Recording of the week: Listening to Sun Ra in the year 4000

Publicity shot of Sun Ra, 1973. Distributed by Impulse! Records and ABC/Dunhill Records. Photographer uncredited. Public domain. Throughout his long career the pianist, composer, bandleader and Afrofuturist pioneer Sun Ra (1914-1993) released over one hundred albums, many under his own record label Saturn Records. His sprawling recorded output is matched…




Recording of the week: Lenny Bruce (1925-1966)

Many of you will have seen a fictionalised version of comedian Lenny Bruce in the streamed comedy-drama The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Although the series has no pretensions to documentary accuracy, actor Luke Kirby has clearly done his research. He gives an impressively convincing and charismatic performance. Working in the late…




Recording of the week: You havin’ a bubble, mate?

This week’s selection comes from Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator of Spoken English. Last month, while preparing for a panel discussion at the Modern Cockney Festival, I stumbled across a Guardian interview with John Cooper Clarke discussing his poem ‘I Wanna Be Yours’. Reflecting on his career, Clarke notes he was…




Recording of the week: Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Falstaff

The famously successful actor and theatre manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852-1917) made this recording in March 1906. It was one of a set of five 10-inch discs recorded for release by the Gramophone Company. These were originally issued in a ‘special envelope’ (which we don’t have) which included the texts…




Recording of the week: The sound designer: the theatre as an experimental stage

Photograph of an actor on stage. Photograph by Antonio Molinari on Unsplash. In this 2004 interview from British Library collection ‘Theatre Archive Project’ (C1142/350), sound designer Ross Brown describes the process of sound creation in theatre. Listen to Ross Brown Download Ross Brown transcript Sound design is, among many things,…