The Band Played On

What was the prevailing sound on the Titanic? Light music, and lots of it. In The Band Played On, Tony Staveacre and Rhod Sharp recreate the musical voyage of SS Titanic, with a pickup band from the Savage Club of Bristol performing numbers from the White Star line songbook. 

In 2020, a summer of no Olympics and precious little else because of lockdown, the conductor KEITH LOCKHART tells RHOD SHARP how 80 members of the Boston Pops came together from home in a YouTube performance of John Williams' Olympic anthem Summon The Heroes. (recorded June 2020)

Rhod talks to his old friend JAMES (Jim) NAUGHTIE about Jim’s introduction to the country 50 years ago this year and other memories collected in his book On The Road. (Recorded November 2020)

Starting at a party thrown by the Kennedy family at their compound on Martha’s Vineyard and ending with an autumn 2020 encounter in a Scranton, PA. coffee shop with two voters separated by generations and party affiliation, JIM NAUGHTIE weaves more stories of the  changing American body politic while asserting unshakeable faith in human nature. 

In this concluding part of his audiobook, the renowned Mozartian Allan Schiller looks back on his student days at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire during the height of the Cold War.  The members of Schiller’s piano trio prepare for the day when they go on the road.

In the first part of this audiobook, internationally renowned pianist Allan Schiller looks back on 1961 when at the age of 18 he was selected for the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire.

Rhod Sharp and Tony Staveacre present a never-heard interview with a giant of music, Astor Piazzolla.

Piazzolla inspired generations of musicians with his classically-trained approach to a form once heard only in the brothels of Buenos Aires. He called it New Tango. Such was the initial hostility to it in Argentina that he was forever grateful he had grown up learning to box on the mean streets of New York, alongside his schoolmate Jake LaMotta, The Bronx Bull. Here, in Tony’s carefully preserved recording from 1989, is Piazzolla in his own words, richly illustrated with his thrilling music. Afterwards he said this was his best-ever performance on record. Sadly, it would also be the last time that this brilliant sextet were heard together in public. We are privileged to hear it now. (August 2023)