Output details

Prom 25

I was invited to curate this Prom by Roger Wright (Controller, Radio 3 and Director, BBC Proms), who knew of my interest in Percy Grainger, and suggested I put together a programme inspired by his music. Wright knew that my practice and research would enable Grainger’s work to be explored in an original way.

I took Grainger’s folk influences as my inspiration. I chose the performers and the material, and presented the Prom with my own spoken introductions. My research method was to view Grainger from the standpoint of a practising folk musician, to reclaim and re-present the folk materials he had collected.

I devised a selection of Grainger's folk arrangements, which were performed by Northern Sinfonia and the BBC Singers; additionally I introduced June Tabor, the Wilson Family and my own band to provide the authentic folk 'voice'. My band arrangements constituted one quarter of the programme and were informed by Grainger's quirky inventiveness, using a wider harmonic palette than is traditional in folk music – opening up a new research arena. I also included Northern Sinfonia in some of my arrangements.

The Prom was broadcast on BBC Radio 3, televised for BBC 4, and extensively reviewed in the national press. Associated with this, I instigated and directed a Percy Grainger festival at The Sage Gateshead in October 2011. Together, these events constitute a major re-evaluation of the folk dimension of Percy Grainger's work. Their wider and continuing significance is evidenced my being commissioned by the South Bank Centre to research and mount a similar programme for their The Rest is Noise Festival in 2013, also based on folk and classical interactions.

The accompanying portfolio details the research dimensions that informed the processes of curatorship, musical arrangement and performance.