Published in 2025
417 pages
Elizabeth Alker is a presenter for BBC Radio 3, where she hosts Unclassified and the afternoon show, Classical Live. She joined the BBC as a researcher in 2005 and soon became a reporter and presenter for Radio 6 Music. Born to classically trained pianists, she grew up learning the clarinet, recorder and piano, and later worked as a talent scout for Universal Classics and Jazz. She has written for the Guardian, Sunday Times and Dazed and Confused, and is the curator and host of a series of cross-genre concerts at the Southbank Centre with the BBC Concert Orchestra.
What is this book about?
‘Revelation after revelation . . . I love music more for reading it.’ Guy Garvey
‘Alker joins the dots by following myriad musical ley lines. A fascinating journey into sound.’ Mark Radcliffe
‘Reveals so much about the hidden connections between the sounds we love . . . A must read.’ Sara Mohr-Pietsch
A panoramic exploration of the ways in which pop and rock were transformed by the pioneering visionaries of classical music.
The worlds of pop and rock owe a much greater debt to the classical canon than we realise. A direct and fascinating lineage draws from the experimentalism of Pierre Henry to The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows”, from Stockhausen to Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” and from Bruckner to Sonic Youth via Glenn Branca.
In Everything We Do is Music, Elizabeth Alker shines a light on the fertile ground that exists between the borders of classical music and pop. She showcases the innovators of the former and their fans and collaborators in the latter, and explores how together these artists challenged the notion that such musical worlds are mutually exclusive.
** Featuring interviews with Sir Paul McCartney, Steve Reich, Nils Frahm, Soweto Kinch, Jonny Greenwood, the Blessed Madonna and more. **
