ABOUT

Writer, Broadcaster, Podcaster, and Musical Theatre obsessive.

Edward wrote and presented the long-running BBC Radio 3 series Stage & Screen, in which he interviewed many of the most prominent writers and stars of musical theatre. He also regularly produces podcasts of interviews with notable musical and theatrical artists and makes regular appearances on the BBC Radio 2 Arts Show, BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, where he presented the 2007 series of the music quiz Counterpoint. On television, he has commentated at the Cardiff Singer of the World competition on a number of occasions. He has published books on Gustav Mahler and the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, and has been one of Gramophone Magazine‘s review panel for many years.

More recently he has conducted live interviews on stage with musical theatre stars in his Singular Sensations series at Charing Cross Theatre, with celebrated actors at the St James Theatre and eminent classical musicians at the Barbican, Milton Court, and Ivy House among others. In these shows, Edward’s objective is to trace the artists’ careers, uncovering insights into their working process through a mix of conversation, recordings and live performances.

Edward’s recent musical theatre interviewees have included Patti Lupone, Dame Diana Rigg, Joanna Riding, Andy Coxon, Laura Pitt-Pulford, Rebecca Trehearn, Damian Humbley, Alex Young, Rob Houchen, Sharon D. Clarke, Evie Hoskins, Emma Williams, Kim Criswell, Rebecca Caine, Bonnie Langford, Linzi Hateley, Anna-Jane Casey, Julie Atherton, Jon Robyns, Kerry Ellis, Howard Goodall, Janie Dee, John Wilson, Jenna Russell, George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, Gavin Creel, Hannah Waddingham, Stephen Ashfield, Maureen Lipman, Sophie-Louise Dann, Daniel Boys, Louise Dearman, Julian Ovenden, Patricia Hodge, Alex Gaumond, Cynthia Erivo, and Jamie Parker. He has interviewed Patricia Routledge on many occasions in their highly successful show Facing the Music: A Life in Musical Theatre, which focuses on Patricia’s extraordinary but perhaps less well-known career in musical theatre. Recent conversations with classical artists have included Dame Janet Baker, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sir Thomas Allen and Sir Antonio Pappano.

Edward also hosts a live show devoted to the life and work of Richard Rodgers entitled Rodgers Revealed, featuring Tony-nominated arranger, composer and musical director Jason Carr and Olivier Award nominee Anna Francolini. He, Jason and Olivier Award nominee Sophie-Louise Dann perform a second show, Bernstein Revealed focusing on the life and work of the legendary composer, conductor and educator Leonard Bernstein, with whom Edward conducted one of the last in-depth interviews. The show forms part of the forthcoming Bernstein 100 weekend at the Barbican in 2018 to celebrate the centenary of the composer’s birth.

He has interviewed everyone from Bernstein to Liza Minnelli, Paul McCartney to Pavarotti, and Julie Andrews to Andrew Lloyd Webber.

JOURNALIST AND CRITIC

Edward is a prolific writer and journalist. He is:

A member of the review panel for Gramophone Magazine
A critic for Opern Welt
Founder member The Arts Desk. Com

Previously he has been:

Chief Classical Music Critic for The Independent
Chief Classical Music Critic for The Sunday Correspondent
Classical Music Critic for The Guardian
Classical Music Magazine
BBC Music Magazine
Hi-Fi News & Record Review Magazine
The Strad
Has written also for The Times and The Sunday Times

BROADCASTER

A wide range of programmes on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4 as writer, presenter, commentator and critic, including:

BBC Radio 3

Stage & Screen – Writer and Presenter
This long-running series included Edward’s acclaimed interviews with Julie Andrews, Angela Lansbury, Liza Minnelli, Patti LuPone, Barbara Cook, Michael Ball, Stephen Sondheim, Elaine Paige, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Elton John
Presenter Weekend Morning on 3
Presenter of The BBC Proms
Afternoon Performance
CD Review – incl. Building a Library and the annual ‘Critics Choice’
Nightwaves
The Changing Voice
In Character
Mining The Archive
Performance on 3

BBC Radio 4

Presenter of Counterpoint on BBC Radio 4, 2007
Kaleidoscope special with Sir Paul McCartney
Woman’s Hour with Elaine Paige

Television

BBC Cardiff Singer of the World coverage
Julie Andrews sings Richard Rodgers – Polygram Video/TV Special
Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note
Jacqueline du Pre: Playing With Fire
The South Bank Show: Leif Ove Andsnes
Maxim Vengerov: Playing By Heart
Dame Margaret Price – In conversation at Wigmore Hall

Podcasts
Clients have included:

EMI Records
Barbican Centre
Sony Classical Records
Naxos Records
English National Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Opera North
London Philharmonic Orchestra
City of London Festival
Josef Weinberger Ltd
Halle Orchestra
Curve Theatre, Leicester
Sondheim – In Good Company

PUBLIC APPEARANCES

Chairman of the Jury for The Stephen Sondheim Student Performer of the Year
Judging panel for The Voice of Musical Theatre Competition in Cardiff
Judging panel for The Voice of Tomorrow – the Final
Moderated public interviews with Stephen Sondheim (Queen’s Theatre, London) and Charles Strouse (Shaw Theatre, London)
Pre-performance events for the BBC Proms, English National Opera, Cheltenham Festival, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden: public interviews with Bryn Terfel, Renee Fleming, John Tomlinson, Jonas Kaufmann, Juan Diego Florez
Wigmore Hall: Evenings with Anja Silja and Margaret Price
Singular Sensations series at Charing Cross Theatre
Comparing Notes series at Pizza Express Live Holborn
Hosted on stage interviews with Dame Patricia Routledge, Dame Diana Rigg, Claude Michel Schönberg, Patricia Hodge, Maureen Lipman, Elaine Paige, Don Black and many more.

ACTING

Radio:

Numerous dramas incl. The Archers, BBC Radio 4: Peter Stephens

Film:

Young Winston (dir Richard Attenborough)
Julia (dir Fred Zinnerman)
A Bridge Too Far, (dir Richard Attenborough)

Television:

The Regiment
Get Some In

Theatre:

Bristol Old Vic
Tyneside Theatre Company
Timothy West Company at the Billingham Forum
Edinburgh Festival Fringe

PUBLICATIONS

Mahler: His Life and Times (Omnibus Press)
Michael Tilson Thomas: Viva Voce – a collection of conversations with the American conductor (Faber and Faber)
Liner notes & EPK Promotional Videos for Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Decca, and others.
Essays on Leonard Bernstein’s Candide and The Merry Wives of Windsor in Music for the Edinburgh Festival and Royal Shakespeare Company programmes

THE INTERVIEWER INTERVIEWED: THE OPERA QUEEN by CATHERINE KUSTANCZY

Edward Seckerson: “Having A Musicality Which Chimes With What The Artists Are Doing.”

“What’s the c-word?” I ask my students.

“Context!” they reply.

It behoves any writer to know something about the subject to which they profess passion, love, adoration. Far from being antithetical to the spirit of discovery, context tends to enhance appreciation, understanding, and overall enjoyment, while leaving room for questions: why is a musical phrase Beethoven’s 5th done a certain way by Carlos Kleiber, but not by Klemperer? How much should the tempo in the final movement of Das Lied von der Erde be guided by text, or might there be another approach (and if so, what)? How do the alliterative sounds of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s writing inform the aural sounds of Strauss? What roads led to Wagner’s famous lack of resolution in Tristan und Isolde and what paths led out of it (what didn’t, really)? Some things have definitive answers, but in art as much as life, some things tend to be –must be – evolving conversations…