was a lot of nastiness directed at me because people thought they could see I was gay...'Look at that faggot', that kind of thing". So I developed a fear of leaving my nest."

Reykjavik is the first city he has called home for a long long time.

First broadcast 3rd December 2016, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Rachel Hooper

S3: Reimagining The City: Reykjavik 3/3

Cerys Matthews explores the life of the Yorkshire poet-singer Jake Thackray whose wry, tender and lugubrious songs earned him a cult following in the 70s and 80s.

With his rich baritone and roll neck sweaters, Jake Thackray made his name singing in folk clubs and on local radio in the 1960s before gaining weekly slots on TV programmes like The Frost Report and That's Life with Esther Rantzen.

His lyrics and storylines were bawdy and surreal - 'The North Country Noel Coward' was one title he earned. But he really aspired to be 'the Yorkshire Chansonnier', taking inspiration from the French chanson tradition and, in particular, Georges Brassens - his great idol. Cerys hears how Jake travelled to Paris to meet Brassens and persuaded him to play his only ever gig outside France, at the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff in 1974.

In Monmouth, where Jake spent much of his adult life, Cerys meets old drinking pals of Jake's and they recall Jake's early life at a Jesuit school in Leeds and later as a teacher in France and Algeria. She talks to Father David Smith at the church where Jake became an unlikely bell-ringer. And she speaks to Jake's old friends and colleagues Ralph McTell, Don Black and Esther Rantzen about Jake the private man - shy and self-effacing.

Ultimately Jake was uncomfortable with television and eventually he stopped turning up for shows. Agents gave up trying to book him slots and, as drink took over, he became more unreliable. He was happiest performing to small crowds and at folk festivals where his annual performances of Lah-Di-Dah and Sister Josephine became legendary. He died in 2002. In his song 'The Last Will and Testament' he requested "no forget-me-nots, no epitaphs - you can let my memory slip - say a prayer or two for me soul then, but make it quick, boys.".

First broadcast on 18th April 2017, BBC Radio 2
Presented by Cerys Matthews
Produced by Sarah Cuddon

Jake Thackray: The Yorkshire Chansonnier

W.H.Auden’s Paysage Moralisé [1934] in a polyphonic setting for radio, featuring voices recorded in Berlin [2015 - 2017], and original music by producer Phil Smith.   

Producer: Phil Smith
Executive Producer: Alan Hall 
A Falling Tree Production
First Broadcast: 16th May 2017, BBC Radio 4.    

TRANSCRIPT: https://www.scribd.com/document/371956742/IFC-2018-TRANSCRIPTION-AVeryDifferentTime-PhilipSmith

W.H. Auden's 1934 poem Paysage Moralisé, written in 1934, is a poem that floats across time and landscape, expressing something of that search for home, for peace, for safety and for meaning which shapes our existence on this planet. 

Berlin-based producer Phil Smith brings the poem into a contemporary light, interweaving Auden's lines with the voices of those who have chosen - for very different reasons - the German capital city as their home. The poem's images of shipwreck and sorrow reverberate with snapshots from the lives of a Syrian refugee (fleeing war) and a West-African refugee (fleeing poverty, seeking a better life), while we also hear the words of an American musician on a European tour, an Italian-German academic who spends some of her time in Berlin, and a German who moved to the city to escape small-town life. There is no presenter to introduce our protagonists; rather, they step out from the city crowd to offer fragments of their personal  stories. 

Part radio poem, part documentary ballad, part composed feature, A Very Different Time addresses the hopes and fears that surround movement and migration, timeless themes that resonate strongly in today’s Europe.

Lights Out: A Very Different Time

At sunrise, on the banks of the Ganges river, the poet and radio producer Pejk Malinovski picks out a cow at random and starts to follow her. He continues to follow her until sunset.

The cow was here long before man arrived. Does the fact that human beings have maths, space travel and doughnuts really make us superior to all other beings on earth? What does the cow have that we don't have? Four stomachs. Hooves. A lot of patience.

A meditative journey unfolds within the sonic backdrop of the ancient city of Varanasi - until suddenly the two of them find themselves on the set of a Bollywood dance film.

A consideration of the nature of radio, a pondering of inter-species relationships, Pejk's programme invites you to un-follow your digital stream and exercise your ability to be just present.

Written and produced by Pejk Malinovski.
First broadcast 24th February 2018, BBC Radio 3

A Cow A Day

Documentary adventures that encourage you to take a closer listen. This episode follows a line of connection through four women across two referendums to explore the unexpected consequences of talking about abortion.

Starting on live television at a beauty pageant, we hear from a journalist, a radio producer, the founder of a woman's clinic and a woman travelling from Ireland to the UK - and discover the quiet power and hidden dangers of speech itself.

Featuring the voices of Brianna Parkins, Siobhan McHugh and Anne Connolly. With additional recordings courtesy of Zoë Comyns and Regan Hutchins

First broadcast 26th November 2018, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Eleanor McDowall

Lights Out: A Sense Of Quietness 3/3

For a man whose musical demeanour comes across as rough-hewn with a potency that's barely contained, Richard Dawson in person is gentle with a soft smile and opinions that are precisely worded though almost tentatively shared. He admits to a high level of everyday anxiety, yet has left a mark on contemporary folk music in England that testifies to an innate confidence in his musical vision. His albums (notably Nothing Important of 2014 and Peasant in 2017), as well as being critically acclaimed, have taken folk music into new territory that's at once ancient and avant-garde.

Speaking at his home in the north-east of England, Richard reflects on the particular qualities of his voice, the life that music has opened up to him and his ever-present companion, Trouble the cat.

First broadcast 29th June 2019, BBC Radio 4
Presented and produced by Alan Hall

The Voices Of... Richard Dawson

The bond between mother and child is perhaps the most natural and the most profound relationship we can experience. But for Zakia Sewell and her mother - who she's always called Amey - this relationship has been far from straight-forward.

Now, after many years of disconnection and words unspoken, they're collaborating on a theatre piece, a kind of 'curated conversation', to understand better the issues they have had to overcome.

Some are near, intimate and specific to the two of them - Amey's mental health and her own experience of motherhood - but they are entwined with stories from the past, submerged deep beneath the surface, evoking the ghosts of distant ancestors whose experiences under the brutal tyranny of slavery in the Caribbean find expression through the generations.

With contributions from theatre-maker Cathy Sloan and Sonya Welch-Moring, a specialist in trans-generational therapeutic practice.

First broadcast 12th March 2020, BBC Radio 4
Presented by Zakia Sewell
Produced by Alan Hall

My Amey And Me

Documentary adventures that encourage you to take a closer listen.

The N'diaye Rose family of Senegal are masters of Sabar drumming. They are the descendants of Doudou Ndiaye Rose, the late legendary Sabar drummer who propelled these deep and complex Senegalese rhythms across the globe.

Today, in the capital, Dakar, electronic musicians Beatrice Dillon and Nkisi attempt to interpret and translate the encoded language of the drums.

First broadcast on 6th April 2020, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Zakia Sewell

Lights Out: Speaking Sabar 4/6

Songs of the Humpback Whale was released in 1970 and went multi-platinum, becoming the best selling environmental album of all time. But it also became emblematic of the West’s shifting attitudes towards environmentalism, inspiring a global movement to save the whales which continues to this day.

Marking the 50th anniversary of bioacoustician Roger Payne’s unlikely smash hit, this programme considers the legacy of sounds that caught the imagination of the world.

With contributions from the world of music, science and ecology, including the folk singer Judy Collins, Greenpeace Oceans Campaigner Willie Mackenzie, Greenlandic musician Peter Tussi Motzfeldt, marine biologist and electronic musician Sara Niksic, music writer Simon Reynolds and Roger Payne himself.

Including archive courtesy of Radio Canada international 
With music by Duotone.

First broadcast 17th September 2020, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Hannah Dean

Songs Of The Humpback Whale

We make documentaries and audio art for radio, podcasts and public spaces.

At the heart of what we do is a belief in the imaginative possibilities of radio. Sounds that can reconfigure the world around you, move you through inner landscapes, sink into your dreams.

We are an intentionally small company that considers carefully the creative, social and political aspects of the work we put out into the world.

Falling Tree has two full-time Directors – Eleanor McDowall and Alan Hall – and we work with freelancers across our projects, including the core Short Cuts production team of Alia Cassam, Axel Kacoutié and Andrea Rangecroft.

We are one of the founding signatories of the Equality in Audio pact. 

You can listen to hundreds of our documentaries in the free, online Falling Tree archive.

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