Windrush 75, Nicole Paiement, Nigel Brooks

Music Matters

Presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch explores the musical legacy of the Windrush generation, as part of the BBC's coverage of the 75th anniversary of HMT Empire Windrush's arrival at Tilbury Docks on 22nd June 1948.

The composer Shirley J. Thompson joins Sara to discuss a new piano version of her one-singer opera with film, Women of the Windrush, and we hear specially recorded excerpts from the work by soprano Nadine Benjamin and pianist Caroline Jaya-Ratnam. The composers Errollyn Wallen and Des Oliver talk, too, about their own family connections and musical influences, and we hear the story of Belizean folk singer Nadia Cattouse as told by her son, Level 42 keyboardist Mike Lindup.

The French-Canadian conductor Nicole Paiement, Founder and Artistic Director of Opera Parallèle in San Francisco, speaks to Sara from her home over-looking the bay while preparing to give the UK premiere of Joby Talbot and Gene Scheer's opera Everest - a work which tells the harrowing story of climbers caught in a blizzard in 1996 - in what will be a semi-staged version with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Plus the conductor, composer and arranger Nigel Brooks discusses his life in music, from his first job during a Proms performance of music by Vaughan Williams with the BBC Singers in 1950, to his own group the Nigel Brooks Singers, and what drives him to continue writing music - including an orchestral piece inspired by that first Proms appearance - at the age of 96.