Dame Evelyn Glennie joins the BBC Singers and Fantasia Orchestra for a live concert exploring the many ways people experience music on BBC Radio 3.

By Robert Lee, The Audio Concierge | Web Radio Info

Tonight’s Prom on BBC Radio 3 begins with a simple but expansive idea: listening involves more than hearing notes.

Dame Evelyn Glennie joins the BBC Singers and Fantasia Orchestra at London’s Royal Albert Hall for a late-night concert that crosses jazz, rock, classical music, percussion, and unaccompanied voices.

The concert begins tonight, Tuesday, August 11, at 5:15 p.m. Eastern, or 10:15 p.m. in London. BBC Radio 3 will carry the performance live, with online audio available through BBC Sounds.

The program brings together music by John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Radiohead, Dvořák, Vaughan Williams, Caroline Shaw, Meredith Monk and other composers.

Coltrane’s “Welcome” and Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” bring jazz into conversation with orchestral and vocal music. Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song” receives an arrangement for orchestra and voices, while Caroline Shaw’s “Sarabande” from Partita for 8 Voices explores rhythm, speech and the physical possibilities of the human voice.

The concert also includes the world premiere of Héloïse Werner’s The Wood Pigeon, commissioned for this Prom.

Other selections move between the stillness of Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel, the energy of Dvořák’s Czech Suite and the communal singing of Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music.

Glennie is central to the meaning of this concert.

She became profoundly deaf as a child and developed a deeply physical approach to music. She experiences sound through vibration, the floor, her instruments, the surrounding air and her entire body.

Glennie has explained that listening is not limited to receiving sound through the ears. It can involve touch, attention, awareness and connection.

That perspective makes her especially fitting for a concert centered on collective listening. Her performance challenges the assumption that everyone experiences music in the same way.

Glennie will perform Sandman’s Castle by Vincent Ho and Orologeria Aureola, which she created with Philip Sheppard.

How to Listen Tonight

The concert begins:

• Eastern: 5:15 p.m.
• Central: 4:15 p.m.
• Mountain: 3:15 p.m.
• Pacific: 2:15 p.m.
• London: 10:15 p.m.

Listen live through BBC Radio 3 on BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds often retains Proms broadcasts for later listening, but Web Radio Info has not confirmed the replay period for this particular concert. Listeners who want to hear it live should open the BBC Radio 3 stream before the scheduled starting time.

BBC Sounds availability can vary by location and device.

The Audio Concierge Recommendation

Listen for the transitions instead of approaching the program as a collection of unrelated pieces.

The movement from Coltrane and Ellington into contemporary vocal music, orchestral works, percussion and Radiohead is part of the experience. Each selection offers a different answer to the question of how performers and audiences listen to one another.

Glennie’s presence gives that question additional meaning. For Web Radio Info listeners, this is more than an unusually adventurous Prom. It is an opportunity to consider sound as something heard, felt and shared.

For anyone interested in percussion, jazz, experimental voices or accessible ways of understanding music, tonight’s broadcast is worth hearing.