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Listen to our teaser with the editor of The Times

I was sent by the Times to write about a classical music concert for children at the Barbican five years ago. It changed my life. The squeal of excitement, the wonder in the little faces of people who had never seen a full-blown orchestra before.

The idea of this series of podcasts is to recapture that wonder; and what better time to do it than during the world’s largest music festival, the BBC Proms.

I will be on the podium with maestro Valery Gergiev, in the pit with violinist superstar Nigel Kennedy and in the newsroom with Times editor James Harding. I’ll be taking the whole Times team to the Albert Hall with me – from David Aaronovitch to Caitlin Moran – to experience that rush of music-making.

I'll also introduce a generation of new composers who have undertaken the immense challenge of ‘rewriting’ the Proms; from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty to the perennial Proms classic Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance. How else can we celebrate music-making without hearing new voices? The Promcasts, as I have called them, should throw up some interesting conversation.

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