The sofa that became a work of art

Last week on Front Row (Radio 4) the singer Joyce DiDonato recalled the advice she gave the new graduates of the Juilliard School, just about to embark on their professional careers in music. It’s a hard life. They’re asked to be perfect, which of course is unattainable. She wanted to encourage them to keep going, to persist in pursuing their art, despite the inevitable phases of discouragement and disappointment. Because, she says, art has the power to build bridges across cultures, religions, political divides. ‘It teaches empathy.’

She was referring particularly to musical art, but what she was saying applies also to radio. The intimacy and immediacy of listening create such a strong connection that it’s impossible not to feel a close identity with the person you are listening to, and to begin to understand something of their lives, what makes them tick, how they think, why they behave as they do.