Yannick Nezet-Seguin, International Women's Day

Tom interviews the Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who currently holds music director posts at the Philadelphia Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestre Métropolitain in Montréal. He talks about the cross-fertilisation process that comes with working with different orchestras; about getting out 100% from all of the players in his ensembles; about his responsibilities at Philadelphia, where he oversees aspects beyond music, like marketing; and about working with orchestras to serve their respective communities, securing their future in the process.

Composer, singer, opera director and teacher Laura Bowler takes to the Music Matters Soapbox to talk about how composers today need in her view to consider their audiences and to remember that music is a form of communication. She talks about how part of her mission with her students, in institutions both in London and Manchester, is to make them more aware of the world that surrounds them, paying attention not only to the other arts, but to current affairs and politics too.

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Laura Bowler

As part of Radio 3's programming around International Women's Day, Tom investigates issues of gender in professional orchestras. We speak to researcher Christina Scharff and Orchestra Official for the Musicians’ Union, Morris Stemp, about the figures, plus Opera North’s Richard Mantle and Michael Garvey of BBC National Orchestra of Wales tell us about how their orchestras deal with the issue.  And bassoonist Amy Harman tells us about her experience of being a minority in a major London orchestra.