Jason Starr’s latest novel is called "The Follower." It tells the story of Katie Porter who has just started her first job after college in a PR firm in downtown Manhattan. She finds the dating circus in the city confusing and tiresome so running into an old friend from home seems like a lucky break. Little does she know that Peter Wells has been planning this chance meeting down to the last detail…

Interview: Ulrike Sarkany

A former Newsweek journalist, New York born Robert Littell has been writing about the Soviet Union and Russians since his first novel, the espionage classic The Defection of A.J.Lewinter. He is the author of fifteen novels, including the New York Times bestseller The Company and Legends, the 2005 L.A. Times Book Award for Best Thriller/Mystery. Among other numerous critically acclaimed novels are The October Circle, Mother Russia, The Debriefing, and The Visiting Professor.
The Stalin Epigram tells of the poet Mandelstam’s defiance of the Kremlin dictator and the Bolshevik regime —which reached its climax in 1934 when Mandelstam, putting his life on the line, composed a searing indictment of Stalin in a sixteen-line epigram and secretly recited it to a handful of friends and fellow artists.

In this week’s Inspired Minds Robert Littell talks to Breandáin O’Shea about his latest book, his encounter with Mandelstam’s wife back in the seventies and how he has been writing this book for almost 30 years.

The cellist Sol Gabetta was born in Argentina, the daughter of French and Russian parents. She was only ten when she won her first competition in Argentina, and has received many more awards since then including the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition and the ARD Competition in Munich and the Natalia Gutman Prize.

In 2004 Sol Gabetta made her début with the Vienna Philharmonic under Valery Gergiev and has since made guest appearances with many of the world’s great orchestras including the Munich Philharmonic, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.She appears at major festivals such as the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Schwarzenberg Schubertiade and the Saratoga Festival and has recently established her own festival in Switzerland called "Solsberg".

In this week’s Inspired Minds, Sol Gabetta speaks to Breandáin O’Shea about her why her parents drove 800 kilometres for her first music lessons, her influence from different schools of cello playing and how she believes concerts need to kept intimate to communicate the true meaning of music.

The Irish novelist and journalist Colm Tóibín was educated at University College Dublin where he read History and English. The author of a number of fiction and non-fiction works, Tóibín is also a regular contributor to various newspapers and magazines.
His novels include the titles "The South," which was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and won the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for First Book and "The Heather Blazing" which won the Encore Award for the best second novel. His collection of short stories, “Mother and Sons,” has just be released in German translation.

In this week’s Inspired Minds, Colm Tóibín talks to Breandáin O’Shea about short story writing, his admiration for the author John Banville and why the tale of his latest novel “Brooklyn” could be the tale of so many Irish immigrants.

The Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki studied composition at the Krakow Academy of Music where he was subsequently appointed as professor in 1958. One year later, Penderecki won all three available prizes at the II Warsaw Competition for Young Composers.
To date, Penderecki has composed over 130 works - some of these are in remembrance of catastrophes in the 20th century. Threnos for 52 string instruments, is dedicated to the victims of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and the piano concerto Resurrection was composed as a reaction to the terror attacks of 11 September 2001.
Numerous compositions from a variety of genres originated from direct cooperation with outstanding soloists including Anne-Sophie Mutter, Mstislav Rostropovitsch and Boris Pergamenschikow.

In this week’s Inspired Minds Krzysztof Penderecki talks to Breandáin O’Shea about his special relationship with the music of Beethoven, how his music is often inspired by his encounters with other musicians and how his Christmas Symphony came to contain a motif from “Silent Night.”

Andrew Greer initially studied writing at Brown University, and later worked in various jobs in New York before completing his studies at the University of Montana. His first novel," The Path of Minor Planets," was published in 2001. His short story collection, “How It Was for Me,” was published to wide acclaim, while other stories have appeared in publications including Esquire, The Paris Review and The New Yorker.

In this week’s Inspired Minds, Andrew Greer talks to Breandáin O’Shea about how his latest book,“ The Story of a Marriage” was inspired by his late grandmother, how he went about researching San Francisco of the 1950s and his life today, in Obama's USA.

Theodor Paleologu has been Rumania’s Minister of Culture, Religious Affairs, and Cultural Heritage since 2008 and is a member of Rumania’s Democratic Liberal Party.
Born in Bucharest, Paleologu completed his secondary schooling at the city's German High School. Tertiary studies took him to Paris where he obtained a masters degree in Philosophy and later a doctorate in Political Sciences at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.
Paleologu has lectured at Boston and Deep Spring Colleges and was a research fellow at the University of Notre Dame, New York University and Harvard University and assistant professor and director of the summer university at the European College of Liberal Arts in Berlin.
Between 2005 and 2008, Theodor Paleologu served as Romania's ambassador to Denmark and Iceland and resigned from the office in order to pursue his successful parliamentary campaign.
In this week’s Inspired Minds, Theodor Paleologu talks to Breandáin O’Shea about the role of the arts in Romanian society, his struggle to safe as much of the country’s heritage sites and his deepest wish that Romania will one day be able to entice its many great artists back to their homeland.

Maldoom initially studied agriculture, but his passion for dance was ignited after seeing a movie of the Royal Ballet. Although already in his twenties, he immediately joined a local Cambridge dance school and scholarships made his professional training and further education at special dance academies possible. These included the Stella Mann School, London School of Contemporary Dance and the Royal Ballet School where he was an apprentice choreographer.

Engagements for choreographic projects, workshops and speeches have brought him to institutions and initiatives worldwide. In this week’s Inspired Minds, Royston Maldoom talks to Breandáin O’Shea about these special dance projects, his ideas about what dance can do for kids and what these projects might achieve in the long term.

For many years, David Wallace’s more than a thousand page novel, "Infinite Jest", first published in 1996, was generally deemed untranslatable. Over six years ago the well-versed literary translator, Ulrich Blumenbach, decided to take on the task of translating this much-acclaimed book. Initially he expected to finish the job in a year or two, but because there were just too many tricky translation problems to solve, he ended up spending six years on it.
UIrike Sárkány has looked at both the original and Ulrich Blumenbach's translation.In this week’s Inspired Minds she talks to the translator about the difficulties of portraying a masterpiece adequately in another language, his love of James Joyce and the various authors - including Stephen Fry and Will Self - he has translated into German.

Adam Elliot grew up in outback Australia. After his father's business went bankrupt, the family moved to Melbourne. As a child he spent hours drawing and creating characters out of pipe cleaners and egg cartons. Elliot went on the study at The Victorian College of the Arts, where he made "Uncle," his first film. After graduating in 1997, he went on to complete the other two parts of his trilogy, "Cousin" and "Brother." In 2003 he completed a half-hour claymation called "Harvie Krumpet," which won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film in 2004.

The appeal of Adam Elliot's films is universal. Infused with a balance of humor and pathos, his simple and endearing characters touch a nerve with so many people from all walks of life. Adam Elliot has a passion for human observation.

In this week's Inspired Minds, Adam Elliot talks to Breandáin O'Shea about his latest film, his love for claymation and where his ideas for Mary and Max came from.

George Benjamin started to play the piano at the age of seven, and began composing almost immediately. In 1976 he entered the Paris Conservatoire to study composition with the renowned Olivier Messiaen and piano with Yvonne Loriod. From there he studied at King's College Cambridge, where he is today, the Henry Purcell Professor of Composition.

In recent years there have been numerous other major retrospectives of his work, including Brussels Tokyo, Berlin, Strasbourg and Madrid. As a conductor he appears with some of the world's leading ensembles and orchestras including the London Sinfonietta, the Cleveland and Concertgebouw orchestras and the Berlin Philharmonic.

In this week’s Inspired Minds George Benjamin speaks to Breandáin O’Shea about the difficulties he has in separating his conducting and composing career, his long association and friendship with Olivier Messiaen and the influence great instrumentalist and vocalist have in inspiring his music.

Born in New York, Alan Titus studied voice at the Juilliard School. Among his earliest performances - a Leonard Bernstein's Mass under the direction of the composer. Titus’s opera debut was as Marcello in Puccini’s La Bohème in Washington and this was followed by guest appearances in all the great American opera houses, including New York’s Metropolitan Opera.
In 1974 Alan Titus made his debut as Pelléas in Pelléas et Melisande in Amsterdam, and has since been a regular performer in many of Europe’s major opera houses and festivals - including Vienna State Opera, La Scala Milan and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, where he was given the title of Kammersänger in 1994.
It was in 1998 Alan Titus made his debut at the renowned Bayreuth Festival when he sung as the Dutchman in Der fliegende Holländer, returning to the role in 1999. After a four-year break Alan Titus returned to the Bayreuth Festival this year to sing Hans Sachs in Katharina Wagner’s staging of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

In this week’s Inspire Minds, Rick Fulker talks to Alan Titus about his return to Bayreuth, his lifelong fascination with the music of Richard Wagner and what changes he feels the Bayreuth festival might go through with its two new directors, Katharina Wagner and Eva Pasquier – Wagner.

A graduate of the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. Michelle Breedt started her training at the opera houses in Cape Town and Pretoria, and continued her studies at the Guildhall School in London. In 1990 she moved to Germany – initially as a member of the Opera Studio in Cologne, thereafter joining the Ensemble of the State Theatre in Braunschweig. It was during this time she began to build her extensive repertoire, which includes diverse mezzo-soprano roles in works by Mozart, Dvorak and Brecht.

In the summer of 2000 she made her highly acclaimed Bayreuth debut as Magdalene in Die Meistersinger, in Wolfgang Wagner’s production, under the baton of Christian Thielemann. She returned to Bayreuth in 2001 and 2002, and indeed in 2006 sang Fricka in the new production of the Ring cycle. In this week’s Inspired Minds, Michelle Breedt talks to Rick Fulker about her path to the Bayreuth Wagner festival, how lied interpretation has influenced her singing and her observations of new performance practices of Richard Wagner’s music.

The world acclaimed author, Frank McCourt, died on July 19th in New York.
He was born in New York in 1931, to Irish immigrant parents. Unable to find work in the depths of the Depression, the McCourts returned to Ireland, where they sank deeper into poverty. It is this time, in Limerick Ireland that Frank McCourt describes in his memoir, Angela's Ashes.
After years of teaching creative writing to young people, McCourt was determined to write his own life story. The result was Angela's Ashes. His second book, also a best-seller, ‘Tis,’ picks up the story of his life where Angela's Ashes left off, with his arrival in America at age 19. While his last work “Teacher Man,” was an account of his thirty-year teaching career with the New York City public school system.

In this interview, recorded during Frank McCourt’s last trip to Germany in 2006, the author talks to Breandáin O’Shea about the phenomenal success of his first book at 66, the reason why he took so long to actually write it and his lifetime struggle with overcoming his impoverished childhood.

Chance was a choral scholar at King's College, Cambridge where he completed a degree in English. Chance is active in opera, oratorio and song recitals and is also a guest professor at London’s Royal College of Music. His operatic roles include major baroque repertoire as well as contemporary works, the likes of Judith Wier’s A Night at the Chinese Opera, and Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Chance has performed all over the world under conductors such as Frans Brüggen, John Eliot Gardiner and Trevor Pinnock.

In this week’s Inspired Minds, Michael Chance talks to Breandáin O’Shea about his career, his ideas about the interpretation of Bach and how the voice of a countertenor varies to others.

Interview: Breandáin O’Shea/Michael Chance

The pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard is widely acclaimed both as a key figure in the new music world and a uniquely significant musical voice in the performance of established repertoire.

He studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Yvonne Loriod, and in London with Maria Curcio. Early career landmarks included winning first prize in the 1973 Messiaen Competition, and being appointed at the age of 19 by Pierre Boulez to become the Ensemble InterContemporain's first solo pianist. He holds professorships in Cologne and Paris and has been honoured with several recording prizes including two ECHO Classic Awards and a Grammy. In 2009 Pierre-Laurent Aimard became the director of the Aldeburgh Music festival in Britain.

In this week’s Inspired Minds Pierre-Laurent Aimard talks to Breandáin O’Shea about his lifelong quest to present new composers and their music, the constant challenge Beethoven’s music present to him and the challenge of bringing new audiences to concerts.

Elliot Carter has known all the great leaders of contemporary music, from Charles Ives, Edgar Varese, Aaron Copland, Stravinsky and many, many others.

Carter was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and was the first composer to receive the United States National Medal of Arts, as well as Germany’s Ernst Von Siemens Music Prize.
One of the extraordinary features of his career is his astonishing productivity and creative vitality as he embarks on his eleventh decade. His has written more than 130 works and over 40 of these in the past decade alone.

In this week’s Inspired Minds - the second of two special programmes - Elliott Carter talks to Breandáin O’Shea about his work to perfect his compositional technique, his great admiration for the composers Pierre Boulez and Helmut Lachenman and gives a little advice for young composers.

Interview: Breandáin O'Shea/Elliott Carter

Elliot Carter has known all the great leaders of contemporary music, from Charles Ives, Edgar Varese, Aaron Copland, Stravinsky and many, many others. Among his most vivid early memories, is the premier of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, where he sat next to George Gershwin. He has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and was the first composer to receive the United States National Medal of Arts, as well as Germany’s Ernst Von Siemens Music Prize.
One of the extraordinary features of Carter’s career is his astonishing productivity and creative vitality as he embarks on his eleventh decade. His has written more than 130 works and over 40 of these in the past decade alone.

In this week’s Inspired Minds - the first of two special programmes - Elliott Carter talks to Breandáin O’Shea about his interest in Germany and it’s music, his latest piece, where he has set poems of Ezra Pound to music and the importance of humour in his life and music.

Interview:Breandáin O'Shea/Elliott Carter

The journalist, TV producer, book reviewer, teacher and author Nuala O'Faolain became internationally well-known for her two volumes of memoirs, “Are You Somebody?” and “Almost There”, and her novel, "My Dream of You". She also wrote a history with commentary, “The Story of Chicago May”. The first three were all featured on the New York Times Best Seller list, while “The Story of Chicago May” won the Prix Femina in 2006.
O'Faolain was educated at Dublin’s University College, the University of Hull and Oxford University, and worked as a television producer for the BBC and Irish National radio.
In this interview with Breandáin O’Shea, Nuala O'Faolain talks about the difficulties she experienced in Ireland as an outspoken woman, the inspiration New York provided for her writing and her troubled childhood, the theme of so much of her writing.
Nuala O'Faolain died on May 8th 2008.

Interview: Breandáin O’Shea/Nuala O’Faolain

The Australian filmmaker Scott Millwood has been living in Germany for more than five years. He was born in Tasmania in 1973 and initially studied law at the University of Melbourne, specialising in international law and human rights.

In 2003, Millwood wrote and directed the award winning “Wildness,” a one hour documentary about two Tasmanian wilderness photographers’ whose work marked the emergence of the environmental movement in Australia. He was also writer and director of “Gather” a New Media installation in which portraits of people in various landscapes were projected onto thirty screens during the opening of a landmark Melbourne building.

In this week’s Inspired Minds, Scott Millwood talks to Breandáin O’Shea about his latest film, “Whatever Happened to Brenda Hean?”, his journey to filmmaking after law studies and how Tasmanians vary from other Australians.

Reporter: Breandáin O'Shea/Scott Millwood