Inside Music

Creating a weekly show about classical music

Client: BBC Radio 3

Brief: Two hour weekly show: classical music from a musician’s perspective.

Tandem process: Pitched for and fulfilled brief for a weekly Radio 3 programme presented by musicians. Booked and contracted over 200 presenters. Curated and shaped music running orders with presenters, recorded and edited shows ready for broadcast. Created clips and digital assets for promotion.

Project

BBC Radio 3 is known as the home of live music and the arts, with classical music at its core. From 2018 to 2024, Tandem produced Inside Music for BBC Radio 3 every Saturday afternoon. It was a show designed to allow listeners to appreciate music with new ears, guided by musicians who open it up from the inside. Presenters have included multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier, composer Hannah Kendall, cellist Natalie Clein, singer Katherine Jenkins, pianist Víkingur Ólafsson, horn player Katy Woolley, and oud player Joseph Tawadros.

Each week a musician introduced music that intrigued them and gave insights into why it has the effect that it does. They might do this by talking technically about bows, strings, tonguing or touch, or by explaining how a composer arrived at a particular chord or rhythm. 

The team selected and booked presenters carefully, making sure a wide range of musicians were represented across the year, with a variety of angles expressed on the music they chose. 

Together with each presenter we worked in detail on the music sequence before recording ‘in conversation’ with the producer (whose questions were then cut out). This created a natural and free flowing style of presentation, giving the listener a chance to really get inside the musician’s head and absorb their thoughts and ideas about the music they’re listening to.

Tandem’s producers spent several hours editing the programmes to show each presenter in the best possible light, before the finished programmes were mixed to the highest quality broadcast standards.

Each week, we made audio clips for the BBC website and social channels as well as visual assets to help promote the show.

 "Inside Music on Radio 3 has all the characteristics of a podcast. What gives it so much more punch is that the musicians can take us ‘inside’ the experience of playing the music they have chosen, why it works, how it makes them feel.  Insight through purposeful conversation."

Kate Chisholm

The Spectator