Nick Luscombe has another day just like he likes it: filled with musicians piling into our studio truck, for interviews and live sessons: from the i Arena came Stealing Sheep, from the 6Music stage came twisted folktronicists Coco Rosie and Icelandic electro-acoustic newcomers Múm. After all that we tossed a coin to see which of us should interview Bobby Womack over in the artists' hospitality suite at the back of the mainstage, the Obelisk Arena. Nick made the right call and didn’t give me a second chance when I suggested we consult the I-Ching, just to be scrupulously fair. So Nick got to hear the great soul legend tell it like it is about life, music, the passage of time, Sam Cooke and Damon Albarn. And I got to realise that perserverance furthers.

Making programmes here means that you don’t get out much to see Germaine Greer, Eddie Izzard or Ockhams Razor and the whole host of other amazing artists, writers, musos, poets etc which make it the unique hot ticket that it is. But there is a moment everybody shares wherever they are on site … a Sunday Morning Latitude tradition. Every public address system is silenced right across the site and for a moment, quiet chatter, the baa-ing of sheep and birdsong replaces the continual bass and drum sonic background. And then floating over the treetops, refreshing every corner of the site, celestially pure acoustic music of long ago issues forth from the lakeside stage. This year its Baroque for a joyous summer’s morn from Alison Balsom and the English Concert. Like pied pipers, they attract thousands on to the banks of the lake to listen and watch spellbound, as the musicans seem to make dancing partners of their instruments.

Another all transforming revelation!!! No, that’s not idle hyperbole, that’s the chamber techno set from Anna Meredith and Horsebox. Partly because I knew very little about her music and because she’s an astonishing, game changing genius. How have I missed out on her music till today? I mean … its only been broadcast on BBC Radio 1, 3, 4 & 6Music, performed everywhere from the Last Night of the Proms and London Fashion Week to flashmob performances in the M6 Services - dazzling, ear-bending works performed by symphony orchestras, body percussion, beatboxers and MRI Scanners. They opened with the shimmering polyrhythmic triumphant fanfare that is Nautilus and the crowd in the Lavish Lounge gasped when the first drum beat dropped and shattered and rebuilt the rhythms. Later in the day, the Foals used the recorded version of the piece as their entrance music on the main stage and the distinctive sound soared all around the site, much to the delight of Anna! The 21st century replacement for Fanfare for the Common Man and Thus Spake Zarathustra is amongst us and it is Nautilus!!! 

Nancy Elizabeth’s late Sunday afternoon set was just so summery. Was it the angelic harmonies, the shiny new arrangements, the magic of her new tunes, her unflappable, down-to-earth banter between numbers, the tropical colours of her dress, the way she and her band seemed to be having such a good time on stage? Well it was all that plus the powerful soaring solo acapella of her encore which crowned her set with sunlight.

Back in April I played tracks by Graveola each night of the Late Junction week. We were under the spell of the nu-skool psychedelic tropicalistas from Minas Gerais, Brazil who gleefully declared their music ‘Polyphonic Garbage’ and ‘Carnival-Cannibalism’. But what was going to happen when they came on stage? Could they deliver the grand finale for Late Junction at Latitude 2013? As soon as their wonky samba groove rocked out into the darkness the densely packed Lavish Lounge crowd rose to its feet and wanted them to play till dawn. As it was they played two encores and even though they were jetlagged and exhausted after playing two gigs in a day, they hung out with the crowd dancing and chatting until the guys came to take the p.a. away

Starry eyed and laughing, we leave the Lavish Lounge for another year. Big thanks to: all the artists who played for us, our fantastic audiences, Late Junction listeners wherever you may be, the Late Junction Team, the Lavish Lounge Luvvies, everyone at Latitude, particularly Melvin, everyone at BBC6Music, particularly Lauren Laverne, Shaun Keavney and Steve Lamaq.

You can listen to the programmes by following this link.

You can follow BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction on twitter @bbcradio3 #latejunction

 

 

Saturday 20 July

Morning ... comes eclectic obviously... Went to sleep last night dreaming distractedly about the most abstract ever bill on our stage in the Lavish Lounge. I mean no-one’s ever going to suggest that we’re veering into middle of the road/luke warm festival fodder with 3 acts like Walls vs Daphne Oram, Flower Corsano Duo and Troyka.

... Abstract and leisurely, wander into our studio truck compound immediately interrupted by reality: news from the legendary Latitude traffic jam ... cavalry delayed: fellow presenter and longtime technicsmate Nick Luscombe won't be able to be the LJ voice in the studio truck for Serafina Steer and Emma (Elysian Quartet/Geese) Smith. Climb nimbly into said truck and prepare myself for such a sweet encounter until next bulletin from traffic jam via walkie talkies: Serafina and Emma have also been becalmed by the traffic. Ah my... back to abstraction

....Nick and family (Harumi and Hannah) arrive five minutes later ... As day turned into night Nick (El) Luscombe presided over live sessions and interviews with artists from iArena, the BBC6Music stage and the main stage (Obelisk Arena); harpist Serafina Steer (Think Mark E Smith meets Joanna Newsom meets a sad girl at a disco, or so  it said in the Latitude bible-size programme), nu’skool Americana hombre Matthew E White and Late Junction/World Routes/World on 3 Malian favourites Bassekou Kouyate and his family band Ngoni ba

Last night’s Melt Yourself Down set last night seems to have permeated the collective consciousness of Latitude. All round the site  we heard people talking about how even the multicoloured sheep had been moshing to the duelling saxes of Pete Wareham and Shabaka Hutchings. BBC6Music’s Steve Lamaq, Lauren Laverne and Shaun Keaveny all told us that they’d heard all around that it was totally unmissable and such comments and whispers followed us all round the site for the rest of the weekend. As it goes, Shabaka and Pete were in the Lavish Lounge with us for most of the fest,  along with Richard Dawson: on Late Junction the music is always the magnet , so it is written.

Live set from Walls vs Daphne Oram, with guest drummer John Barrett on board,  shakes the treetops and floats the settees, while the spirit of Daphne Oram possesses a worshipful audience who feel the need to rise up and dance as the set reaches it broken beat climax. Walls are London electronic duo Alessio Natalizia and Sam Willis,  who’ve been using the Daphne Oram Sound Archive at Goldsmiths College (Univ. of London) as a primary sound source for their set. Daphne was co-founder of BBC Radiophonic Workshop and, as an anonymous person from the audience generously chipped into my intro, ‘the first female British electronic composer who invented the Oramics drawn sound technique, a method of music composition and performance which allows a composer to draw an "alphabet of symbols" on paper and feed it through a machine that produces the relevant sounds on magnetic tape’... or something like that. It started life as a Late Junction session back in May (check it out here.)  

Next set took us and our totally rapt Lavish Lounge audience deeper into abstraction: an epic improvisational session from Mick Flower and Chris Corsano. How does it happen that Mick, an Englishmusician playing the Shahi Baaja*, forms a duo with nonstop American totally freestyle kit drummer Chris? And how can they make such extreme and sublime freeform sonic magic? It's a conversation that no-one appears to lead but both transmute throughout their set, which starts at what seems to be the highest level of intensity imaginable and totally takes its audience with it, surfing the crests and plumbing the depths.

...and finally a late night piece of cerebral funk-encrusted jazz served up a band that's one of LJ presenter Fiona Talkington’s big faves... Troyka (Chris Montague-guitars & loops, Joshua Blackmore-drums and Kit Downes-keyboards and biggest fat organ sound). Once again the Late night Lavish Lounge was packed, this time with with laid back, mesmerised, cool-jazz heads ... while above the lake in front of our very eyes the Moon, the fireworks and the technicolour projections entertained us with some free form choreography. In one corner of the Lounge one woman braved the consciousness changing time signatures, syncopation, drops and stabs powered by Joshua’s percussion to dance non-stop through the set, with no partner but her necklace of clear plastic bottles ...

*a variety of Indian zither  with ‘modifications’ typewriter keys which depress several of the strings to change their pitch and 12 additional unfretted strings which serve as an on-board drone harp (swarmandal)

Producer Peter Meanwell writes: On Tuesday night's Late Junction (23 July) there were live sets from Melt Yourself Down, Richard Dawson and Electric Jalaba, as well as Yo La Tengo in session and Richard Thompson in interview. Last night (24 July) we had Troyka, Flower-Corsano Duo and Walls vs Daphne Oram, with Matthew E White and Coco Rosie in session, and Bobby Womack in interview. Tonight (25 July) Max presents live sets from Graveola, Nancy Elizabeth and Anna Meredith, plus Late Junction truck sessions from Bassekou Kouyate and Stealing Sheep.

You can listen to the programmes by following this link.

You can follow BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction on twitter @bbcradio3 #latejunction

 

 

 

 

All this week on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction at 11pm, Max Reinhardt presents highlights from the Late Junction stage in the Lavish Lounge and exclusive truck sessions from the 2013 Latitude Festival.

Friday 19 July

00.45 Leave air conditioned Late Junction Studio at Broadcasting House and walk into the heart of the summer darkness( ‘He felt the heat of the night hit him like a freight train..’). Resolve to sleep as soon as I get in...early start for Suffolk. Fail miserably...eat, drink, chat, listen, read for a couple of hours... the Latitude buzz has kicked in.

13.00 Finally arrive on site, 6 hours since we woke up. Keep motorways out of East Anglia... that campaign is definitely working. Whizz through security, passes, identification, justification, deification etc with surprising ease thanks to the Power of the Late Junction Team....trudge down dusty tracks... (can’t help but wonder after previous two Latitude Fests, if this is Latitude where’s the mud, wind and rain?)... past shiny happy people dressed for heat (no gorillas/cart horses/hairy mammoth costumes visible so far)... beats and bass lines swarming through the air all around.

Reach the BBC Mobile studio trucks, step in and I’m on! Straight into the middle of an interview with Yo La Tengo... Ira, Georgia and James all good laid-back company and for me, the first of the new discoveries I made at the fest. Oh help! all interviews on camera for website today and no make-up in sight. Couldn't stay to hear the two unplugged tunes they recorded from fade their current album... mental note must go to LJ website to hear the clips ... cos it was time to get down to our stage in the Lavish Lounge, 5 mins through the woods as the radio presenter flies.

Sometime later (time has ceased to be measured in hours and minutes) ...

Time to greet our audience in the newly expanded Lavish Lounge, the surreal dreamscape in the woods by the lake that is to be home to the Late Junction stage for the weekend. The luxurious settees are full, people are lying, sitting and standing on the dry dusty ground waiting for the first band. That would be Spacey Gnawa Electronica from Electric Jalaba ... a UK groovester brotherhood (Sound Species) transformed by their encounter with new member, Moroccan Maalem Simo Lagnawi and his guembri (or sentir), the ultimate organic bass instrument. In less than 5 minutes audience have also transformed from indolent sybarites into ecstatic  dervishes whirling to the karakeb (metal castanets). Quick  post-set interview with the band, all vibed up and totally believing in the power of their new music... an infectious belief.

Wander purposefully through the dust, crowds, slamming bass lines and babble of voices from comedy, literature and poetry tents over to backstage area of BBC 6 Music to interview Richard Thompson. Any worries about what to ask such a maestro disappear when we meet him cool and calm in the heat of a trailer, sitting on a sofa with a guitar, a smile and wise twinkling blue eyes. Should have asked him what he thought about the Observer review of his recent CD Electric ‘introducing a “new genre: folk-funk”; it showed that, over 40 years into his career, Richard is only just getting started.’ Best of all he played an exquisite finger picking miniature... as you’ll hear

... the whole Richard Dawson experience was just a still continuing revelation. I met him just before he went on stage... friendly, chatty, calm, taking it all in... but nothing prepared anyone for when he came on stage to do his 6pm set. Sure I’d played his new CD The Glass Box - steeped in Tyneside law, legends and archival tales... but nothing prepares you for his all-consuming elemental voice, his devastating deadpan humour and his Joseph Spence meets Antennae Jimmy Semens guitar style. Having dazed and converted the crowd to Dawsonmania, he joined me in the Studio truck to create more video treasures/trash for posterity. Richard is certainly one of the major revelations  of our stage here

... so Yo La Tengo were Velvet Underground link #1 (they played the Velvets in I Shot Andy Warhol... and Lemon Jelly’s Nick Franglen was link #2 (John Cale’s accompanist and Nico’s tribute curator), a v. affable host as he showed us round his Hive installation -a tsunami of radio broadcasts ...

... totally bonkers end to first day with the Melt Yourself Down 11 pm set which filled the Lavish Lounge with over 1000 delirious pleasure seekers totally hooked by the jazz punk world gestalt of MYD. Lauren Laverne commented they were 21st C Pig Bag, the crowd manically moshed non–stop and, given that the rest of the live festival had closed down, our Late Junction Stage became the Latitude main stage for an hour, as the moon rose over the canopy of trees that cradles the Lavish Lounge.

Producer Peter Meanwell writes: On Tuesday night's Late Junction (23 July) there were live sets from Melt Yourself Down, Richard Dawson and Electric Jalaba, as well as Yo La Tengo in session and Richard Thompson in interview. Tonight (24 July) we have Troyka, Flower-Corsano Duo and Walls vs Daphne Oram, with Matthew E White and Coco Rosie in session, and Bobby Womack in interview. On Thursday (25 July) Max presents live sets from Graveola, Nancy Elizabeth and Anna Meredith, plus Late Junction truck sessions from Bassekou Kouyate and Stealing Sheep.

You can listen to the programmes by following this link.

You can follow BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction on twitter @bbcradio3 #latejunction

It’s that time again when the Late Junction team unpack their wellies, and get ready to head into the Suffolk countryside for the Latitude Festival. Once again we’ve been let loose on the Lavish Lounge, an intimate little stage tucked in the woods by the lake that’s strewn with battered leather sofas, and we’re curating nine live bands over the three days of the Festival. Max Reinhardt will be there, with many an elaborate hat no doubt, and we’ll be recording all the music for broadcast on Radio 3’s Late Junction the following week. So, if you don’t fancy packing a tent you can relax in your own lavish lounge with the wireless on next week, but if you’re at Latitude this weekend, come and say hello, and follow us on twitter using #latejunction. 

Here’s a quick rundown on the Late Junction acts: on Friday Electric Jalaba float traditional traditional Gnawa songs above analogue effects and warped guitars,  Newcastle’s skewed troubadour Richard Dawson brings an intense soaring slant to traditional songs of the North East and Melt Yourself Down conjure a post-punk jazz future that explodes onstage into a tropical storm. On Saturday Walls vs. Daphne Oram bring the live incarnation of a project that has seen electronic duo Walls dig deep into the archives and transportative soundworld of the late Daphne Oram There’s an acutely musical collaboration between kinetic DIY drummer Chris Corsano and Mick Flower on shahi baaja, and London based band Troyka bring a new vision of the jazz trio. On Sunday, composer Anna Meredith brings her cello-encrusted live band to perform music of symphonic scale with dancefloor intensity, multi-instrumentalist Nancy Elizabeth conjures up old English folk traditions alongside the soundworlds of Ennio Morricone and Arthur Lee and post-tropical polyphonic populists from Minas Gerais in Brazil, Graveola create a sound they call 'carnival-cannibalism', mixing the canon of 20th century Brazilian music with funk, Latin, baroque and blues.

PS: Our friends at 6Music will be broadcasting live over the weekend, so keep an ear out for more from Latitude on digital ...

• Latitude Festival
• Late Junction
• Late Junction on Twitter 

Fiona Talkington pestered her Late Junction producers for years, to bring together Jerry Douglas and and Stian Carstensen. And now you can download their session. Here's what happened ...

It was the morning after the night before and nothing will ever be the same again. After years of hoping and dreaming, two fantastic musicians met each other for the first time and made glorious music: Jerry Douglas (described famously by Alison Krauss as 'the greatest dobro player the world has ever known') and Stian Carstensen - accordionist and banjo player, soloist, collaborator and member of the zany and wonderful Farmers Market.

My ‘matchmaking’ had started years ago when Jerry did a solo session for Late Junction and I mentioned Stian to him then. I’m not sure if, when I talked to Stian, he thought that dream would become reality but I never let go of the idea, bothering my producer colleagues regularly with the Jerry and Stian idea. Finally, amidst a flurry of texting before Christmas, there was a date in the diary, with Jerry over here to tour with Transatlantic Sessions and Stian touring with sax player Iain Ballamy.

When Jerry and Stian finally met, on the 8th floor of Broadcasting house, I began to wonder if we were going to get any music recorded at all. They both have a great sense of humour and are born storytellers. Maybe we were about to make a comedy show rather than a music programme?

Stian had brought his big Bugari accordion powered by melted down Russian ammunition parts (so he told me...), and there, on a chair, was Jerry’s stunning Paul Beard dobro complete with inlaid signature. As mics were set up and sound checks done, Stian and Jerry set off with a Cajun tune that was soon going off on many different tangents. Six hours later we’d laughed and cried and recorded five tunes ranging from the tear-jerkers to ones where we, on the other side of the glass, had stood open-mouthed by the sheer unbelievable brilliance of their playing.

The session was broadcast on Late Junction on 28th February and I’m daring to dream that these two lovely people and brilliant musicians will meet again, and I hope to be there when it happens. If you missed this session, you can download it here - and please tell your friends!

Download the session

Visit the Late Junction homepage

It was a quick turnaround to get to the evening’s concert with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ilan Volkov, in Reykjavik’s new iconic concert hall, Harpa (below).

Approaching it in the, now, darkness, the much talked about glass hexagonal tubes which wrap the cliff-face like sides of the building were twinkling greens, pinks and yellows. Its breathtaking impression continues inside (see below) where shapes and glass continue to defy concert hall convention. Harpa is a testament to Iceland’s belief in creativity through the banking crisis of 2008, a monument to imagination and vision.

It was clear from this opening concert that here were people who welcomed new music and the need and enjoyment of having a platform for it. There was warmth towards each composer, and while everyone had their favourites, there was little to be seen of the judgmental backbiting that can smother such occasions. Much had to do that night because of Ilan Volkov’s warm engagement with the audience, just the right blend of welcoming, knowledge and humour. Before the night was out I’d talked to the Festival Directors Kjartan Ólafsson and Pétur Jónasson and met the team from Music Export Iceland led by ex Sugarcubes drummer Sigtryggur Baldursson. I was already feeling quite at home.

The following morning took me to a place I’ve wanted to visit for a long time - the Bedroom Community label HQ where Valgeir Sigurdsson (who did a great Late Junction session with Pekka  Kuusisto a few years ago) showed me around the Greenhouse Studios. From the outside it’s like any other house in the cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Reykjavik. Inside, it’s a cavern of musical delights, a hub of creativity and the important things any studio has: a large kitchen table, a chandelier and a 1920s Broadwood. Paul Corley was in town doing some mixing and spoke warmly about making his debut release on Bedroom.  It’s about feeling you’re artistically in the right place, with a signature sound, and, well you can’t argue about the views over to the snow-clad mountains. Valgeir, Paul and I are in the photo below.

A lunchtime piano recital back at Harpa by Þórarinn Stefánsson was based around pieces inspired by an Icelandic folk tune, and I wondered again about Icelandic folk music, its history and the current state of play.  I went over to the University to visit Rosa Thorsteinsdottir(below), an archivist with expert knowledge about the ancient rimúr tradition, the practice of telling stories, chanting, singing or speaking, usually in the home, late at night, while fishing nets are being mended, socks knitted, or babies soothed. 'Rather like a Late Junction programme of days gone by,' someone grinned at me! 

I also met composer and folk singer Bára Grimsdóttir and her husband, UK folk musician Chris Foster, who, between them, have a good understanding both of the Icelandic folk tradition and where it is today, and left me with the impression there is yet a lot to be uncovered and celebrated.

Harpa proved to be an interesting hub with the Dark Music Days concerts rubbing shoulders (in one of the other halls) with the Icelandic finals to chose a song for Eurovision. Very graciously they told me they would be certain to come last. I assured them that they probably wouldn’t!

I learned that Late Junction is much admired in Iceland and I, in turn, was very impressed by hard-working colleagues at RUV, Iceland’s National Broadcasting, who managed to get me some recordings I wanted. I had been very taken with Nordic Affect, an award-winning ensemble who perform contemporary music on Baroque instruments, and had chatted with their (Australian) flautist Georgia Browne (below).

I very much enjoyed meeting the composer Hafdís Bjarnadóttir (below) whose music I’d heard performed by the famous Hlómeyki Chamber Choir. She kindly invited me to her house for pancakes and to listen to part of the music she’s composing based on the knitting pattern for a traditional Icelandic shawl. Different sounds and rhythms for different types of stitch, and, for the lacey part a glissando and – silence! – a hole! It was really rather beautiful, and I told her I was looking forward to the fanfare at the end when the shawl would one day be finished!  The surprise she had up her sleeve for me was a visit to Sigur Ros’s studio, made out of a disused swimming pool, and a stop, in the pouring rain, to look at huge lava formations, greys, greens and reds, whose shapes must have played a part in the imagination of the writers for sagas.

I came away with a real desire to return. Reykjavik is musically vibrant, exciting, welcoming, crazy in a good way. I loved the colours of the clothes, bright and jewel-like. I loved the space-rocket shaped church (the Hallgrímskirkja), and I even liked sitting in a hot pool on a roof in the freezing horizontal rain.

I was fascinated by Iceland’s geographical situation, where the pull between New York and London seems equidistant, and by the geology, and I’m indebted to journalist and broadcaster Hilary Finch who was there at the time for sharing some of her 30 years worth of Icelandic insights with me. Her description of imagining you’re standing astride the ever widening tectonic plates will stay with me forever, one foot on the North American plate the other on the European. It’s sort of humbling.

Photos by Lyndon Jones. You can hear music from Iceland in Late Junction in the weeks beginning Tuesday 26 February and Tuesday 5 March, and Fiona will be at Ilan Volkov’s Tectonics Festival with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Glasgow in May.

Fiona Talkington and John Paul Jones at Maida Vale

Late Junction presenter Fiona Talkington introduces the star of the show's New Year's Day special

When John Paul Jones was a teenager he asked his father for a loan so that he could buy an electric bass. His father laughed and told him he wouldn't get any work playing bass and he'd be better off getting a sax. Fortunately for the world of rock music the bass won and John went on to play in one of the most successful bands the world has known, Led Zeppelin.

John's father was stiff competition for the young musician in his early years: 'I couldn't rival him as a pianist, so I went and learned the church organ', he told me while unpacking instruments in the BBC's Maida Vale studios just before Christmas. There's some electronics wizardry he's putting together plus a mandolin (which he always travels with), a ukulele and an instrument I immediately covet, a 'collapse-steel' - a lap steel which folds in two and pops into a handy travel-sized bag. This is part of John's collection of 'small' instruments and he's going to play them and the studio's Steinway, as well as choose some discs for Late Junction's New Year show.

I first met John Paul Jones in 2008 when he came backstage at a Norwegian festival I was curating at Kings Place in London. We persuaded him (quite easily) that he should come to the Punkt Festival in Kristiansand and that was where he had a memorable meeting with the mighty Supersilent (Arve Henriksen, Helge Sten and Ståle Storløkken). I'd introduced John on to the stage where he played a short extract from music he'd written for choreographer Merce Cunningham. When Supersilent came on next he stayed and played with them. Standing side of stage I witnessed four musicians who have such passion for what they do and who were totally enthralled by playing together. The relationship has lasted and Supersilent and John Paul Jones have just finished their first UK tour.

He's such an inspiring musician to listen to and to talk to. Of course there's a lot written about his Led Zeppelin life, but delve further and you'll be talking Appalachian fiddling, Egyptian traditional music or French folk music. I had no idea what instruments he was going to bring and I was intrigued to know what his CD choices were. As it turned out it was a mixture of new discoveries (Sxip Shirey for example whom he'd met at ENO last year) and old partnerships in which he'd played or been producer. He told me a great story about Diamanda Galas who turned up at his place and they sang and played their way through the entire Motown songbook. I hoped beyond hope that they'd recorded that, but we'll just have to imagine! He brought recordings of some shape note singing, a CD he'd produced with Uncle Earl, and two musicians who are right up there among the very best musicians it's my privilege to know, the singer Sidsel Endresen and the guitarist and Stian Westerhus.

We talked about President Obama (Led Zeppelin had just come back from the White House where they received an award for their lifetime contribution to American culture through the performing arts at the Kennedy Center Honors) we talked about the opera John's writing based on a story by Strindberg, and about his parents and being on the road with their vaudeville comedy act. 'That's where the trouble started,' he grinned.

We do like to surprise our listeners on Late Junction and John was the perfect party guest. Making this particular New Year show was indeed a 'whole lotta fun'!

Listen to Late Junction's New Year's Day Special from 11pm.

Amy MacDougall and King Creosote

The Late Junction team are preparing for their last gig in Edinburgh. Producer Georgia Mann-Smith has been running on shortbread as she holds the fort ...

It's Late Junction's last night here at The Edinburgh Fringe and after some late night hill-walking, extensive shortbread consumption, the odd private performance of ancient Japanese court music and eight Mongolians bringing the sparkly ceilinged house down - it's been an eventful few days. But it's not over yet ...

Producer Roger is currently cutting together audio from last night's excursion up Arthur's Seat - Edinburgh's impressively craggy hill - which has been playing host to Speed Of Light, an event which has seen groups of runners setting off up the hill at dusk with sound emitting light staffs which have not only lit up the night sky but generated an ambient sound track for good measure. Our presenter Verity Sharp joined Speed of Light runners and walkers before hosting our programme live from The Tun, the BBC's Edinburgh HQ, yesterday evening. While she and Roger put their walking boots to good use, I was in the studio holding the fort - and consuming generous amounts of Scottish confectionery. I must admit to feeling a little nervous when I still had no Verity at 11.00 pm (we went on air at 11.45), but thankfully she made it back in good time to host a packed 45-minute show, with guitar fireworks from the now legendary John(s) Williams and Etheridge as well as Mercury Prize-nominated King Creosote and singer Amy McDougall bringing that uniquely Scottish brand of vocal purity to proceedings.

Before things kick off this evening we'll be going to pick up a carpet for our Azerbaijani superstar Alim Qasimov and his ensemble, then we'll need to get the piano tuned on stage at the Big Sparkly BBC Tent so that it's ready for use by both top Scottish new music band The Hebrides Ensemble and vampy chanteuse Camille O'Sullivan who will all be joining us to play live from 11.00 this evening.

And I'm very much hoping to get a set list from the brilliant Scottish singer-song writer Dick Gaughan any minute now, whatever he decides to play will be well worth tuning in for. We'll be sad to pack up our Late Junction suitcases but as we head down the hill and out of Edinburgh, we've got great memories of Mongolian Wind Horses, Gagaku and the odd malfunctioning light staff.

Tune in to Late Junction at 11pm tonight

Kris Drever and his trio members Eamonn Coyne and Megan Henderson

Radio 3 producer Georgia Mann-Smith is with the Late Junction team in Edinburgh. It's raining, but as Georgia explains, that's the least of the challenges when radio, TV and interactive production teams are all at it full tilt ...

A band of Mongolian musicians. A Belgian viol consort. Rising stars of the Scottish folk scene - and Gaelic song inspired by a grass weaver from the Outer Hebrides. It could only be Radio 3's home for the terminally eclectic: Late Junction, and the programme has just landed at the Edinburgh Fringe where we'll be broadcasting live from the BBC's sparkly new venue at Potterow. The production team and presenter Verity Sharp are slightly soggy from the Edinburgh August weather, but the clouds were blown away by former BBC Folk Singer of the Year nominee Kris Drever and his trio members Eamonn Coyne and Megan Henderson (banjo, tenor guitar, fiddle and harmonium are covered by those two respectively). They've just finished sound checking for tonight's live programme - with one final request to the sound team for 'more banjo', which Eamonn looked slightly surprised about. Niall, Sam and Joanna - our sound team - are being commendably calm about the fairly gargantuan challenge they've been set for tonight's show: having to switch seamlessly from the steppes-inspired Mongolian strains of AnDa Union to the melancholy richness of Ricercar Consort's viol music, alongside lots of boisterous folk-y energy from Kris Drever and co. And tonight is fairly simple in comparison to Thursday's show…

I doubt the team will clear the venue tonight before 1.00 am after the show, but our alarm clocks will be set, because tomorrow morning, we're off to record music from The Musicians of the Imperial Household in Tokyo who'll be playing Gagaku: music which dates back to 5th century Japan. That's before we send Verity up Arthur's Seat - Edinburgh's landmark hill - while holding a light staff which generates a movement-inspired sound track. So far she seems game, I've brought her a lovely kagoule to ensure maximum dryness of light staff. And presenter.

The home of the BBC here at the Fringe is quite a thing to behold. The main space is a giant tent with a black canopy dotted with twinkly lights, which give a slightly surreal Christmassy feel to everything. It's fair to say that there is a special energy and enjoyment in our work when radio, tv and online teams get together to operate in such close physical proximity.

As I write this Paul Merton and Nicholas Parsons are in conversation on the main stage talking about Just A Minute; CBBC were here this morning and tomorrow everyone from Rory Bremner to Richard Bacon will be taking to the twinkly-ceilinged stage.

As the rain continues to come down on our portacabin, I'm off to find out about the distribution of 300 Mongolian scarves, and to dodge some puddles while seeking out blank CDs. Where's that kagoule…..?

• Tune in to Late Junction, live from the Edinburgh Festival at 11pm tonight.
• Visit the Late Junction Home Page
• Find the BBC's Edinburgh Festival Fringe Page

(Above and below) Musicircus performers at the London Coliseum

American composer John Cage's Musicircus, a musical happening first realised in 1967 'for any number of musicians, being prepared to perform in the same place', is rooted in his idea that 'many musics may be heard at one and the same time'. Which sounds like chaos, yet, as ever with Cage, it is less a chaotic shambles than an extremely disciplined action that opens the door to wholly unexpected results.

For the English National Opera Musicircus in March this year, with over 200 performers strewn across the four floors of the Coliseum in London, the combined result was a feast for the senses, sounds streaming in from every angle: around corners, behind closed doors, down stairwells and even in the ladies toilet. Each of the performers, be they hand-bell ringers, violinists, or even John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin, followed chance-derived timing sheets that dictated when they should play, and when they should be silent. With each sheet being an independently generated set of timings, as a listener you experience the interplay of different musicians stopping, starting, overlapping, creating waves of concurrent musical sounds or silences.

Part of the appeal of a Musicircus is the anarchic nature of a building full of people, a musical carnival, apparently inspired by the composer's 1931 visit to Seville where he experienced a wild mix of different musicians all on the same street corner. So the idea of recording a Musicircus, creating a fixed version of an event, in which by design anything could happen, is fraught with difficulties. Not least because with 200 performers who may or may not be playing at any one time scattered around a vast Edwardian theatre, you need to have a microphone on everything; and that is a lot of microphones. It is also crucial to be faithful to the idea of the Musicircus, and present the meandering of an interested listener wandering at will through the forest of sounds that make up the piece, open to all. Once you start to make decisions about the relative merits of one sound over the other, what may or may not be more interesting, you start to stray from a Cageian ideal of a 'multiplicity of rights'.

Step forward Mr James Birtwistle, who with his crack team of sound engineers, seemingly half the BBC stock of microphones and a lot of cabling, on 50 time-coded channels managed to record the entire event. Every squeak, parp, declamation or silence was recorded, an almighty collective musical statement painstakingly captured. But this was not the whole picture, as for each visitor to the Musicircus the experience of what they heard at any given moment would be different. So James took it upon himself to wander the building with a stereo microphone, to create a narrative that took in the serendipitous tuttis, the silences, and the muttering of his fellow audience members. Once we'd returned to Broadcasting House, the next job was to mix the multitrack recording with James' stereo wanderings in order to create a radio version that matched the experience of being there. What a stereo microphone records doesn't take into account the brain's ability to focus on a particular instrument that you may happen to be looking at, so we were able to embellish the stereo mix with the direct feeds of sounds James had been looking at, all the time wary to preserve the linear integrity of the recording, all the sounds and silences, and to add nothing to the mix that couldn't be heard at that moment in time and space.

What resulted is a remarkable piece of music, a 37 minute journey from the top of the building to the bottom, taking in all the different areas, all the different performers, but with no knowledge of who would play when, or what or how. The temple bowls mixed with the violin and the lecture on mycology, the analogue electronics versus the autoharp, the two choirs singing against each other: the moments of musical overlap, creating freshly minted musical worlds, could not have been planned or composed, but by the rigorous application of chance processes. It's only one person's perspective on this mind-boggling event of course, and we make no claims to have pinned down the anarchic beast which is a Musicircus, but I hope you enjoy Cage's riotous vision of a new musical world.

As well as full mixed and multi-tracked radio recording, we sent our colleague Louise off with a pair of binaural microphones attached to her ears, for the full immersive experience - here's what Louise heard.

• View over 150 pictures of the ENO/Radio3 Musicircus
• Find out more about John Cage
• All this week Late Junction is celebrating the centenary of John Cage's birth.
• Listen to the full Musicircus recording in Late Junction with Anne Hilde Neset from 11pm this Thursday evening.
  

One of the musicians of COMBÉ playing at Latitude 2012. Photo: Danielle Peck/BBC

With multi coloured sheep, majestic snowy owls circling the site each evening and, frankly biblical weather, the past four days at the Latitude Festival have seen the Late Junction production team communing with nature in muddy Henham Park in Suffolk.

Nestled in a spruce wood by a lake, Max Reinhardt presented three nights of Late Junction-curated artists in a space called the 'Lavish Lounge', a cosy wallpapered living room with a canopy of trees, where each night rapt audiences would crowd the leather sofas, to see how Late Junction's trademark 'whatever musical gem will they play next- style of late-night radio would transfer to a festival stage.

What they got was a programme that skipped through musical genres like a game of hopscotch, the first night alone taking in Ornette Coleman, Xenakis and Congolese Soukous. Whether it was rising stars such as Sam Lee or Tanya Auclair, big names such as Baloji and Laetitia Sadier, the audience kept coming back to have new musical worlds brought to life under the stars.

For me it was amazing to see how the artists who came from across the world to play, were discovering eachother's music and making connections they hadn't before - Baloji's congolese musicians singing along to Aisha Orazbayeva soundchecking Steve Reich's violin phase, or Tanya Auclair dancing in her wellies to the Afro-Colombian roots of Cumbé.

All the recordings are now being rushed back to Broadcasting House, where the mud will be shaken off and highlights from three nights of festival music- making will be distilled into three episodes of late junction. If you listen carefully you can almost hear the sun coming out.

Peter Meanwell is a producer for BBC Radio 3.

Max Reinhardt presents highlights from Latitude 2012 on Late Junction on Tuesday 16 July (11pm), Wednesday 17 July (11.45pm) and Thursday 18 July (11.15pm). Find details on the Late Junction home page.

Tanya Auclair. Photo: Danielle Peck/BBC