Josie Lawrence and Paapa Essiedu Set For BBC Ten Pieces Prom

Comedian Josie Lawrence and emerging young star, Paapa Essiedu are today announced as actors for this year's BBC Ten Pieces Prom.

For a fourth year running, the BBC's ground-breaking classical music education initiative, Ten Pieces returns to the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday 29th July. Josie Lawrence and Pappe Essiedu join 'Musical Spell Caster', Naomi Wilkinson to guide the audience through this family-friendly Prom where some of the greatest pieces of classical music ever written will be heard, in a concert centred on the theme of 'home'.

Josie Lawrence and Paapa Essiedu, both familiar faces to the world of both stage and screen, make their Proms debuts in this project. Best known for her work with the 'Comedy Store Players', Lawrence rose to fame through involvement in the television series, Whose Line is It Anyway?, and latterly, in BBC One continuing-drama, Eastenders and Channel 4's Humans. Recipient of the 2016 Ian Charleson Award for his title role in Hamlet and Edward in King Lear (Royal Shakespeare Company), Essiedu has had an illustrious career to date, including co-founding award-winning theatre company, Invertigo.

Comedian and actress, Josie Lawrence, said, "I am delighted to be making my BBC Proms debut this year! Ten Pieces is a brilliant initiative reaching so many children across the country and teaching them about the joy of getting creative with the arts. I can't wait to see you all on Sunday for a whirlwind ride through some of the biggest and best pieces of music as I join the fantastic forces of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers!"

This summer's BBC Ten Pieces Prom features a number of other highlights, including collaborations with English PEN, an arts charity that works with young people from asylum-seeker and refugee backgrounds, and London Music Masters, an organisation focussed on reaching children and young people in London's inner-city schools. The Ten Pieces Children's Choir will once again welcome over 400 children from across the Greater London area to take to the Royal Albert Hall stage, alongside the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers under conductor Rafael Payare.

Aimed at inspiring a generation of children to get creative with classical music, BBC Ten Pieces marks the biggest commitment the BBC has ever made to classical music education in this country.

Tickets for both performances (1pm and 5pm) are still available via the Royal Albert Hall website.
The best seats in the house remain in the 'Arena' where you'll be closest to the action and your family can sit or stand as they wish: £6 Promming passes are available online for both performances between 9am-12pm on Saturday 28th July.

BBC Proms: As the world's biggest classical music festival, the BBC Proms offers eight weeks of world-class music-making from a vast array of leading orchestras, conductors and soloists from the UK and around the world. Across more than 90 concerts - and a similar number of free events designed to extend and further enrich the audience's Proms experience - the festival aims to offer a summer of music that allows for the most diverse and exciting musical journeys. More than 120 years since it was founded, the driving factor in building a festival of this scale is to offer exceptional music-making at the lowest possible prices, continuing founder-conductor Henry Wood's original ambition of bringing the best classical music to the widest possible audience. With every Prom broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, available across multiplatform and many televised on the BBC, the Proms reaches far and beyond the Royal Albert Hall. The 2018 BBC Proms runs from Friday 13 July to Saturday 8 September 2018.

Aimed at inspiring a generation of children to get creative with classical music, BBC Ten Pieces invites children aged 7-14 to develop their own creative responses to ten pieces of music. The initiative has so far reached over four million school children across the UK, sold out five BBC Proms concerts and won a BAFTA for the Ten Pieces II film. A project delivered by BBC Music and BBC Learning - in conjunction with the BBC Orchestras and Choirs - it marks the biggest commitment the BBC has ever made to music education in our country. Through a range of online resources, UK-wide events and close collaborations with music and arts organisations, Ten Pieces III has now launched for the 17/18 academic year to provide a continuing programme of activity for engagement of a wider age group.

At the heart of British music for over 80 years, the BBC Symphony Orchestra performs an exciting, distinctive and wide-ranging season of concerts at the Barbican in its role as Associate Orchestra, offering everything from works at the heart of classical music to world premieres from today's finest composers. The BBC SO provides the backbone of the BBC Proms, performing around a dozen concerts each year, including at the First and Last Nights. It performs throughout the world, and works regularly with its Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo, Semyon Bychkov, its Günter Wand Conducting Chair and Conductor Laureate Sir Andrew Davis. Strongly committed to twentieth-century and contemporary music, it has given recent premieres of works by Harrison Birtwistle, Betsy Jolas, George Walker and Raymond Yui. Central to its life are recordings made for BBC Radio 3 during sessions at its studios in Maida Vale, London, some of which are free for the public to attend. The vast majority of its concerts are broadcast on BBC Radio 3, streamed live online, and a number are televised, giving it the highest broadcast profile of any UK orchestra.

The BBC Singers hold a unique position in British musical life. Performing everything from Byrd to Birtwistle, Tallis to Takemitsu, their versatility is second to none. The choir remains committed to interpreting the music of some of the most important composers and conductors of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Poulenc, Britten, Judith Bingham and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. The Singers' forthcoming 2018-19 season will showcase a rich and wide-ranging selection of choral music from across the centuries, from much-loved masterpieces such as Handel's Israel in Egypt to works by Lully and Rameau, supported by the Aakash Ordera Company. Many of these performances will be led by the BBC Singers new Chief Conductor, Sofi Jeannin. Based at the BBC's Maida Vale Studios, the BBC Singers also give regular free concerts at St Paul's Knightsbridge, as well as regularly appearing at major festivals across the UK and beyond. The Singers are committed to sharing their enthusiasm and creative expertise through its nationwide outreach programme. This includes frequent collaborations with schoolchildren, youth choirs and the amateur choral community, as well as with the professional composers, singers and conductors of tomorrow.

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