Midweek - 28/04/2010

This week Libby Purves is joined by Blanca Huertas, Robert Sackville-West, Bobby McFerrin and Gail Brand. Blanca Huertas is butterfly curator at the Natural History Museum. She is responsible for looking after the collection of 3.5 million butterflies housed in the museum's new Darwin Centre. She curates a new exhibition, Butterfly Explorers featuring hundreds of butterfly species, the vast majority of which are never seen in the UK, at the Natural History Museum. Robert Sackville-West founded Toucan Books, which he combines with chairing Knole Estates, the property and investment company that runs the Sackville family's interests at Knole House in Kent. In 2008, he and his wife and three children moved into the house, which has been occupied by the Sackville family for 400 years, but now owned by the National Trust, and has just written a book 'Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles', published by Bloomsbury. Bobby McFerrin is a ten-time Grammy Award winner, one of the world's best known vocal innovators and improvisers, and creator of one of the most popular songs of the 20th century, 'Don't Worry, Be Happy'. His new project called 'VOCABularies' is a mix of hundreds of overdubbed voices, lush melodies and a mix of languages which has been seven years in the making and is out on WRASSE records. Gail Brand has been a trombonist since the age of nine. A graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she is a commissioned composer and has performed on the international jazz and improvising scene since the early 1990s. As well as a trombonist, Gail works as a qualified Music Therapist and is the professor of Group Improvisation skills at the Guildhall School. She is appearing at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival.