Desert Island Discs: Archive: 2016-201811 Feb 2018

Chi-chi Nwanoku

Chi-chi Nwanoku is a double bass player and founder of Europe's first professional majority black and minority ethnic orchestra, Chineke!.

Chi-chi is the eldest of five children, born to a Nigerian father and an Irish mother. Early on, she discovered two competing passions: playing the piano and 100 metre sprinting. She was aiming to qualify for the 1976 Olympics when she suffered a knee injury which cut short her life as an athlete. Her music teacher then suggested that she could have a career as a musician if she took up 'an unpopular orchestral instrument'. She began learning the double bass a week later.

She was a student at the Royal Academy of Music and for over 30 years has played with renowned orchestras, including the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, English Baroque Soloists, London Classical Players and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment , which she co-founded and where she was principal double bass for three decades.

In 2015, she set up Chineke! to support, inspire and encourage black and minority ethnic musicians. Last year the Chineke! orchestra made its debut at the BBC Proms, and Chi-chi was awarded an OBE for her services to music. Producer: Sarah Taylor.

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Episoder(126)

Bill Gates

Kirsty Young's castaway is Bill Gates.He sat at his first computer while still at school in Seattle, wrote his first computer programme aged just 13 and went on to co-found the company Microsoft, beco...

4 Feb 201635min

Sigrid Rausing

Kirsty Young's castaway is the philanthropist and publisher Sigrid Rausing.Founder of one of the UK's largest philanthropic foundations, her trust has given away around £230m to human rights causes si...

24 Jan 201633min

Sir Anthony Seldon

Kirsty Young's castaway is the educationalist and writer, Sir Anthony Seldon.Now Vice-Chancellor of Buckingham University, he was the Master of Wellington College. He has written, co-written and edite...

17 Jan 201637min

Alex Crawford

Kirsty Young's castaway is the Sky TV news correspondent Alex Crawford.She's won the Royal Television Society's Journalist of the Year award an unprecedented four times - reporting from the world's wo...

10 Jan 201633min

Colm Toibin

Kirsty Young's castaway is the writer Colm Toibin.Best-known for his novels "Brooklyn" - now made into a film - "Nora Webster" and "The Master," he has been nominated for the Booker Prize three times....

3 Jan 201637min

Patricia Greene

Archers actress Patricia Greene is castaway by Kirsty Young. For nearly 60 years she's played the role of Jill in BBC Radio 4’s The Archers which celebrates its 65th anniversary on January 1st 2016....

27 Des 201536min