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Tom Service is joined by the Grammy® award-winning Uruguayan conductor and composer, José Serebrier, who shares stories from his life in music ahead of the launch of a new biography by the author Michael Faure. With more than three hundred recordings already under his belt, he discusses, too, the creative impetus behind a new compendium of recordings which feature world premières of his own compositional work.

We hear from the music director, conductor, and academic Sean Mayes, and the musical theatre researcher, practitioner and academic Sarah K. Whitfield about their recently published book 'An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre'.

Michael McCarthy, artistic director of Music Theatre Wales, tells us about the company’s New Directions initiative – a project aimed at creating more open and diverse opera by working with artists and designers who have not yet worked in the art form. Two of the composers working on new pieces, Tumi Williams and Jasmin Kent Rodgman, explain what they would like to achieve and why is it crucial for opera that this schemes exist.

And we explore the plight of the many musicians challenged by hearing loss who want to make a life as professional performers and composers, with contributions from Danny Lane, the artistic director of the charity Music and the Deaf, who describes his own experience and the work he’s involved in helping young people and adults access and enjoy music. Ahead of the launch of her first classical music album with the London Symphony Orchestra, Tom also talks to the composer Cevanne Horrocks Hopayian about her work writing music-films, and her involvement with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Resound.