PODCAST · arts
Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast
by Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast
Jon Jacob talks to artists, writers, and audience members about classical music.
Episodes
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242: Gavin Higgins & Mark Simpson
Gavin Higgins & Mark Simpson discuss Higgins' new clarinet concerto premiered by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in October 2026.
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241: Nigel Short on 25 years of Tenebrae
Tenebrae began with no plan, no name and a dinner Nigel Short tried to get out of. Twenty-five years on, the choir marks its anniversary with concerts and a new album, The Journey. In this conversation, Nigel talks about the chance encounters that founded it, the pocket-money calculation that...
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240: Fran Wilson's 'Facing the Music'
Writer Fran Wilson's debut publication 'Facing the Music' captures a lifelong love of experiencing music both from a performer and an audience member's perspective. Buy the book in bookshops, Amazon and on Kindle Unlimited.
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239: Eleanor Alberga & Thomas Bowes
Does the world need another recording of the Elgar Violin Concerto? Yes, I think it does. This episode makes the case: a conversation with violin Thomas Bowes and pianist, composer and arranger Eleanor Alberga, celebrating a touching lifelong musical partnership with a new release on the Rubicon...
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238: Jessica Walker
In this episode, listen to singer Jessica Walker introduce the story of Barbara — the singer, composer and lyricist whose output equals Jacques Brel's, someone who sold over a million copies of a single song in a day, but who remains little known in the UK. Walker has spent years translating…
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237: Three Choirs 2026 in Gloucester with composer Grace Evangeline-Mason
A scrapbook in sound: voices, reflections and field recordings from Three Choirs Festival 2026 in Gloucester — a postcard from two life-enhancing days.
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236: Guy Johnston on Britten’s Cello Symphony
Days before his BBC Proms appearance marking 50 years since the death of Benjamin Britten, cellist Guy Johnston talks candidly about his career, his influences, and his preparation for performance.
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235: Pianist Beatrice Nicholas
Beatrice Nicholas is a British concert pianist and composer. She performs the traditional classical canon, and she composes and arranges, fusing classical and jazz together. She's also a member of the Chineke! Chamber Ensemble, drawn from principal players of the Chineke! Orchestra. On the...
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234: Laura Bowler and the Cheltenham Music Festival's Composer Academy
Composer Laura Bowler on leading the Cheltenham Music Festival's Composer Academy, recorded on-site during the week of workshops in Gloucestershire. She talks about what conservatoire didn't teach her — pitching, funding applications, resilience — plus a look back at Houses Slide, her 2021 piece...
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233: Belly of the Beast at Aldeburgh, Spitalfields and Edinburgh
Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre isn’t a name many will recognise — despite an opera that reached the Paris stage in 1694, two books of biblical cantatas published three years apart, in 1708 and 1711, and a career that ran for decades either side of those dates. The point this episode seeks to...
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228 Repeat: Aldeburgh & Snape, 50 Years After Britten's Death
This episode is being republished during this year's Aldeburgh Festiva. This episode was first published 1 June. Fifty years after Britten's death, Aldeburgh and Snape still carry his fingerprints — and still provoke the same question: what is this place actually for? In this special episode,...
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232: Adrian Brendel on Tree of Strings
Cellist Adrian Brendel on Tree of Strings, his new Dorset festival — the Harrison Birtwistle story behind its name, genre-mixing, and watching his father Alfred's final tour from the audience, occasionally incognito.
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231: Bergen International Festival's Lars Petter Hagen
Bergen International Festival Artistic Director and Chief Executive Lars Petter Hagen talks programming, audiences, leadership and listening in this special Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast episode - something of a pilgrimage for Jon Jacob.
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230: Franco Fagioli
Time with the most playful of interviewees, Franco Fagioli, recorded in Versailles in March 2026. Fagioli appears with Orchestra de l'Opera de Versailles at St Martin in the Fields on 13th June 2026.
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229: Christophe Rousset on Lully, Mozart, and playing with rules
Christophe Rousset is a harpsichordist, conductor, and founder of Les Talens Lyriques. In this conversation, recorded in Paris, he talks about completing his twenty-year project to record all thirteen of Lully's operas — a composer long dismissed as boring, and why that dismissal gets the history...
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228: Aldeburgh & Snape 50 years after Britten's Death
Fifty years after Britten's death, Aldeburgh and Snape still carry his fingerprints — and still provoke the same question: what is this place actually for? In this special episode, contributors who've performed there, programmed it, and thought hard about its future speak in their own voices…
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227: Claire Booth
Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2026 curator Claire Booth was asked a blunt question when she was invited her to put together this year's programme: why is selling a song recital so difficult? This year's Sheffield is the answer — or rather, her answer, or the argument. Or maybe its her case for...
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226: Huw Watkins
Composer and pianist Huw Watkins explores his work, his musical language, his collaborations with musicians including Tamsin Waley-Cohen with whom he has released a new album on Signum, Reflection.
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225: Gen Z, Gen A, and Forgotten Older People
When branding gets louder than the art.
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224: Lizzie Ball
A conversation with violinist and singer Lizzie Ball that begins with “big announcement week” energy and opens into a thoughtful exploration of intimacy, collaboration, and how classical music can be presented with integrity, warmth, and curiosity — from Ronnie Scott’s new series to life on and…
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223: Mezzo Soprano Katie Bray
What’s the point of pursuing something you can never reach? Hope, apparently. Mezzo-soprano Katie Bray makes a compelling case. Her new album In Search of Youkali explores Kurt Weill’s musical response to longing, exile, and the fragile idea of belonging.
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222: Penelope Appleyard
Discover Penelope Appleyard's Live from London’s festive Jane Austen programme with Zeb Soanes and pianist Jonathan Delbridge: song, domestic music-making, and Regency wit brought to life in an intimate Christmas performance.
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221: Revere Arts' Elise Brown and Class Ceiling
How do we make the classical music industry inclusive for people from lower socio-economic backgrounds — when even the “comfortable” ones struggle to get a foothold? How does an industry that desperately needs a diverse workforce to survive remove the barriers it has quietly maintained for decades?
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220: Composer and Sound Artist Ruby Colley
Composer and sound artist Ruby Colley releases her new album Hello Halo on 14 November 2025 — a work shaped by field recordings, family archives, and her lifelong conversation with her nonverbal brother Paul. It premiered at King’s Place in February, evolved through performances at Aldeburgh’s...
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219: Writer Carole Hayman
Carole Hayman is a writer, director and producer best known for creating the long-running Radio 4 comedy Ladies of Letters, and for her work across theatre, film and television. This conversation explores her fascination with understanding the motivations and actions of women who kill. When she...
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218: Vache Baroque's Betty Makharinsky
Vache Baroque didn’t start with a five-year plan. It started with a can-do attitude. In 2020, soprano-producer Betty Makharinsky and conductor Jonathan Darbourne looked at a locked-down industry and staged Purcell's Dido and Aeneas outdoors—in eleven weeks. Since then they’ve built a distinctive...
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217: Pianist Clare Hammond and Michael Betteridge
Pianist Clare Hammond is no stranger to the Thoroughly Good Podcast. She appeared here a few years ago to talk about performing Schubert in prisons. This time she returns with composer Michael Betteridge to discuss another prison project — one in which they co-created new music with prisoners,...
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216: Aida Lahlou
When the leaves begin to turn and shifting clouds reveal brief bursts of autumn light, music like that on pianist Aïda Lahlou’s new album Mirrors and Echoes seems to meet the moment — even if you didn’t know there was one waiting to be met. The Casablanca-born pianist, winner of the 2024 Royal...
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215: RLPO CEO Vanessa Reed
Thirty minutes with one of the loveliest leaders in the classical music industry.
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214: Violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen
Violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen talks candidly about the additive experience of motherhood in this podcast episode recorded on Barbican terrace in mid-September 2025.
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213: Conductor Alice Farnham
In this episode, conductor Alice Farnham is working with English Touring Opera in September and October in performances of The Elixir of Love and Britten's Rape of Lucretia. The productions pop up in a variety of different locations across England. Visit the ETO website for more details. When she...
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212: Composer Julian Anderson
In this episode, composer Julian Anderson discusses his new work Life Cycle, to be premiered by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in September 2025. Conducted by Stephan Meier, and featuring soprano Anna Dennis, the concert also includes Charlotte Bray’s Reflections in Time and the premiere of...
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211: Trumpeter Matilda Lloyd
Trumpeter Matilda Lloyd releases her third album on the Chandos Label featuring four premiere recordings by Roxanna Panufnik, Richard Barbard, Deborah Pritchard and Owain Park, alongside transcriptions of music by Johan Sebastian Bach, Martini, and Johann Ludwig Kreps. Matilda is an invigorating...
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210: BBC Proms Director and Radio 3 Controller Sam Jackson
Audiences. Strategy. Credibility. What does cultural leadership in classical music look like when credibility is tested by data? Sam Jackson - Radio 3 Controller and BBC Proms Director - talks to Jon Jacob about Radio 3's new sound, recent listening figures (have they been spun or are they…
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209: Three Choirs Festival
Composers Richard Blackford and Gavin Higgins return to the Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast talking about the Three Choirs Festival where Higgins has just been announced new Associate Composer. Blackford's new work The Black Lake premiered there. Also featuring CEO David Francis. Music:...
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208: Pianist Hanni Lang
Hello Grab a pillow and lay down. Drift off. Allow yourself to dream. Such overt direction wouldn't normally feature in a Thoroughly Good Podcast introduction, but its fitting for this one with pianist Hanni Liang who, ever the experimenter with concert formats, tests out an element of her...
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207: Pianist Mariam Batsashvili
Georgian pianist Mariam Batsashvili shares her journey from student to international artist. She reflects on her roots in Georgia’s rich musical culture, her transformative experience as a BBC New Generation Artist, and the thrill of returning to the Royal Albert Hall. Mariam discusses the...
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206: Wigmore Hall's John Gilhooly
London chamber music venue Wigmore Hall stages something in the region of 600 events a year. That’s partly why its season brochure stretches to 206 pages — and that’s just for September to December 2025. A weighty piece of print that, for some (myself included), reads more like a guaranteed...
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205: Composer Daniel Kidane
Four years after the premiere of ‘Woke’ at the BBC Proms in 2021, composer Daniel Kidane is riding high, this year Composer in Residence at the 2025 Aldeburgh Festival. Kidane reflects on his training, his mindset for composing, and what’s changed (or not) since the work that promoted empathy,...
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204: Britten Sinfonia at Addenbrooke's Hospital
In this episode, Jon Jacob joins Britten Sinfonia and medical professionals at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge to explore how live music brings moments of connection and calm in clinical settings. Recorded during hospital visits, the conversation reveals how music supports recovery and...
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203: Composer Oliver Davis introduces his new album 'Life'
This episode spotlights contemporary classical composer Oliver Davis talking about his new album Life. Davis writes music that makes a montage of your own life. Had author Augesten Burroughs had access to Davis he'd have had access to soundtracks that would have consoled and celebrated the very...
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202: Bristol Beacon CEO Simon Wales
Bristol Beacon CEO Simon Wales reflects on leadership, legacy, and launching the 2025/26 orchestral season. We talk classical music, innovation, and why Bristol deserves its place as one of the UK’s great music cities.
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201: Britten Pears Arts CEO Andrew Comben
Andrew Comben, Chief Executive of Britten Pears Arts, reflects on leading an organisation where legacy, place, and innovation intersect. We explore the 2025 Aldeburgh Festival, the return of Festival Extra, and how collaboration across the sector is vital to sustaining new artistic work.
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200: Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston
Some people raise the bar just by walking into the room. Mezzo Soprano and Creative Consultant Jennifer Johnston is one of them. We talk about her award-winning creative work during the pandemic, her journey from barrister to singer, and her latest collaboration with the London Transport Museum —...
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199: Horn Player Martin Owen
Following a stunning opening concert in Manchester Camerata's new Mozart series, horn player Martin Owen talks about Mozart's Horn Concertos, working with Camerata, and a 30-year career spanning many of the UK's leading orchestras. Owen is warm, playful and generous, and that is reflected in his...
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198: Pianist Jan Lisiecki
Jan returns to the podcast after what we both reckon is probably around 12 years. He remains, as I dimly recall from a sunny day in Verbier, candid, down to earth, and completely and utterly absorbed by his craft. But what’s evident now — and what I definitely don’t remember sensing then — is his...
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197: Industrial-scale Mental Housekeeping (with Brahms)
How successfully can AI underscore a day-to-day experience like grief? Or reading a book? Or even work as a coach? It turns out surprisingly well. Far better than the pearl-clutching naysayers. 11 minutes accompanied by Brahms. All very Thoroughly Good.
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196: Conductor Mark Wigglesworth
In this podcast Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Chief Conductor discusses his view on leadership, the role he plays as a leader conducting an orchestra, and how he's developed that role in the 30 plus years of his career to date.
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195: Soprano Ana Beard Fernandez
30 minutes of chat with Manchester born soprano Ana Beard Fernandez ahead of her new album - Habanera including music by Villa Lobos, Ravel, de Falla, Shostakovich and Rameau on the SOMM label featuring the Endellion Cellists, Roderick Williams, and conductor William Vann. In addition ... because...
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194: Pianist Emmanuel Despax
Pianist Emmanuel Despax reflects on his deep connection to music, the emotional power of performance, and his upcoming concerts with the Bechstein Trio at Bechstein Hall in Spring 2025
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Jon Jacob talks to artists, writers, and audience members about classical music.
HOSTED BY
Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast have?
Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast currently has 445 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast about?
Jon Jacob talks to artists, writers, and audience members about classical music.
How often does Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast release new episodes?
Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast publishes regularly with 445 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
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You can listen to Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast?
Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast is created and hosted by Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast.
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