Falling Tree Productions

15/06/2026

From sunset until sunrise on this year's summer solstice, listen to a dream-like weave of radio documentaries from the archives of BBC Radio 3 and the Third Programme.

Midsummer Dreaming features radio signals bouncing off the moon, documentaries woven from our dreams and dancers performing in duet with their younger selves, interspersed with a specially chosen playlist of music and field recordings to fit the night-time.

A special celebration of the vast imaginative possibilities of the radio, presented by Verity Sharp. Curated and produced by Alan Hall and Eleanor McDowall at Falling Tree, with exec production from Phil Smith at Reduced Listening

Listen live from 9.30pm this Saturday 20th June, until 6.30am on Sunday: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002xms3

22/05/2026

Excited to see Soundcraft - a new project for creative sound education - emerging in St Leonards on Sea. Brought together by a group of audio-makers - XMTR's Lucia Scazzocchio, Jodie Taylor and Lucy Dearlove.

Their first course features Arlie Adlington and Tullis Rennie on Sonic World Building. Snap yourself up a ticket!

Join us by the seaside for a unique workshop focused on how to enrich the sound in your audio work.

14/05/2026

https://mediacentre.cbc.ca/announcement/5699/cbc-abc-and-bbc-partner-to-revive-beloved-audio-series-short-cuts/

29/04/2026

"[Sunday's Afterwords on Elgar Howarth] felt like someone opening a window on a fascinating world I didn’t know much about..."

Great to see this mention of our latest series of Afterwords on BBC Radio 3 - catch up with the whole series now on BBC Sounds!

Scottish comedian Susan Calman was talking to Vernon Kay on Radio 2 all week in the Tracks of My Years slot (it’s also available on BBC Sounds) -…

28/04/2026

This looks like such an exciting and thoughtful collaboration between In The Dark and the Multitrack Fellowship. An audio artist pathway for mid-career producers. Learn more here:

Want to expand your audio production career into the sonic arts? Introducing: the Audio Artist PathwayA brand new collaboration between Multitrack and In The Dark.Over 12 months, The Audio Artist Pathway will create space for six mid-career audio producers from underrepresented backgrounds to expand...

26/04/2026

Tonight on BBC Radio 3, our current series of Afterwords concludes with a look at the trumpet player, composer and conductor Elgar - Gary - Howarth. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002v8f7

One of the five musicians who constituted the 'Manchester School' in the 1950s (composers Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr and Peter Maxwell Davies, together with pianist John Ogdon), Elgar - or, universally, Gary - Howarth was a distinguished trumpet player with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and, notably, the Philip Jones Ensemble before becoming a hugely respected conductor, composer and arranger.

Musical colleagues together with his son Patrick reflect on Gary's humble origins and international achievements, interwoven with extracts from the BBC Sound Archive. With Gillian Moore, formerly of the London Sinfonietta, trumpet player Paul Archibald, trombonist David Purser, oboe player Melinda Maxwell, conductor and broadcaster Frank Renton and former Musical Director of Grimethorpe Colliery Band Garry Cutt.

Producer by Alan Hall

22/04/2026

This festival at the Barbican Centre looks wonderful - Pamela Z! Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman! Nyokabi Kariũki!

The first UK edition of George Lewis’s Afrodiasporic Incubator project, curated by vocalist and composer Elaine Mitchener, presented by the Barbican and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

19/04/2026

"The first time I saw Franz Liszt, I was about seven years old, and already accustomed to seeing the spirits of the so-called dead..." - Rosemary Brown

Afterwords continues tonight on BBC Radio 3 with an exploration of the work of Rosemary Brown, an English musician and spirit medium who said her pieces were dictated to her by dead composers like Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002v1w9

Entering the spotlight in the late 1960s, Brown's work was analysed by musicologists and composers, discussed by priests and talk show hosts. It opened up discussions of the afterlife, on the nature of composition itself and on musical performance as a type of conceptual art.

In this archive-led documentary, we dive into some of the recordings from the time and hear new interviews with the composer Neil Luck, pianist Siwan Rhys, radio presenter and journalist Kate Molleson, The Spectator Arts Editor and Director of the London Contemporary Music Festival, Igor Toronyi-Lalic and the radio producer Daniel Snowman who interviewed Rosemary Brown in 1969.

Image credit: Louis-Maxime-Dubois

Produced by Eleanor McDowall
Mixed by Mike Woolley

12/04/2026

Afterwords, our series which tells the stories of musicians with the help of the archive interviews they left behind, returns to BBC Radio 3 tonight. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002tmjb

Richard Rodney Bennett, who would have celebrated his 90th birthday in March 2026, has been described as the 'complete musician'. Born into a highly musical family - his mother had studied with Gustav Holst - he was already writing film scores while a teenage student at the Royal Academy of Music. He went on to study with Boulez, perform as a jazz pianist and singer and to receive three Academy Award nominations for his film music.

He was also a lively interviewee, as revealed in the BBC Sound Archive. Here, his words interweave with new observations from jazz singing partner Claire Martin, pianist and film expert Neil Brand, biographer Anthony Meredith and musical collaborator Scott Dunn.

Photo credit: Sven Arnstein

Produced by Alan Hall

11/04/2026

"There’s a ghostly thrill at the thought of voices coming out of the air at you. Consider yourself haunted in the best possible way... Here were two beautiful and evocative stories told by the people from Falling Tree productions. Yes, radio can be so much more than two people yakking in a studio..."

Great to see Nuala McCann at the Irish News pick up on both Alan Hall's Cannon Fodder and Eleanor McDowall's Into the Ether in this weekend's radio review:

Radio can be a kind of temporary haunting