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In the last programme of season, Tom Service is joined by composer Tansy Davies, theatre and opera director Adele Thomas, and the Chief Executive of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Stephen Maddock to revisit some of the big issues that faced music and culture in the last year. They look at the impact that music has had on the environment, education, healthcare and as a beacon for social inclusion.

Soprano, Renée Fleming is a champion for the work being done at the intersection of health and music. She has spearheaded the first ongoing collaboration between the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts, where she is Artistic Director and America’s National Institutes of Health. Renée Fleming talks to Music Matters about how music can move and comfort the human spirit and about how scientists are now discovering that music can teach us a lot about the brain itself. And pianist, Stephen Hough talks to Tom about his new book Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More which he describes as his notebook and is a lifetime’s worth of his thoughts on life in music.