Today’s Fea­tured Music is “Mod­ern Clas­si­cal Music” — but what does that mean, exactly?

Well, in the con­text of today’s pro­gramme, we’re talk­ing about pieces of music writ­ten between around the mid-20th Cen­tu­ry until the present day, that aren’t exact­ly “pop music”.

This is a tricky def­i­n­i­tion, how­ev­er. Mike Batt has remarked that there is no such dis­tinc­tion as “pop­u­lar music” and “seri­ous music” — there’s sim­ply “pop­u­lar” and “unpop­u­lar”, so the def­i­n­i­tion rather falls at the first fence.

Today’s pro­gramme is a bit of a wild ride. It includes famous names like William Wal­ton and John Rut­ter, but it also includes the Pen­guin Café Orches­tra (and its suc­ces­sor, the Pen­guin Café) and the North Sea Radio Orches­tra, both of whom could per­haps be described as play­ing “alter­na­tive cham­ber music”. There are pieces from Karl Jenk­ins, Deb­bie Wise­man and Joby Tal­bot, a recorder con­cer­to from Richard Har­vey, works by Christo­pher Gun­ning and John Bar­ry that aren’t either com­poser’s work for film and TV, and the Muf­fin Men play­ing arrange­ments of music by Frank Zap­pa. And a great deal more.

Today’s pro­gramme may be a lit­tle odd. But we do hope you enjoy it.

Then at 12 noon and 4pm Pacif­ic Time, 8pm and 12 mid­night in the UK, it’s your last chance to hear the cur­rent episode of “Where Have You Been?”, which this time vis­its the Art Korner gallery in Sec­ond Life. Plus Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity every four hours from 4am Pacific.

The image shows The North Sea Radio Orches­tra play­ing live, from their web site.