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BBC Announces Olympic Programming
The BBC has today announced its line-up of programmes to mark the 2012 Olympics.
They include Shakespeare, live music and the history of London, marking the games in the city.
The corporation's cultural line-up for 2012 was launched by director general Mark Thompson in London today
The Shakespeare season features several documentaries and a special edition of Antiques Roadshow, alongside new versions of the bard's history plays.
Meanwhile, the Proms will be part of the 2012 Festival and Tinie Tempah will play Radio 1's Hackney weekend.
The music festival, which was announced in June, is being described as the largest live music event ever staged by the BBC.
It will also see performances from Florence and the Machine and Hackney-born artists Leona Lewis and Plan B.
Official music for the BBC's Olympic coverage will be provided by Elbow, who have composed a song for use throughout the games.
In addition to coverage of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the corporation will send crews to cover the 70-day Olympic torch relay, followed by the Games themselves and the two-month-long London 2012 Festival, which encompasses cultural events around the UK.
On the opening night of the games, 27 July, The Proms will feature conductor Daniel Barenboim leading the West Eastern Divan Orchestra in a performance of Beethoven's Ninth, the culmination of his complete Beethoven symphony cycle.
The BBC has also commissioned a raft of documentaries looking at London's history and heritage, which will air throughout 2012.
The Market looks at the bustling activity of the Spitalfields, Smithfield and Billingsgate markets, where more than £5m changes hands every day, while Dan Cruikshank delves into the history of the plague and the great fire of London in A Tale Of Two Cities.
Film-maker Julien Temple, who chronicled the punk era in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, has created what is described as "a love-letter to his home town" in This Is London.
BBC coverage will also move outside London, including concerts in Glasgow, Cornwall, Belfast, Cardiff and the Shetland Isles, as part of the Music Nation weekend on 3 and 4 March.
The Culture Show will document the creation of Anish Kapoor's Olympic sculpture The weekend of performances is billed as the first nationwide countdown to the London 2012 Festival.
Radio 3 will broadcast 20 new musical works, each lasting 12 minutes on the Hear and Now programme, while four short films have been created in conjunction with Film Four.
These include What If, a retelling of Rudyard Kipling's famous poem starring Noel Clarke and highlighting the UK's talent in street dance and free running.
Many other programmes and series have already been announced, including the return of Olympic comedy series Twenty Twelve, and Bert and Dickie - a dramatisation of how Bert Bushnell and Dickie Burnell beat the odds to become gold medallists in the 1948 London Olympics.
waveguide.co.uk
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