The Listening Service

Based on his critically-acclaimed BBC Radio 3 programme The Listening Service, in which Tom Service takes an idea on an ear-opening and mind-expanding walk through the musical landscape every week, this book is a celebration of music's multi-dimensional power in our lives. With 101 short chapters based on the programmes and grouped thematically the book will open ears and imaginations to find answers to the questions we all have about why and how music - from Toots and the Maytals and J S Bach, Gustav Mahler and Miley Cyrus, to Anna Meredith and Mozart - works its magic over us. With direct links to the programmes using a QR code, the chapters draw on powerful and communicative anecdotes and analogies, as well as the latest scientific research, and above all, a spirit of discovery and connection across genres, cultures, and histories. At its heart is the conviction that music changes us.

Tom Service writes and presents The Listening Service on BBC Radio 3, and has presented Music Matters since 2003. He is a regular presenter of the BBC Proms on TV, as well as films on composers from Handel to Saariaho. His previous books about music, also published by Faber, are Music as Alchemy: Journeys with Great Conductors and Their Orchestras, and Full of Noises, interviews with the composer Thomas Adès. He wrote about music for The Scotsman and The Guardian for two decades, and he is a columnist for The BBC Music Magazine. He was the Gresham College Professor of Music in 2018-19, with his series, 'A History of Listening'.