Today, I‘m talking with Sam Jackson, Controller, BBC Radio 3 and BBC Proms.

The BBC Proms is the world’s largest and longest-running classical music festival, taking place over 8 weeks each summer. With concerts broadcast on the radio and on television around the world, and with international artists and orchestras performing, it is one of the most important, visible, and impactful parts of the classical music industry.

However, everyone has an opinion on the Proms and the BBC itself. For some, the festival is guilty of dumbing down, and for others of not doing enough to be more accessible. The BBC Proms is always an easy target for clickbait articles, and as a full confession, I’ve written a couple myself.

But with the digital world continuing to impact the world of broadcast, changing consumer trends, and real-term cuts at the BBC, there are some challenges that the BBC Proms faces that are worth looking at.

So, with the BBC Proms about to start on July 18th, I thought it would be great to dive into it all with the person in charge, Sam Jackson. We spoke about how the BBC works and making decisions as part of a large organisation, what impact for the proms looks like, and the challenge of programming a festival for a broad-church of audiences when what the Proms means to them and what they are looking for can sometimes be very different and even conflicting things.

We also dive into some more challenging areas, such as whether the BBC Proms has fulfilled its potential in the digital world, whether the broadcast of the Proms has kept up with advances elsewhere in the industry, and AI and innovation.

I’d like to thank Sam for being up for the challenging questions, and I certainly learnt a lot from the answers.

This is one of my favourite chats I’ve had for a long time, andI found it really enlightening. I hope you do too. Let’s jump in.

Today, I‘m talking with Alexandra Robinson, Social Media and Content Manager for the Minnesota Orchestra.

Social media is ever-present in our lives and has redefined the society we live in. Despite this, many orchestras have been slow to adopt social media and continue to make basic mistakes. However, there are a few orchestras doing great things. If you’re a follower of the blog, you already know just how much I love the Minnesota Orchestra.

They are exceptional online, creating incredible and funny audience-centric content, and Alex is the driving force behind it and one of the leading social media and content managers in the industry. If you’ve seen their posts, you know their musicians are front and centre of the content, and if you’ve not seen them, I can highly recommend you go and check their socials out.

In this conversation we spoke a lot about how to build trust, with musicians, guest artists, and the organisation to be able to create and implement an audience-focussed strategy. We also spoke about balancing audience focussed content with the need to post about concert tickets, developing an organisational voice on socials when it can be so different to the corporate voice, some of the tools used to create, schedule, and manage content, and how to avoid being overwhelmed as a social media manager.

Honestly, this episode was a blast, and Alex drops some incredible thoughts and advice throughout, I can’t wait for you to listen. Let’s jump in

Guest: Alexandra Robinson

Today I’m talking with Christopher Widauer, CEO of AMS and former Head of Digital Development at Vienna State Opera. Christopher has a wide-ranging career, with a speciality in all things digital. This includes the introduction of 2,100 tablets for interactive infotainment and seatback subtitling in Vienna, consulting for organisations like Cairo Opera and Teatro alla Scala on their digital transformation, and being involved with the digital sheet music app Newzik

We talked a LOT about digital covering a lot of bases, including how to bring your audience and organisation with you when innovating, the death of Google, the role of artists in the digital age, and of course, AI.

This chat was recorded at the Classic Violin Olympus in Dubai, talking with jury member Marios Papadopoulos. Marios is a conductor and pianist who founded the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra in 1998.

Founding an orchestra is no easy thing, so I was really interested to hear the journey from idea to an orchestra performing 40 concerts a year. With a lot changing since 1998, I was also fascinated to hear how the orchestra has adapted over the years.

We also talked about how the role of musicians has changed over the years, and Marios’ thoughts on the skills that soloists need to thrive.

Today’s episode is a little bit different. This is an impromptu in-person interview pianist Denis Kozhukhin that we managed to squeeze in at the InClassica festival in Dubai.

We talked about his hopes for humanity and how music plays a part in it, the role of competitions and advice for musicians in making the most of them even if they don’t win, reconnecting with audiences, and the challenge of being able to appreciate art when it is instantly accessible

Guest: Denis Kozhukhin

Today, I‘m talking with Matt Parkin, CEO and co-founder of Stagecast, a digital media company that specialises in filming and broadcasting classical music concerts.

We talk about how the landscape of classical music broadcasting has changed over the last 10 years, the power of livestreaming, the process of taking a concert idea to broadcast, the future of broadcast, and the power of embedding digital in an organisations artistic vision.

"Yuja x Hockney" on Stage-Plus

https://stagecast.net/

Today I‘m talking with Matilda Lloyd, a soloist and trumpeter who is reshaping what it means to be an artist in the modern world. After bursting onto the scene winning the BBC Young Musician of the Year Brass Final in 2014, she’s performed all over the world, but has also focused on music education projects and building an audience online.

As well as talking about the digital world and what it means to be an artist today, we also dive into what musicians can learn from the world of sport, the importance of being more open about mental health, how to get an album from idea to launch, and why transparency would benefit everyone in the industry.

Host: David Taylor

Guest: Matilda Lloyd