Today’s pro­gramme con­cerns itself with the “sense of place” or genius loci, as the Romans called it, that has informed much of West­ern art through the cen­turies. We’ll be attempt­ing to cap­ture the feel­ing of pres­ence that char­ac­teris­es many loca­tions, and to do so we’ll be vis­it­ing sites, cities and spots around the world.

So you’ll hear pieces from Respighi’s Foun­tains of Rome to Mitchel­l’s Stat­ue of Zeus at Olympia; Fin­gal’s Cave from Mendelssohn to Gersh­win’s An Amer­i­can In Paris, Hol­st’s The Plan­ets, Elgar­’s Cock­aigne (In Lon­don Town), and many more. Most of the music is in a clas­si­cal vein, but we’ll also be play­ing more recent com­po­si­tions, for exam­ple music by Sheri­dan Tongue for Pro­fes­sor Bri­an Cox’s BBC tele­vi­sion series Won­ders of the Uni­verse. Immerse your­self in the music and trav­el with us on our own, rather exten­sive and a lit­tle unusu­al, Grand Tour.

Join us at noon or 4pm Pacif­ic, 8pm or mid­night in the UK, for the lat­est episode in our Sec­ond Life trav­el­ogue series, “Where Have You Been?”, where, appro­pri­ate­ly enough, we fea­ture For­ev­er Tourist, A Sec­ond Life Explo­ration Game.

“The Sphinx and the Great Pyra­mid of Giza” by Sam and Ian is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0