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Since 1983 Soundscape Productions have been creating programmes for BBC Radio and other broadcasters
It is with great sadness that we have to announce that one of our producers Dave Sheasby has died of cancer.
Dave was a great inspiration to us all at Soundscape - an excellent producer, playwright and friend who will be greatly missed.
He was a very modest man but thankfully we have the legacy of his productions and radio dramas to testify to his talent and it is fitting that his two latest adaptations for the BBC - 'All Quiet on the Western Front' and 'Slaughterhouse 5' will rightly be regarded as radio classics for many years to come.
BBC World Service – 28th May 2010
Transmissions on BBC English Service at 09.05, 12.05. 15.05, 20.05 and 01.05 (29th) All Times BST
Each morning on the way to work in the Iranian city of Isphahan hundreds of people pause beneath the Bridge of the Thirty Three arches and sing faultless poetry written almost eight hundred years ago before continuing on their way to work or college. In the Southern city of Shiraz the tombs of the C13th poets Hafiz and Sa'di are visited by crowds of Persians who adorn the tombs with fresh roses and recite poetry by heart. The Iranians have a reverence for poetry that we in the West find astonishing and which is so at odds with the portrayal of Iranians as belligerent warmongers. Vita Sackville West, who loved Persia and travelled through it, said that 'Hafez and Sa'di sang frequently, even wearisomely of love, nightingales and roses and the modern Iranian loses no opportunity to do the same”. So why are Iranians so enamoured and familiar with their elegant, philosophical poetry of love and life written at the same time that Chaucer was writing bawdy tales about clerics and scoundrels and what does it say about the state of the Iranian soul?
Presenter: Amir Amirani Producer: Caroline Beck
Our Programme ‘Then-Now’ has been awarded a Bronze World Medal at the New York Festival for Best Editing. The editing of this intriguing ‘radio poem’, which was created entirely out of recordings made during a single minute of a single day, was a collaborative process between Producer Andy Cartwright and Warwick Pilmer at Clipstore Ltd in Leeds. For more details about ‘Then-Now’ and a chance to listen to the award-winning programme click here.
Home Recorded Voices
BBC Radio 4 – Saturday 20th December 2008
Sean Street delves into the world of domestic home recordings revealing a fascinating social history from wax cylinders to 'myspace' Domestic and semi-professional tape machines have only been around for just over half a century and by the late1950s people with money or a passion for sound were beginning to purchase these machines and start to recording sounds in their own homes. But now in the 21st Century tape has become old technology and boxes of tapes take up a lot of space!
For the past 10 years Richard Harrison has been trailing around car boot sales, skips and auctions finding boxes and boxes of 1/4" tapes and has now established an unusual archive of 'domestic recordings' from around the UK. In this Archive Hour Sean Street joins Richard as he hunts out piles of boxes at Car Boot sales and listens to tapes many of which are being heard for the first time in decades and probably for the first time people outside a close circle of family and friends. These are recordings of unique moments in time and situation never before broadcast. But who are these voices? The programme follows Sean, Richard and other collectors and ‘domestic’ tape recordists as they tell the story of Home Recorded Voices.
Producer: Andy Cartwright
Nigel Simeone, the professor of music at Sheffield University travels to Paris to tell the dramatic and sometimes intriguing story of classical musical activity during the German occupation years - les annees noires - from June 1940 to August 1944. Moving round the modern city he rediscovers the places where concerts were held and meets some of the people who can help piece together the story of what happened to music in Paris in the occupation years.
In spite of mass Jewish deportations and disappearances which left orchestras severely depleted, musical life went on apace made both by those who favoured collaboration and those who favoured secret resistance, sometimes the two tendencies working together under a tacit silence and all encouraged by a Nazi high command who were well disposed to French culture and the arts and determined to maintain a cultural Paris-as-usual. There were underground meetings and even clandestine publications like "Musiciens Aujourdhui" centred on resistance and yet others like the pianist Alfred Cortot and the singer Germaine Lubin were openly pro-occupation.
Producer: Dave Sheasby
On a windswept hillside in County Durham is a line of doorsteps embedded in the grass. It’s all that remains of one of the hundreds of so-called D-Villages, settlements that once served the coal industry but which were deliberately demolished as that industry declined.
During the 1960’s and 70’s over one hundred villages in County Durham were categorised as D-Villages and destined for eradication. But as plans leaked out there was considerable resistance in defence of the doomed villages. Planning for Destruction will examine the tensions that grew up between policy makers and villagers who fought to keep the very villages that were written off.
Presenter/Producer: Caroline Beck
by Steve Chambers.
The story of the author of ‘The Rights of Women’ Mary Wollstonecraft’s epic Scandinavian quest in pursuit of a doomed love affair.
‘Scandinavian Dreams’ is the true story of an epic journey of discovery to Scandinavia against the backdrop of the French revolution. It’s also the story of a love affair which begins euphorically in Paris at a moment when the possibilities of happiness and justice in human affairs seem infinitely extendible and ends in despair a few months later when the same possibilities now appear infinitely remote.
Directed by Dave Sheasby Produced by Andy Cartwright
NOW Available as a CD price £5 [see details in the NEWS section above.)
As Bretton Hall College closes it’s doors to students for the last time – ‘Final
Curtain’ looks back at the remarkable history of an institution in the
heart of Yorkshire that produced some of the greatest acting, writing and musical
talents of the past 60 years – Award-winning playwrights, John Godber
and Kay Mellor; Oscar winner, Colin Welland; and comedian and writer Mark Thomas
and Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith from ‘The League
of Gentlemen’. What was it about this isolated community which made it
a hot-bed of artistic creativity?
Producer: Andy Cartwright
Believe it or not a 'Festival of Lying' takes place every year in Wasdale
in the Lake District. A sheepskin gauntlet has been thrown down to Sue Perkins
to see if she can beat the local liars and all-comers to become the first
woman and stand-up to carry off the prestigious title of the ‘world’s
biggest liar’. It's a live contest in front of a boisterous audience
and contestants have to speak for five minutes on a local subject and they're
judged by a panel of experts for their ability to 'pull the wool over the
eyes' of the assembled crowd. But, to paraphrase the famous song does Sue "know
all there is to know about the Lying Game"? Can she cheat her way to
the top? Will anyone believe she can do it? Obviously with such a star of
Radio 4 taking part she's bound to walk off with the prize.
But we could be lying!
Producer: Andrew Carter/Andy Cartwright
In an area known as 'The Great Limestone' in the northern Pennines is Harehope
quarry which has been worked since the thirteenth century both for the quality
of its extraordinary limestone and its beautiful fossil-filled marble. It
is indeed the hole in the ground from which the Romanesque masterpiece Durham
Cathedral emerged as well as being a haunt of the twelve year old WH Auden
who came to the area as a boy hunting for fossils and exploring the labyrinth
of limestone caves.
‘Opened Ground’ is a radiophonic celebration of an ancient seam of
limestone as experienced by the people who have worked, loved, written about
and absorbed the genius loci of this unique place that gave rise to one of the
most beautiful buildings in the world.
Producer: Caroline Beck
Tommy Pearson travels to Darmstadt in Germany to discover if the rumours
are true that one of the most radical avant-garde music festivals was covertly
funded by the CIA. In a single night the allies destroyed 80% of the Darmstadt – in
13 years Hitler destroyed the heart and soul of German music. Could an international
music school help re-build the cultural life of a devastated Europe and stop
the advance of the awesome might of Shostakovich? And what if the composers
were lefties and communists and only interested in writing the most inaccessible
music imaginable?
Producer: Andy Cartwright
Children’s writer Anne Fine goes in search of the secret life of the
author of ‘The Secret Garden’ – Frances Hodgson Burnett -
An adventure which takes her to the USA and into the secret garden itself.
Producer: Caroline Beck
A radio-poem which explores what happened on one particular minute in one particular
day. 6pm – 6.01pm on 9th November 2005
Hundreds of infinitely diverse minutes turned into a 24 minute radio poem.
Producer: Andy Cartwright
click here to read Sean Street’s introduction to the programme
click here to download a pdf guide to this unique ‘radio-poem’
click here to hear the programme as an mp3
The story of the unwanted visitors who made Victorian Christmas hell!
Presented by Georgina Boyes with Norma Waterson
Producer: Dave Sheasby
The Archive Hour: The British on Top of the World – BBC Radio 4
Voyages - this programme was nominated for the Feature Award at the Sony Radio Academy Awards 2006
In this programme spinal injury patients and outpatients at the James Cook Hospital in Middlesbrough talk about their own voyages of discovery juxtaposed with extracts from the journals of Captain Cook and the poetry of Kevin Cadwallender.
The programme was originally transmitted on BBC Radio 4 on 15th August 2005
John Meade Falkner’s Bag of Paradoxes - BBC Radio 4
The Archive Hour: A Shoddy Business - BBC Radio 4
Turning the Tide – BBC Radio 4
Trimming Pablo – BBC Radio 3
Soundscape
Productions
01904 731300
info@soundscapeproductions.co.uk