Alan Davey, the controller of Radio 3, BBC Proms, and BBC Orchestras and Choirs, has introduced that he’ll depart the BBC in March 2023.
Davey has been within the put up since January 2015, throughout which era he has consolidated Radio 3’s viewers at greater than 2 million weekly listeners. His tenure has additionally seen numerous themed seasons throughout Radio 3 – together with 2015’s Northern Lights, which used Sibelius’ 250th birthday as an inspiration for a season of Nordic music. Then there was 2021’s Capturing Twilight, which explored the connections between nightfall and music.
The outgoing controller has additionally been an enthusiastic champion of latest music and rising voices. He has helped to develop Radio 3’s profitable New Technology Artists Scheme, which nurtures younger expertise and affords broadcast alternatives to artists simply beginning out in music. The scheme noticed its highest ever variety of individuals in 2021.
Davey’s tenure has additionally generated a spread of programmes geared toward rising entry to each modern music and to the work of smaller venues. These have included Open Ear, Publicity and The New Music Present.
There was a spotlight, too, on works and composers that won’t have had their due prior to now: for instance, the BBC’s Orchestras and Choirs have targeted on unfairly forgotten works. The Proms, in the meantime, dedicated to programming 50 per cent feminine composers by 2022.
Elsewhere, Radio 3 and the Proms have commissioned a variety of latest works underneath Davey’s management. These have included works from composers starting from Harrison Birtwistle to Anna Thorvaldsdottir.
Alan Davey says: ‘There may be nothing like the mixture of Radio 3, the Proms and the BBC Orchestras and Choirs wherever else. Selecting when to maneuver on is all the time tough, however now’s the time for me at hand over the function to another person.
‘Since Radio 3’s first day of broadcasting, it has recognized that the important thing to securing the way forward for music is find new expertise and providing methods in to new audiences.
On Radio 3 we play over complete 17,000 items of music a yr and discover 1000’s extra. We imagine the best public service is present in exhibiting, not simply telling, of the riches of the humanities. It has been an honour and a delight to steer this mission.’
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Alan Davey will proceed as controller of Radio 3 and the Proms till subsequent spring. He then plans to proceed his work supporting arts and music organisations and to pursue his tutorial pursuits.
The BBC will announce Mr Davey’s successor in the end.
