Recording of the week: Listening Project Symphony

Paul Wilson, Curator Radio Broadcast writes:

This week’s selection celebrates World Radio Day 2018 (13th February). It's an excerpt from the Listening Project Symphony, a beautiful composition by Gary Carpenter for the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra which was first broadcast live from Manchester in December 2012. The piece incorporates extracts from some of the intimate and often surprising conversations which have emerged from The Listening Project, a collaboration between the BBC and the British Library in which family members or friends are invited to share their stories, private thoughts and feelings with an unseen radio audience.

Afshan (left) and her mother Flavia, with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra at Salford Quays (composite image courtesy of the BBC)

In this extract we briefly hear voices from three separate conversations, each poignant or moving in its own way even in this edited form. The third – part of a conversation between a young British Muslim woman of Indian/Pakistani descent and her India-born mother – will hold a particular resonance for some. Afshan, the daughter, begins by gauging her mother Flavia's response to a hypothetical question: how would you feel if I were to marry a man of a different religion? Only then does she take the hypothetical situation a step further – how would you feel if my partner were another woman?

Excerpt from the Listening Project Symphony BBC Radio 4 29 Dec 2012

The complete Listening Project Symphony can be heard on the BBC iPlayer here and the Listening Project’s BBC homepage is here.

Afshan and Flavia’s conversation can be heard in full here, while the complete collection of unedited Listening Project conversations can be explored at the British Library’s Sounds website.

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