@johnshea63
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Pianist, @BBCRadio3 presenter, @BBCWorldService newsreader, @GirtonCollege @CamUniMusic @RoyalAcadMusic alumnus 🇬🇧 🇮🇪 🇪🇺 🎹 📻 🌍🚆🎭📚 🏊🏻♂️
London, UK
Joined March 2012
- Tweets17.3K
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- Likes40K
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And now we’re 30 years old! Renewed thanks to @DonaldMacleod01 for starting it all, and to @BBCRadio3 for letting us continue. It’s still one of the best jobs imaginable 📻🙏
Let’s hear it for 25 years of @BBCRadio3 Through the Night! We’re a quarter of a century old on 5th May. Thank you @radiotimes for publishing my account of the programme I’ve co-presented for 19 of those years. And if you haven’t already discovered us... bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tmq…
John Shea retweeted
BBC Radio 3's Choral Evensong programme will celebrate its 100th anniversary with a special broadcast live from the Abbey on Wednesday 7 October.
The service will be sung by @WAbbeyChoir, conducted by Organist & Master of the Choristers Andrew Nethsingha. It will include music by Howells and Parry, whose repertoire has featured prominently over the last 100 years, together with the world premier of an introit composed especially for the occasion by Kerensa Briggs.
Apart from a short break in 1970, Choral Evensong has been broadcast every week since its very first transmission. That service was live on the National Programme from Westminster Abbey on Thursday 7 October 1926.
Even during the war years Choral Evensong maintained its position in the schedules - although for two years from 1940 to 1942 the venues were not revealed by Radio Times and the programme was listed simply as coming from 'a Public School Chapel' or 'a Western or Northern Cathedral'. Over 80 different cathedrals, churches and chapels have since been visited.
Listeners in the UK can hear Wednesday's service live on Radio 3 or on demand for 30 days on BBC Sounds. It will also be repeated on Radio 3 at 6pm (BST) on Sunday 11 October. Find out more: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m003215…
ALT An elevated, wide-angle shot captures Evensong at Westminster Abbey, focusing on the choir stalls lining the central aisle. The aisle features a prominent black-and-white checkered floor leading to the distant, ornate golden altar. On both sides, members of the choir, dressed in traditional red and white vestments, sit in wooden pews beneath high, intricately carved golden screens. Small, glowing red lamps are spaced along the pews in front of the singers. Congregants fill the remaining seats and stand in the background, facing inward. Tall Gothic stone pillars and pointed arches rise toward the vaulted ceiling, with natural light streaming in from stained glass windows on the right, illuminating the historic stone architecture.
John Shea retweeted
RIP Anna Picard. Very sad news of the death from cancer of an outstanding critic, writer and communicator – and a good friend of this magazine. Anna was Head of Communications and Insight and also Research and Repertoire Consultant at Opera Holland Park.
John Shea retweeted
80 years ago BBC radio launched the Third Programme offering an evening schedule of music, drama, talks, features, poetry and, to start things off, comedy. My September 2016 blog post on How to Listen andywalmsley.blogspot.com/20…
John Shea retweeted
Twelve hours of ambitious outside broadcasting, from lighthouses across the UK, condensed into 60 minutes. A feast for your ears, courtesy of my brilliant @BBCRadio3 colleagues: bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0pcwd…
John Shea retweeted
This is a beautifully-crafted feature from producer Freya Hellier, alongside Alex Anderson and the Tandem team (who also masterminded our twelve-hour lighthouse extravaganza, Where the Light Sings, on @BBCRadio3). Pure audio escapism: bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0031p…
John Shea retweeted
Listening to @PetrocTrelawny’s most recent update from the Isles of Scilly—which I have not yet visited…
Wikipedia offers this useful piece of advice:
“Not to be confused with Sicily.”
#wherethelightsings
John Shea retweeted
This Saturday, @BBCRadio3 celebrates the lights that have guarded our shores for generations. We'll broadcast from atmospheric lighthouses, welcome guest musicians, and send @PetrocTrelawny to a mystery location via boat. What could possibly go wrong?! bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0031pv…
John Shea retweeted
🌍 Robert Macfarlane will challenge humanity’s ‘superiority complex’ in the 2026 BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures
The acclaimed writer will argue for the urgent need to re-imagine humanity’s relationship with the living world
Learn more ➡️ bbc.in/3UHrDmA
ALT Left: A pair of brown leaves frame a square containing the words The Reith Lectures 2026. Right: A man in a dark blue jacket stands in a wooded area with his hands in his pockets, smiling to camera.
John Shea retweeted
🌊BBC Radio 3 is travelling around Britain’s coast in a 12-hour live relay of music and sound from six lighthouses.
Where the Light Sings is a live musical adventure connecting some of the wildest coastal locations.
More➡️ bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2026/b…
ALT A lone white lighthouse perching on top of a rocky alcove next to the sea
John Shea retweeted
Just announced: a record-breaking season for the @bbcproms 🥳 🎶 bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2026/b…
Attending the RCM Junior Department from age 12 was *the* formative educational experience of my life. Without it I’d never have discovered the professional music world or thought of trying to enter it. Long may it flourish!
@GirtonCollege @CamUniMusic @RoyalAcadMusic @BBCRadio3
Join us to celebrate 100 years of the RCM Junior Department! 🎉
A century of musical training at the RCM Junior Department will be celebrated through a programme of special events this year, launching with hourly fanfares on 19 September.
Read more: bit.ly/rcm-jd100
John Shea retweeted
Wonderful to start the week with a shag in St James’s Park. Some prefer to call them cormorants
John Shea retweeted
This Sunday at noon on Private Passions @BBCRadio3, Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s chief international correspondent.
This year she won the Women’s Prize for non-fiction for her first book, The Finest Hotel in Kabul.
Lyse's choices include music by Elgar, Sibelius, Bach and Einaudi.
John Shea retweeted
As thoughts turn to autumn and we think about what to offer @BBCRadio3's listeners when the @bbcproms is over, I'm delighted we're able to share this news today: bbc.com/mediacentre/2026/bbc…
John Shea retweeted
BREAKING: Today, Eurail (established 1959) & Interrail (established 1972) merge into a single European railpass range for EVERYONE regardless of nationality or country of residence, called INTERRAIL. Read why I think this is excellent news here: seat61.com/news.htm
John Shea retweeted
This is going to be glorious. The great Martha Argerich, rehearsing ahead of her performance at the @bbcproms tonight, taking place almost sixty years to the day since she made her debut at the festival. Live on @BBCRadio3 at 7pm.
John Shea retweeted
Andy Burnham has fun at Bayeux Tapestry launch
“Thank you for this elaborate, 70 metre reminder of one of Britain’s biggest defeats,” Burnham said to President Macron. “A tapestry that shows a leader emerging from a Northern Territory, travelling to the south of England in search of the crown. Clearly something that couldn’t happen today.”
