Programme Information

Bob Harris's session tonight comes from two key figures in East Nashville's alternative music scene, Eric Brace and Peter Cooper.

The front man of roots-rock band Last Train Home, Eric Brace moved to Nashville in 2003 to develop the band and form an independent record label, celebrating the music of East Nashville. After moving to the city he met Peter Cooper, one of Nashville's leading music journalists, himself a singer-songwriter. The two friends recorded an album together in 2008 called You Don't Have To Like Them Both, and are currently on tour in the UK with Eric's band Last Train Home and fellow East Nashville songwriter Phil Lee.

Presenter/Bob Harris, Producer/Al Booth for the BBC

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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BBC Radio 2 In Concert

Thursday 29 July

8.00-10.00pm BBC RADIO 2

Tonight's headline concert comes from REM, recorded for BBC Radio 2 at St James's Church, Piccadilly, London in September 2004.

Jo Whiley also celebrates the very best live music on Radio 2 over the past seven days. Her weekly Gig Guide gives listeners all the latest news on who's released tickets for up-and-coming tours, and she reveals which gig she's sent her reviewer to this week.

Listeners can contact Jo with stories about the latest gigs they've been to and their reaction to the headline concert by emailing inconcert@bbc.co.uk or texting 88291 during the show.

Presenter/Jo Whiley, Producer/BBC Radio 2 Live Music for the BBC

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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A session from the Redbridge Brass Band, recorded especially for Listen To The Band, features in tonight's programme, presented by Frank Renton.

Redbridge Brass Band have just had a very successful fourth place finish in the French Open Championships and are London and Southern Counties area champions again, following last year's victory at The Butlins Mineworkers Championships.

Conducted by Jeremy Wise, they play a varied and exciting programme of music for tonight's show including George Allen's The Wizard, which won them the march prize at this year's French Open. They also perform the Scherzo from Shostakovich's 10th Symphony; Elgar's Chanson de matin; the theme from the movie Silverado; and a Beatles classic, Got To Get You Into My Life.

Presenter/Frank Renton, Producer/Terry Carter for the BBC

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

BBC PROMS 2010
Performance On 3 – Prom 16

Thursday 29 July

7.00-9.15pm BBC RADIO 3

• www.bbc.co.uk/proms
• Press pack

Katie Derham presents Prom 16

Pianist Paul Lewis continues his cycle of all five of Beethoven's piano concertos, tonight with No. 2 in B flat major, which Beethoven revised many times before it was published. He was developing the form and there is still a youthful feel about this concerto, looking back in style to that of his forebears such as Haydn and Mozart.

Paul Lewis is joined by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under its Latvian music director Andris Nelsons. The Beethoven concerto is sandwiched between Wagner's lively overture to Rienzi (which opened the very first prom in 1885) and the ever popular New World Symphony No. 9 by Dvořák.

This Prom will be broadcast on BBC Four at 7.30pm and repeated on BBC Radio 3 on Tuesday 3 August at 2pm.

Presenter/Katie Derham, Producer/Helen Garrison

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

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Award-winning writer Julia Blackburn recalls the summer she spent writing dictionary definitions for the letters H and L. Now she sees an autobiographical thread in her apparently objective definitions.

Winner of the Penn-Ackerley biography prize 2009, Julia lived for two years in Majorca as a young woman. Trying to become a writer, she found herself too afraid of words to write. They were "all so fickle and prone to exaggeration or misinterpretation".

A summer job compiling a dictionary came along via a friend of her father's and so she took charge of two letters, with instructions to define her words according to English "as it is spoken today", including new words and colloquialisms. Her definitions had to be original, and where a word was difficult to understand or ambiguous in meaning it needed to be illustrated with a short phrase. These phrases reveal Julia's preoccupations and passions at the time: her love of animals; a love affair just ended; and her bohemian lifestyle.

Writing definitions changed Julia's relationship with words. She began to forgive their shiftiness, their lack of absolute clarity, and especially loved the more simple ones which carried a complex responsibility of meaning.

Presenter/Julia Blackburn, Producer/Mary Ward-Lowery

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

John Sugar explores the originations of magic over the past 100 years.

Magic is constantly changing, with performers creating bigger and better tricks to impress. But times have changed since a magician produced a startled rabbit out of a top hat with a puff of smoke. Today people expect more, and the modern magician apparently does the impossible.

In this programme, John explores where the magic came from. He does not reveal any trade secrets – such as how to saw a woman in half, or the best way to float in the air – but he does investigate how the sale of magic has changed, with the impact of the internet and the way conventions are developing new environments for its promotion and sale. The programme also hears about the leading magic shops and studios of 60 years ago, revealing the characters who created the magic.

The programme visits the 58th Magic Convention in Blackpool, attended by 3,500 magicians, and hears from the organisers and the performers.

Presenter and Producer/John Sugar for Sugar Productions

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Daniel is running through the Chilean desert; Ayelen is speeding across it in the opposite direction. When an earthquake hits, they become reluctant travelling companions, in a desperate bid to find out if Ayelen's family have survived.

Daniel is a young free runner who has been all over the world, jumping across cities everywhere but never really seeing them. His latest goal is to run solo across the Atacama desert in Northern Chile, a new extreme challenge. He's earning a huge amount of money by being filmed at the end of his run drinking a particular extreme sports drink. But he has to get there on a certain day, and time is tight.

Ayelen is a Chilean woman in her thirties, who has lived in the UK for most of her life. She has come home for a family reunion with her mother but has run off after yet another family row. She has "borrowed" a run-down 4x4 from the garage where her brother works and is travelling across the desert alone.

Then an earthquake hits. Ayelen's car is thrown off course and she becomes trapped. Daniel, who has seen it all from a nearby ridge, is forced to rescue her. He is reluctant to break his meticulously planned run, but feels he cannot leave a human being in a place like this.

Their subsequent journey across the desert is a life-changing experience for both of them.

Terremoto, written by Catrin Clarke, features Sule Rimi as Daniel, Clare Isaac as Ayelen, Richard Harrington as Guy Merchant and Ernesto Cantu as the Chilean driver.

Acoustic guitar and folksong is performed by Héctor Daniel Saez Cárdenas.

Producer/Polly Thomas for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

5 Live Sport

Thursday 29 July

7.00-10.30pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE

Vassos Alexander and Eleanor Oldroyd have all the day's sports news and, from 7.30pm, live action from the European Athletics Championships including the women's 100m final.

From 9pm 5 Live Golf has all the latest from the golfing world.

Presenters/Vassos Alexander and Eleanor Oldroyd, Producer/Mark Williams

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

Test Match Special

Thursday 29 July

10.45am-6.30pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

Uninterrupted commentary on the opening day of the first Test between England and Pakistan comes live from Trent Bridge with the Test Match Special team.

Producer/Jen McAllister

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity