About

CLASSIC FM

Zeb Soanes is the presenter of Relaxing Evenings on Classic FM, the UK’s most popular classical music station. His nightly show from 7-10pm regularly attracts 1.3 million listeners each week.

In January 2024 he recorded a special interview with Dame Judi Dench, in which she shared her favourite pieces of classical music, broadcast over the Easter weekend as Dame Judi’s Classical Favourites. He followed this with Sir Simon Russell Beale’s Life in Music in which the celebrated Shakespearian actor talked to Zeb about how music has marked the special moments of his life and career, with his selection of music performed live by the Choir of St Martin-in-the-Fields.

In December 2022 Classic FM gave the broadcast premiere of Zeb’s charity children’s book Gaspard’s Christmas, which he narrated with a score by Jonathan Dove, performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

BBC RADIO

For over 20 years Zeb was an authoritative newsreader and reassuring voice of the Shipping Forecast to millions of listeners on BBC Radio 4. He announced some of the biggest events in recent years from the final result of the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump to the unfolding of the Coronavirus pandemic. He was a regular fixture onThe News Quiz, reported for From Our Own Correspondent and presented Saturday Classics on BBC Radio 3. Sunday Times readers voted him their favourite male voice on UK radio. On leaving The BBC, the Director General Tim Davie wrote, ‘I, like millions of the audience will miss you! Your voice has been a lyrical, clear and reassuring presence — the very heart of Radio 4.’

SHIPPING FORECAST

His long association with The Shipping Forecast led him to read it from the top of Orfordness lighthouse, at the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics and to open London Fashion Week — for which Vogue magazine described him as ‘a BBC radio presenter whose voice sounds like a massage feels’.

He wrote the forward to The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book (Penguin Books) and was asked to record a special Greek Myths forecast for the National Theatre’s 2023 production of Odysseus.

He also reads the forecast during the opening titles of ITV’s detective series Grace.

TELEVISION

Zeb launched BBC FOUR on 2nd March 2002 as the first voice to welcome viewers to the new channel. He subsequently appeared on BBC FOUR as a regular presenter for the BBC Proms, interviewing star musicians and conductors including: Gianandrea Noseda, Andras Schiff, Stephen Hough . Across BBC television he has presented films for the Culture Show, Newsnight and Songs of Praise; made cameos in Sherlock and The League of Gentlemen and competed in the 2019 Christmas special of University Challenge. He was the brand voice of the BBC Store, the forerunner to BritBox.

LIVE EVENTS

Zeb has hosted major live music events to audiences of over 8,000 in Trafalgar Square for the Royal Opera House (relayed to screens around the UK) and presented concerts at London’s Southbank Centre and Royal Albert Hall. At literary festivals including Hay and Edinburgh he chairs discussions with best-selling authors, who have included: Francesca Simon, Patrick Gale and David Walliams. He presents the Royal British Legion’s annual Remembrance Assembly, live-streamed to schools across the UK in association with the National Literacy Trust.

CONCERTS

He has earned a reputation as ‘the go-to person for music narration’ (Daily Telegraph) with the UK’s leading orchestras, performing favourite works for children including The History of Babar the Little Elephant, Paddington’s First Concert and Peter and the Wolf.  He was the Voice of God in the Aldeburgh Festival production of Noye’s Fludde to conclude the Benjamin Britten Centenary in 2013 and is a frequent reciter of Walton’s Façade, including a critically acclaimed recording conducted by John Wilson.

Premieres include: Ben Palmer’s Eggs or Anarchy based on William Sitwell’s award-winning book about the wartime Minister for Food, Lord Woolton; Beethoven, Wordsworth and the French Revolution with the pianist David Owen Norris (marking the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth); and the first live performance in over 30 years of Banana Blush, John Betjeman’s verse set to music by Jim Parker in a gala at St Martin in the Fields. Zeb is curretnly touring Banana Blush to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

During the coronavirus pandemic he recorded Knee Play 2 from Philip Glass’ opera Einstein on the Beach with the violinist Vicky Sayles for Classic FM and made a guest appearance with The King’s Singers. For ten years he was the narrator for the choral ensemble Opus Anglicanum and, in 2020, was appointed patron of the Thaxted Festival.

ACTING

Zeb originally trained as an actor and has performed in BBC radio dramas with Simon Russell-Beale and Toby Jones.  He played Derek Nimmo in the story of the classic BBC comedy series All Gas and Gaiters and was the sinister librarian to David Warner’s Doctor Who for Big Finish Productions. In the short film, Mayday, starring Juliet Stevenson, he relayed the unfolding chaos of an earthquake in London. During the 2020 coronavirus lockdown he created celebriTEAS, a comedy podcast, impersonating his theatrical heroes to raise money for the Equity Benevolent Fund and Acting for Others which received praise from Williams’ biographer Russell Davies and from Stephen Fry.

WRITING

His best-selling first book for children, Gaspard the Fox, inspired by his remarkable encounters with an urban fox, was published in May 2018, illustrated by James Mayhew.  It was followed by Gaspard Best in Show (2019). The third adventure, Gaspard’s Foxtrot (2021), was conceived as both a book and narrated concert work, composed by Jonathan Dove, which received its world premiere at the 2021 Three Choirs Festival, performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra took it on tour throughout Scotland, narrated by Zeb, where it was seen by over 130,000 schoolchildren. Zeb and Jonathan collaborated again on his fourth book, Gaspard’s Christmas, which premiered at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall in December 2022 and has since been performed by the Hallé and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestras.

Zeb studied Creative Writing and Drama at UEA and has written for The Observer, Country Life and The Literary Review.  In 2019, St Martin in the Fields commissioned him to rewrite the libretto for Vaughan Williams’ 1958 nativity pageant, The First Nowell, presented as a charity gala, playfully casting BBC colleagues Dame Jenni Murray as God and Evan Davis as a Wise Man.

CHARITY

Zeb is an active patron of Young Sounds UK and the British Association of Performing Arts Medicine. He was appointed the first patron of The Mammal Society in recognition of his cultural rehabilitation of the urban fox through his children’s books, representing the UK’s favourite mammal more sympathetically than its sly literary predecessors.

He regularly supports the work of St Martin in the Fields (with homelessness) and, in 2017, hosted a gala auction of theatrical portraits of the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company, raising over a hundred thousand pounds. The proceeds from his book Gaspard’s Christmas, support St Martin-in-the-Fields in perpetuity, inspired by J.M. Barrie’s legacy of his Peter Pan royalties to London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital.

COMMUNITY

In 2021 he commissioned the royal sculptor Ian Rank-Broadley to create a statue of his hometown hero, Benjamin Britten, to be installed on the seafront opposite the composer’s birthplace in Lowestoft. It will depict Britten at 14, the age when his talent was recognised, inspiring future generations of local children to achieve their ambitions. Find out more at brittenasaboy.com

In October 2023 he was made an Honorary Doctor of the University of Suffolk in recognition of his ‘outstanding contribution to education, music, media and literature and very public endorsement and celebration of Suffolk.’