WOS Radio: Musical Summer at Cadogan Hall

Next month, Chelsea concert venue Cadogan Hall presents two concerts celebrating the Great American Songbook. From 5 to 9 August 2009, Maria Friedman, Mary Carewe, Graham Bickley and Tim Howar star in Sing for Your Supper, dedicated to the music of Rodgers and Hart. Then, from 20 to 22 August, Kim Criswell leads a concert celebration of composer Leonard Bernstein - Bernstein on Broadway.

To mark the season, and the launch of our dedicated Whatsonstage.com Radio section, broadcaster Edward Seckerson presents two feature-length podcasts going behind the scenes at Cadogan Hall to meet those involved.

Here, he meets the creative team behind Sing for Your Supper, a rousing revue of Rodgers and Hart classics. Below are three sample songs from the show.


And here, he interviews American actress Kim Criswell, who is joined in Bernstein on Broadway by Graham Bickley and Sarah Eyden, with accompaniment provided by the Royal Philharmonic conducted by Carl Davis (who also devised the show):


My Funny Valentine


We'll Take Manhattan


I Could Write a Book

Writer and broadcaster Edward Seckerson is chief classical music and opera critic for the Independent. He wrote and presented the long-running BBC Radio 3 series Stage & Screen, in which he interviewed many of the most prominent writers and stars of musical theatre. He appears regularly on BBC Radio 3 and 4. On television, he has commentated a number of times at the Cardiff Singer of the World competition. He has published books on Mahler and the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, and has been on Gramophone Magazine’s review panel for many years. Seckerson presented the 2007 series of the Radio 4 music quiz Counterpoint. He has interviewed everyone from Leonard Bernstein to Liza Minelli; from Paul McCartney to Pavarotti: from Julie Andrews to Jessye Norman. For more info visit www.edwardseckerson.biz

Thanks for listening!