The Music Show (ABC listen)

Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto makes a welcome return to The Music Show, this time with American singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane. They talk about collaborating and songwriting and perform live in the studio; and Pekka tells us about completing and conducting a symphony by his late brother, Jaakko Kuusisto.

When was the last time you sat down and listened to a record from start to finish? And when did you last do that in a room with other people? In Japan, people have been gathering in ongaku kissaten (‘music cafes’) for 100 years. They drink coffee and listen to records, usually in silence and always on very high quality sound systems. Nick Dwyer is the director of a new documentary series called A Century in Sound which is being screened at Melbourne International Film Festival. It takes us into three of these cafes in Tokyo to reveal the proprietors, the records, the customers and the role that these dedicated listening spaces play in the life of a busy city. 

Pekka Kuusisto and Gabriel Kahane are on tour as Council with Musica Viva Australia from 6-17 August. 

A Century In Sound screens at Melbourne International Film Festival on 18 and 20 August. 

Music in this program: 

Title: India And On Down To Australia Composer: Laurie Anderson feat. ANOHNIArtist: Laurie AndersonAlbum: Amelia (forthcoming, due 30 August)Label: Nonesuch

Title: Märchentänze III: A Skylark for JaneComposer: Thomas AdèsArtist: Pekka Kuusisto, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas CollonAlbum: Adès: Orchestral WorksLabel: Ondine ODE 14112

Title: BaedekerComposer: Gabriel KahaneArtist: Gabriel KahaneAlbum: Book of TravelersLabel: Nonesuch 571525-2

Title: Symphony, Op. 39; II. Lento (Live)Composer: Jaakko KuusistoArtist: Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Pekka KuusistoAlbum: Kuusisto: Symphony, Op. 39, Pictured Within & Birthday Variations for M.C.B.Label: BIS 2747

Title: Bright Forms (Live)Composer: Pekka Kuusisto and Gabriel KahaneArtist: Council Performed live in The Music Show studio 

Title: Piano Concerto No. 21 In C Major, K. 467, I. Allegro MaestosoComposer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Artist: Walter Klien piano, Mainzer Kammerorchester, Günter Kehr conductorAlbum: Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21 In C Major, K. 467Label: Turnabout TV-S 34504

Title: An Oscar For Treadwell (Alternate Take)Composer: Charlie ParkerArtist: Charlie Parker and Dizzy GillespieAlbum: Bird and DizLabel: Mercury MGC-512

Title: Walk, Don't RunComposer: Johnny SmithArtist: The VenturesAlbum: Walk Don't RunLabel: Dolton Records BST 8003

Title: DakishimetaiComposer: Eiichi Ohtaki and Takashi MatsumotoArtist: Happy EndAlbum: Kazemachi RomanLabel: URC URG-4009

Technical production by Simon Branthwaite, Tim James, and Roi Huberman

The Music Show is made on Gadigal, Gundungurra and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country

Some of the most prominent folk singers of the twentieth century like Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan were being surveilled and, in some cases, blacklisted by the FBI due to their political activism and ties to the U.S Communist Party.

Writer and historian Aaron J. Leonard has written several books on the subject and is in to reveal why the US Government was so fixated on musicians in the 1940s and 50s, and what he unearthed from the FBI files he gained access to. 

Aaron J. Leonard's books on this subject include The Folk Singers and the Bureau: The FBI, the Folk Artists and the Suppression of the Communist Party, USA-1939-1956 and Whole World in an Uproar: Music, Rebellion and Repression - 1955-1972, both published by Repeater Books. 

Some of the most prominent folk singers of the twentieth century like Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan were being surveilled and, in some cases, blacklisted by the FBI due to their political activism and ties to the U.S Communist Party.

Writer and historian Aaron J. Leonard has written several books on the subject and is in to reveal why the US Government was so fixated on musicians in the 1940s and 50s, and what he unearthed from the FBI files he gained access to. 

Aaron J. Leonard's books on this subject include The Folk Singers and the Bureau: The FBI, the Folk Artists and the Suppression of the Communist Party, USA-1939-1956 and Whole World in an Uproar: Music, Rebellion and Repression - 1955-1972, both published by Repeater Books. 

An epic solo album from Magic Dirt's frontwoman, Michael Sheen on musical rivals Mozart and Salieri, and a new vocal consort previews their concert live in the studio.

Riley Lee on shakuhachi and Hildegard, and singer-songwriter Alana Jagt.

Celebrating one of the world's most prolific melody makers, composer Burt Bacharach who has died at the age of 94. Plus Andrew Bird's Inside Problems, and Freyja Garbett's surfing jazz.

Andrew Gurruwiwi leads the Andrew Gurruwiwi Band in what they call 'Yolŋu funk', a mix between reggae, heavy metal, and funk in language from across the region. Andrew tells us about his music-making, his career as a radio presenter, and explains the stories behind some of the tracks on the band's dynamic debut album, Sing Your Own Song.

"He basically invents the rules of jazz. He shows you 'this is how to play a solo, this is how to sing, this is how to phrase, this is how to tell a story, this is how to swing. Ok, this is jazz. And now I'm going to break all those rules.'" - Ricky Riccardi on Louis Armstrong

Towards the end of the 1960s Louis Armstrong's performances were hit-and-miss. Plagued by health issues and pushing 70, the veteran entertainer was determined to keep playing, singing and touring, despite calls from his doctors to slow down. But in 1968, with a burst of vitality, he performed for BBC TV with hits spanning his remarkable five decades in music. This included What A Wonderful World, a song that had made him a household name just weeks prior. The concert recording of Armstrong's "last great performance" has been rediscovered, and now released as live album Louis In London. Ricky Riccardi is Director of Research Collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum and joins Andy to talk about the great trumpeter and why we're still talking about him over 50 years after his death.

You can hear the Louis In London album in full on ABC Jazz program Jazztrack Live this Saturday 20 July at 4pm.

Music heard in the program:

Title: A Kiss To Build A Dream OnComposer: Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby and Oscar Hammerstein IIArtist: Louis ArmstrongAlbum: Louis In London Label: Verve 602465686128

Title: Bare Necessities Composer: Bruce Reitherman and Phil HarrisArtist: Louis ArmstrongAlbum: Louis In London Label: Verve 602465686128

Title: When It's Sleepy Time Down SouthComposer: Clarence Muse, Leon René and Otis RenéArtist: Louis ArmstrongAlbum: Louis In London Label: Verve 602465686128

Title: Gatjumak (Dance Battle), Go To Sleep (The Legend of Ŋamini Baŋ Baŋ), Wata MäwiComposer: Andrew GurruwiwiArtist: Andrew Gurruwiwi BandAlbum: Sing Your Own SongLabel: Gaga Music

Technical production by Simon Branthwaite

The Music Show is made on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country

Country singer songwriter Andy Golledge cut his teeth in Sydney’s Inner West band scene before returning to his hometown of Tamworth a local hero. He and his band have racked up thousands of kilometres of touring, and whether it’s in the back room of a country pub or in the biggest concert hall in town, they put on one hell of a show. Andy is our ears on the ground at Tamworth Country Music Festival which ends this weekend, and he’s up for two Golden Guitar Awards for his latest album Young, Dumb & Wild.

Pianist Lisa Moore and clarinettist Lloyd Van’t Hoff are two Australian musicians who’ve spent much of their lives overseas. Their new album My Place brings together Australian and American composers works either written or arranged for piano and clarinet. Lisa and Lloyd join Andy to talk about how a nation finds its sound – or doesn’t.

Andy Golledge performs at Tamworth Country Music Festival on Saturday 25 January at 9pm. 

Andy Irvine is the quintessential Irish traditional musician and songwriter, but he was born in 1940s London. Since then he’s been a huge part of the wave that popularised Irish music and folk music more broadly, and he joins us in The Music Show studio to play and reflect on a life on stage.

With sixteen albums and five Grammys under her belt, Angélique Kidjo doesn’t need much of an introduction. She’s back in Australia to perform songs from her 2021 album Mother Nature as well as gems from her catalogue that highlight her infectious energy, dazzling array of influences and multi-language pop music. Supporting most of her tour is Maatakitj (the stage name of Noongar song-maker, composer, and academic Clint Bracknell). In this special double-header interview Angélique and Clint reflect on performing in languages most of their audience don’t understand, whether music can be an ambassador, and why it’s more important than ever for us to dance. 

Mezzo-soprano Anna Dowsley makes her home in Germany’s opera houses these days, but she’s back on her home soil for a run of concerts with the pianist Michael Curtain, tackling a body of work called Cabaret Songs by American composer William Bolcom and the late “theatre poet” Arnold Weinstein. Even though they were written in the 70s and 80s, these songs have something distinctly 1930s about them, but also a sharp contemporary wit. Anna and Michael join Andy in studio to play selections from Cabaret Songs live and delve into this eccentric collection. 

In Southern Louisiana, a few hours from New Orleans, Ann Savoy has spent a lifetime studying, playing and collecting Cajun music. She's best known for her trio Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band, her duet album with Linda Ronstadt Adieu False Heart, and touring and playing festivals with the Savoy Family Band. Ann has just released her first ever solo album, Another Heart, which pays tribute to her early musical loves, the English and American singer songwriters of the 1960s and 70s, but with a Cajun twist.

Pianist and composer Wilbur Whitta has released Wildfire, his debut album as bandleader. During the midst of a NSW tour, Wilbur joins Andrew on The Music Show to explain the blend of improvisation and composition on the album, writing for a quartet with two horns and no bass, and about the importance of having mentors in jazz.

Music in the show:

Title: Two Step D'AmédéArtist: Savoy-Doucet Cajun BandComposer: Marc SavoyAlbum: Two-Step D'AmédéLabel: Arhoolie Records CD-316 

Title: Cajun Love SongArtist: Ann SavoyComposer: Ann SavoyAlbum: Another HeartLabel: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings SFW40256

Title: Waterloo SunsetArtist: Ann SavoyComposer: Ray DaviesAlbum: Another HeartLabel: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings SFW40256

Title: Walk Away ReneeArtist: Linda Ronstadt, Ann SavoyComposer: Bob Calilli, Mike Brown, Tony Sansome Album: Adieu False HeartLabel: Vanguard 79808-2

Title: Stolen CarArtist: Ann SavoyComposer: Bruce SpringsteenAlbum: Another HeartLabel: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings SFW40256

Titles: Leave To Enter; Pizza; Not Interested; RED; Sea LegsArtist: Wilbur Whitta piano and keyboards, Tom Avgenicos trumpet, Jack Stoneham saxophone, Alex Inman-Hislop drumsComposer: Wilbur WhittaAlbum: WildfireLabel: ABC Jazz ABCJ0026D

New Zealand composer Annea Lockwood has become a staple in the American experimental community over the last 60 years. Her extensive body of work includes Piano Transplants – a series that includes her well-known Piano Burning and Southern Exposure – the premiere of which went awry when the piano went AWOL in Perth… 

The Music Show goes to the art gallery, where Annea is rehearsing for the premiere of a new piece, created with Brisbane composer and percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson at the AGNSW’s Volume Festival. We chat about her career, listening to rivers and her latest release – Tête-à-tête – a record made with her late partner Ruth Anderson.

ANOHNI & the Johnsons return with My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, and Robbie visits the ACO studios to chat with Will Gregory and his Moog Ensemble.

ANOHNI & the Johnsons return with My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, a kind of reunion-rebirth for the band after frontwoman Anohni Hegarty devoted over a decade to her solo work. Famed for her soulful voice that bridges an extraordinary range of intimacy and power, My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross is an album that takes ANOHNI’s lifelong preoccupations with the self and the natural world into a new space with a new vocabulary. Robbie talks to her about the album, her friendship with the late Lou Reed who inspires a new song, and Marsha P Johnson, who inspired her band name and graces the cover of the new album.

And a previous Freedman Jazz Fellow, Novak Manojlovic, brings his band HEKKA into studio to give us a sneaky preview of their new album everywhere i go my body goes with me, cementing their ill-at-ease relationship with traditional jazz as they move towards their own sound.

Percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie and poet Raymond Antrobus are two of the UK’s most famous Deaf artists and their first collaboration is Another Noise, an album that captures first-takes of Raymond’s spoken word poems, accompanied by Evelyn’s percussion, completely improvised without her having prior knowledge of any poem performed. They join Andy at the start of what promises to be a beautiful friendship. 

Electronic artist Marcus Whale was last on The Music Show when he was in year 10, having composed a saxophone quartet entitled “The Whistler” as part of his high school’s composer scheme. Now he’s four solo albums and two critically acclaimed bands into his career, and he’s about to perform a live version of his album Ecstasy as part of the Liveworks festival in Sydney. He joins Andy to talk about the ritual and sensuality of both the church and the dancefloor, and to remember his friend and collaborator, the singer songwriter Jack Colwell, who has died at the age of 34. 

If you need support, you can reach Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636.

British violinist Anthony Marwood returns to our shores where he’s playing a series of concerts in duet with accordionist James Crabb for the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

As a soloist, chamber musician, orchestra director, and festival director he’s a man with many strings to his bow, but we’ll try not to let that horrific pun get in the way of a good, in-depth conversation between Anthony and Andrew.

They talk about working with composers like Thomas Adès, Sally Beamish, learning from Emanuel Hurwitz, and collaborating with Sinead O'Connor. 

Bringing huge amounts of energy, musicianship and a sense of humour to the Australian folk scene is Apolline. They chat to Ce Benedict about their trio's unusual line up (fiddle, cello, bass), their approach to arranging and layering tunes, and having varied musical influences—from jazz to Scandi folk and Eurovision. They'll also perform two sets of tunes live in The Music Show studio.

American jazz pianist and singer Blossom Dearie would have turned 100 this week. We revisit a delightful interview from 1995 (one of the first Andrew Ford ever recorded), where he gets a strong telling off for suggesting that she played chords like Thelonious Monk. 

And we hear new music from Tessa Bird, Cedric Burnside, and Allysha Joy.

Aristea Mellos and Stephanie McCallum on a new book of piano Preludes, and Tim Rutherford-Johnson on the music of Liza Lim

Embarking on a nautical adventure this week, Andy is welcomed onboard the ‘floating cultural platform’ known as the Arka Kinari, sailed by musical duo Grey Filastine and Nova Ruth. Made of steel intended for a Nazi U-Boat, this seventy-tonne schooner has been fitted out as an eco-touring venue, and after leaving home waters in Indonesia last month is currently visiting Australia for a run of shows.

Pitjantjatjara singer and songwriter Frank Yamma was born into music, and has since had a long and storied career. In the desert, he’s a hard rocker, and in the cities he plays “slow style”. He joins Andy in The Music Show studio ahead of a national tour to play songs from his city repertoire, and talk about his life and work.

Arnold Schoenberg’s music tore a hole in the fabric of the twentieth century. Over the course of his life, he charted a new course through expressionism, atonality, and ultimately to the invention of twelve tone serialism. As the father of the Second Viennese School, he’s been both cursed and adored (often at the same time) by the people who’ve taken up his scores – you’ll hear quite a lot of the adoration and no small amount of the cursing on this episode of The Music Show. Danaë Killian, who is about to perform his complete solo piano works, and Jeremy Eichler, who wrote about Schoenberg in his prize-winning book Time’s Echo, join Andy, and you’ll hear voices including Pierre Boulez, singers Tabatha McFadyen, Merlyn Quaife and Jane Manning, conductors Simone Young and Roger Benedict, pianist Simon Tedeschi, violinists Jack Liebeck and Michael Barenboim, and author Joy Calico from The Music Show’s archives.

Danaë Killian performs Schoenberg’s complete solo piano music at Tempo Rubato in Naarm/Melbourne on 13 September.

Jeremy Eichler’s Time’s Echo is published by Alfred A. Knopf and Faber, newly in paperback. 

Music heard in the show:

1899 - Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 

Artist: Amichai Grosz; Maxim Rysanov; Jens Peter Maintz; Janine Jansen; Boris Brovtsyn; Torleif ThedéenAlbum: Janine Jansen plays Schoenberg & SchubertLabel: Decca 4783551

1905 – String Quartet No. 1, Op. 7

Artist: Julliard String QuartetAlbum: Schoenberg: String Quartet No. 1 Label: Sony G010004560203F

1908 - String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10 

Artist: Amaryllis Quartet, Katharina PersickeAlbum: YellowLabel: Genuin GEN16438

1909 - Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11

Artist: Danaë KillianAlbum: Arnold Schoenberg - Complete Works for Piano SoloLabel: Move Records MCD513 

1911 - Six Little Pieces for Piano, Op. 19 

Artist: Danaë KillianAlbum: Arnold Schoenberg - Complete Works for Piano SoloLabel: Move Records MCD513 

1911 - Gurrelieder 

Artist: Philharmonia Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus, Philharmonia Voices, Esa-Pekka SalonenAlbum: Schoenberg - GurreliederLabel: Signum SIGCD173

1912 - Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21

Artist: Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin/sprechgesang), Meesun Hong (violin), Julia Gallego (flute), Reto Bieri (clarinet), Thomas Kaufmann (cello), Joonas Ahonen (piano), Marko Milenkovic (viola)Album: Schoenberg – Pierrot LunaireLabel: Alpha ALPHA722

Artist: Mary Thomas (soprano/reciter), London Sinfonietta, David AthertonAlbum: Schoenberg – Pierrot Lunaire and SerenadeLabel: Decca 4256262

1923 - Five Pieces for Piano, Op. 23 

Artist: Danaë KillianAlbum: Arnold Schoenberg - Complete Works for Piano SoloLabel: Move Records MCD513 

1923 - Suite for Piano, Op. 25 

Artist: Danaë KillianAlbum: Arnold Schoenberg - Complete Works for Piano SoloLabel: Move Records MCD513 

1929/1931 - Two Pieces for Piano, Op. 33 

Artist: Danaë KillianAlbum: Arnold Schoenberg - Complete Works for Piano SoloLabel: Move Records MCD513 

1930 – Accompaniment to a film scene, Op. 34 

Artist: BBC Symphony Orchestra, Pierre BoulezAlbum: Pierre Boulez Edition – Schoenberg ILabel: Sony G010001828334P

1936 - Violin Concerto, Op. 36 

Artist: Michael Barenboim, Vienna Philharmonic, Pierre BoulezAlbum: Schoenberg: Violin and Piano ConcertosLabel: Peral 4811613

Artist: Jack Liebeck, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Andrew GourlayAlbum: Schoenberg and Brahms – Violin ConcertosLabel: Orchid Classics ORC100129

1942 - Piano Concerto, Op. 42 

Artist: Simon TedeschiPerformed in The Music Show studio

1947 - A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46 

Artist: Gunther Reich (speaker), BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Pierre BoulezAlbum: A Survivor from WarsawLabel: Sony M35882

1949 - Phantasy for Violin and Piano, Op. 47

Artist: Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin), Joonas Ahonen (piano)Album: Schoenberg – Pierrot LunaireLabel: Alpha ALPHA722

Interviews heard in the show:

Jeremy EichlerDanaë Killian Simone Young (2024)Tabatha McFadyen (2022)Jane Manning (1996)Merlyn Quaife (2003)Roger Benedict (2024)Pierre Boulez (2001)Michael Barenboim (2014)Jack Liebeck (2022)Joy Calico (2015)

The Music Show is made on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country

Technical production by Bethany Stewart, Nathan Turnbull and Tegan Nicholls

Arooj Aftab’s 2021 album Vulture Prince took her ten years to write, and for the final two she had to shut all other music out of her life. “I just was trying to make a thing that didn't have a blueprint" she says, of an opus that combines jazz, experimental electronica and Sufi devotional music with her own unique voice. She's about to tour the album here and looks back at over a decade of work with Andy before she hits Australian stages.

When Notre-Dame caught fire in 2019, playwright Alana Valentine was amongst those moved by the sight. That emotional response eventually sparked a collaboration with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, fittingly called Notre-Dame, which uses a narrative poem to tell the story of the disaster and the long life of the cathedral. 

Plus new music from Kirin J Callinan and Cameron Undy.

Arushi Jain is adamant that she’s not a “classical Indian musician.” Leaning on her roots in Hindustani musical tradition, she weaves together ethereal soundscapes that feature melodies and moods based on traditional Indian ragas swirling around an electronically generated soundscapes. Previously releasing music under the monikers Modular Princess and ose | ओस, she draws on her studies in computer sciences at Stanford, and gravitates towards the electronic DIY, working mostly with modular synthesisers when she’s not programming her own instruments.

We spoke to trumpeter Tom Avgenicos last year when he won the Freedman Jazz Fellowship, and now the project idea that he won it with has become a reality. Tom and members of his band Delay 45 - Rohan Kumarage on keys and Dave Quinn on bass - are live in The Music Show studio to offer us a peek behind the curtain of Ghosts between Streams.

And we listen to the final single of Afar woman, Yanna Momina, who died this week at the age of 76. Known for her powerful vocal and thrilling vibrato, Momina made a name for herself as both a singer and a songwriter - defying the expectations of women within the Afar community. 

Elisabeth Lutyens and Edward Clark were a kind of power couple of the 20th century: she a prolific composer; he a less successful conductor but an influential producer and administrator. Annika Forkert is the author of Elisabeth Lutyens and Edward Clark: the orchestration of progress in British twentieth-century music, and she tells Andy the story of their relationship and their work.

Electronic pioneer Ash Wednesday has had a “self-imposed hiatus” from music over the last decade as he was confronted by a diagnosis of progressive multiple sclerosis. He joins Andy to talk about his new album, AfterMATH, a work for electronics and the majestic Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ, composed and generated around Ash’s loss of movement in the right side of his body.

Ashley Naylor is guitarist who has played in many bands. He has his own bands, like Even, plays in other bands like The Church, and is even in bands on TV, like The RocKwiz Orkestra. In fact, you may have heard his guitar on The Music Show, but this time, he is on the program to talk about his most recent release - a new album of instrumental music called Soundtracks Volume 2, a follow up to his 2020 lockdown album Soundtracks Volume 1.

Founding member of No Fixed Address and Mixed Relations and the godfather of Australian reggae, Bart Willoughby makes his Music Show debut. He is an alumni of CASM (Centre for Aborignal Studies in Music) in Adelaide and has toured internationally with bands like Yothu Yindi. In this interview, we journey into Bart’s incredible story as a multi-instrumentalist, and how he came to be one of the most significant figures in Australian songwriting. 

For someone referred to as "the Queen of Jazz" and "First Lady of Song", there's a surprising amount we don't know about legendary jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. She didn't fit the image of a star: she was incredibly polite, avoided drugs and swearing, and kept her private life entirely private. But when she sang, people listened. Her clear diction, perfect intonation and master of scat singing made her one of the greatest vocalists of the 20th century.  

Music historian and author of Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song Judith Tick reveals as much as she can about the great singer.

For someone referred to as "the Queen of Jazz" and "First Lady of Song", there's a surprising amount we don't know about legendary jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. She didn't fit the image of a star: she was incredibly polite, avoided drugs and swearing, and kept her private life entirely private. But when she sang, people listened. Her clear diction, perfect intonation and master of scat singing made her one of the greatest vocalists of the 20th century.  

Music historian and author of Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song Judith Tick reveals as much as she can about the great singer.

Music heard in the show:

Title: Lover, Come Back to MeArtist: Ella FitzgeraldComposer: Sigmund Romberg (music), Oscar Hammerstein II (lyrics)Album: Sweet And HotLabel: Decca DL8155

Title: A-Tisket, A-TasketArtist: Ella Fitzgerald & the Chick Webb OrchestraComposer: trad., embellished by Ella Fitzgerald and Al FeldmanAlbum: A-Tisket, A-TasketLabel: Decca S8140

Title: Oh, Lady Be GoodArtist: Ella FitzgeraldComposer: George Gershwin, Ira GershwinAlbum: Lullabies of Birdland Label: Decca DL8149

Title: Oh, Lady Be GoodArtist: Ella FitzgeraldComposer: George Gershwin (music), Ira Gershwin (lyrics)Album: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George & Ira Gershwin SongbookLabel: Verve MG V-4029

Title: Ev’ry Time We Say GoodbyeArtist: Ella FitzgeraldComposer: Cole PorterAlbum: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter SongbookLabel: Verve MG V-4001

Title: Cheek to CheekArtist: Ella Fitzgerald & Louis ArmstrongComposer: Irving BerlinAlbum: Ella & LouisLabel: Verve MG V-4003

Title: Mack the KnifeArtist: Ella FitzgeraldComposer: Kurt WeillAlbum: Mack the Knife: Ella in BerlinLabel: Verve MG V-4041

Title: Cry Me A RiverArtist: Ella Fitzgerald & Joe PassComposer: Arthur HamiltonAlbum: Duets in Hannover 1975Label: Impro-Jazz IJ 546

Technical production by Simon Branthwaite, Tim James and Roi Huberman

The Music Show is made on Gadigal, Gundungurra and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country

From the very first shot of John Travolta strutting his stuff down a busy New York street, Saturday Night Fever is an iconic film, and the music is even more iconic. Well, the five Bee Gees’ tracks that occupied side A are anyway—don’t get music writer Clinton Walker started on the ‘highway robbery’ of making fans pay for a double-album just to get those songs!

Clinton Walker brings disco fever to The Music Show and explains the Australianness of the film and its soundtrack, thanks in large part to Adelaide-born producer Robert Stigwood and the Bee Gees who we claim as our own.

Clinton Walker's book Soundtrack From Saturday Night Fever is published by Bloomsbury.

Beethoven's five sonatas for cello and piano span his career - two from the beginning, one from the middle and two from his late period - so they provide a good framework for talking about the composer. Timo-Veikko Valve and Aura Go have recorded them alongside the complete music for cello and piano by Anton Webern (three works, together lasting under ten minutes) and they'll be in the studio to talk about them and play excerpts. 

Alison Cotton is a London-based experimental artist whose viola/drone/voice/soundscape-rich music is very hard to pigeonhole. Her new album Engelchen (meaning 'little angels') follows the incredible story of British opera-loving sisters Ida and Louise Cook who helped save 29 Jewish people before the start of World War II. The sisters used their love of attending operas as a guise for travelling to Germany, where they actually met refugees and helped smuggle their valuables out of the country. Items like jewellery, furs and watches were sold in the UK to help fund their owner's safe passage. The sisters would do things like restitch British labels to the German coats to avoid suspicion from the Nazi border guards... who thought they were just spinsters dressed in finery returning from a weekend trip to the opera. 

Timo-Veikko Valve and Aura Go are performing at ACO Up Close: Beethoven Arranged on 20 April in Sydney and 22 April in Melbourne.

Alison Cotton’s Engelchen is out now.

Music in the show:

Title: Cello Sonata No. 3 in A Major, Op. 69; ii. ScherzoComposer: Ludwig van BeethovenArtist: Timo-Veikko Valve (cello) and Aura Go (piano)Performed Live in The Music Show studio

Title: Three Little Pieces, Op. 11Composer: Anton WebernArtist: Timo-Veikko Valve (cello) and Aura Go (piano)Performed Live in The Music Show studio

Title: Cello Sonata No. 4 in C major, Op. 102 No. 1; ii. Adagio – Tempo d'andante – Allegro vivaceComposer: Ludwig van BeethovenArtist: Timo-Veikko Valve (cello) and Aura Go (piano)Album: Beethoven Cello Sonatas, Webern Works for Cello & PianoLabel: ABC Classic

Title: The Letter Burning; We Were Smuggling People’s Lives; Crepuscle; Engelchen NowArtist: Alison CottonAlbum: EngelchenLabel: Feeding Tube Records LAUNCH339R

Title: CrepuscleComposer: Jules MassenetArtist: Amelita Galli-CurciAlbum: Amelita Galli-Curci Volume OneLabel: The Rubini Collection GV.578

Title: As The Trees Have Always KnownArtist: Melanie HorsnellAlbum: As The Trees Have Always Known (Single)Label: Independent release

Technical Production by Russell Stapleton and John Jacobs

The Music Show is produced on Gadigal and Gundungurra Land

Singing forbidden fruit with Benjamin Appl, and live music from Rockhampton duo Busby Marou.

Rockhampton duo Busby Marou have been making music together for sixteen years. They say they’re better live but their fifth studio album, Blood Red, doesn’t sound too bad either. Combining Tom Busby’s singer-songwriter sensibilities and Jeremy Marou’s guitar chops and Torres Strait islander musical culture, their sound has a breezy optimism that they’ve worked hard to achieve, as they demonstrate live in The Music Show studio.

German-British baritone Benjamin Appl reinvents the German Romantic Liederabend – “evening of song” – for a new era with his Australian recital program entitled Nocturne. His latest album, Forbidden Fruit, contains another swathe of songs, and Benjamin joins Andy to talk about both, as well as his time as the last student of the legendary baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Plus new music from Kate Pass's Kohesia Ensemble where Persian instrumentalists teaming up with jazz artists for Sand, Sea and Sky. 

Bill Bailey is best known for his stand-up comedy, but one of his first public performances was a Mozart piano concerto, with his own cadenza, in his hometown of Bath. He joins Andy to explain what Mozart has in common with dancing on television, how timing is crucial to both comedy and music, and making sure there’s enough affection in his musical parodies.

Modern troubadour Darren Hanlon has performed in hundreds of halls and pubs around Australia, and is on a mission to visit at least one new town per tour. His observational songwriting, sharp wit and catchy melodies earn him fans everywhere he goes. 

Darren is on The Music Show to reflect on a life on the road and talk about making his latest album Life Tax in an old church hall (he was able to record when the hall wasn’t being used for swing dance or yoga classes).

As ABC Science Week asks Australia what the nation’s favourite animal sound is, The Music Show looks at the unique musical relationship between humans and birds. From Olivier Messiaen’s trio of birds written when he was in a Polish concentration camp, to English folkie Sam Lee, Muruwari and Filipino rapper DOBBY, and zoomusicologist (dream job) and violinist Hollis Taylor’s duets with birds, and David Lumsdaine’s composition-by-dawn-chorus.

We hear from this year’s four Boyer lecturers; pianist and writer Anna Goldsworthy​, violist and conductor Aaron Wyatt, composer, conductor and performer Iain Grandage, and Artistic Director of Gondwana Choirs Lyn Williams. They all reflect on the future of classical music in this country.

Master of the Afghan rabab Qais Essar performs traditional Afghan music live in the studio, but also shares how important it is for him to push the instrument into "uncharted territory" in a time where its music is being banned in Afghanistan. He's joined by tabla player Aman Pal.

Brett Dean and Matthew Jocelyn's Hamlet (2017) has been one of the most successful operas of recent years with performances at the Glyndebourne Festival, the Adelaide Festival, New York's Metropolitan Opera and the Bavarian State Opera. Now it comes to the Sydney Opera House in its original production by Neil Armfield, with the tenor Allan Clayton, who created the role of Hamlet, perhaps singing it for the last time. Brett Dean and Allan Clayton join Andrew Ford to talk about the opera's origins and its connection to Shakespeare's play.

New York-based jazz bassist and composer Linda May Han Oh is back in Australia for a string of concerts with her husband, the Cuban American pianist Fabian Almazan, as well as the WA Youth Jazz Orchestra (a nice full circle moment for the Perth-raised musician). She speaks to Andrew Ford about switching between electric and upright bass, incorporating her voice in compositions, and the environmental themes behind her piece Ephemeral Echoes which has just earned her a nomination at the forthcoming 2024 Art Music Awards. 

Hamlet runs from 20 July - 9 August at the Sydney Opera House. 

Linda May Han Oh performs 21 July at the Sydney Opera House, and 22 July at Church St Studios in Sydney.

Music in this program:

Title: Act I; Scene 4, ...or not to be (Live)Composer: Brett Dean, words William Shakespeare, libretto Matthew JocelynArtist: Allan Clayton, The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Nicholas CarterAlbum: Brett Dean: Hamlet (Recorded Live at the Met, June 4 2022)Label: The Metropolitan Opera (digital release)

Title: Spring Symphony, Op. 44, Part II. Waters aboveComposer: Benjamin BrittenArtist: Allan Clayton, London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon RattleAlbum: Britten: Spring Symphony, Sinfonia da Requiem, the Young Person's Guide To the OrchestraLabel: LSO Live LSO0830

Title: Act I; Scene 4, Get thee to a nunnery (Live)Composer: Brett Dean, words William Shakespeare, libretto Matthew JocelynArtist: Allan Clayton, The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Nicholas CarterAlbum: Brett Dean: Hamlet (Recorded Live at the Met, June 4 2022)Label: The Metropolitan Opera (digital release)

Title: Wring from him the cause (from Gertrude Fragments) Composer: Brett DeanArtist: Lotte Betts-Dean, Andrey LebedevRecording supplied by Brett Dean

Title: Firefly, from Ephemeral Echoes (Live)Composer: Linda May Han OhArtist: Linda May Han Oh, Steve Richter, Iain Robbie, Genevieve Wilkins, Fabian Almazan, Ben VanderwalLive recording from Perth Festival 2023, with thanks to Finding Our Voice

Title: HatchlingComposer: Linda May Han OhArtist: Linda May Han OhAlbum: The Glass HoursLabel: Biophilia Records

Title: ArchComposer: Vijay IyerArtist: Vijay Iyer, Tyshawn Sorey, Linda May Han OhAlbum: CompassionLabel: ECM 2760

Technical production by Russell Stapleton

Produced on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country

The Brodsky Quartet return to Australia with Britten, Schubert, Bach... and Ford. And a Country-flavoured celebration of The Rolling Stones in the tribute album Stoned Cold Country.

Following the release of her second studio album Hertz, Perth-based singer-songwriter Carla Geneve chats to Andrew about channelling the experiences of her bipolar diagnosis into her music and resisting the temptations of becoming the “tortured artist”. Describing the record as a “concept album,” Hertz is a continuation of her previous release Learn to Like It, but takes on a new, raw sound that still maintains an authentic Aussie twang.

Reflecting the melting pot of Adelaide, Nexus Arts Orchestra adds new dimensions to the idea of “Contemporary Australian Music”. The group is made up of performers from varying musical backgrounds, and include instruments like the guzheng, shamisen and santur alongside a string section, vocals and flamenco guitar. They have just released a three-track EP, featuring co-composed music and songs by Ngaanyatjarra singer-songwriter Vonda Last.

And we remember one of the greatest Irish songwriters and frontman of The Pogues, Shane MacGowan, who died this week at the age of 65. He was renowned for the powerful sound he derived from Irish traditional music and punk.

In the 1960s, the Les Girls Revue made Carlotta a star, and earned her the moniker “Queen of the Cross”. In Sydney’s red light district, she made a name for herself before hitting the road – she’d be the first to remind you that Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is at least partially based on her rural tours. Now she’s contemplating (but not committing to) retirement, she looks back at her career as an entertainer with Andrew Ford.  

Maria Grenfell is a composer for the concert hall and for film, and also a teacher of composition at the University of Tasmania Conservatorium of Music. With her follow composer-academics Linda Kouvaras and Natalie Williams she has edited two volumes about the experiences of composing women. She recently sat down with Andrew in her home town of Christchurch to talk about writing for orchestra, teaching, and whether the term 'woman composer' is a help or a hindrance.

Teho. is a Finnish fiddle duo made up of Tero Hyväluoma and Esko Järvelä (who are also members of 7-piece folk band Frigg). At the end of a whirlwind Australian tour the pair speak to Andrew about the rich musical history in the Kaustinen region, bringing traditional music into the 21st Century and how they can get such a big sound out of just two violins. 

Music in Carlotta:

Title: Got To Be Real Composer: Cheryl Lynn, David Paich and David FosterArtist: Cheryl LynnAlbum: Cheryl LynnLabel: Columbia

Title: I'm The Greatest StarComposer: Jule Styne, lyrics Bob Merrill Artist: Barbara StreisandAlbum: Funny Girl (Original Broadway Cast)Label: Capitol Records W 2059

Music in Maria Grenfell:

Title: Di Primavera III. With energy and bounceComposer: Maria GrenfellArtist: Claire Edwardes and Karin SchauppAlbum: Women of Note: A Century of Australian ComposersLabel: ABC Classics 4817995

Title: River Mountain SkyComposer: Maria GrenfellArtist: Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin NortheyRecording: Courtesy of ABC Classic

Music in Teho.:

Title: Jokivarren Polska & FlikuleeriComposer: Esko JärveläArtist: Teho.Album: Not A Violin DuoLabel: Independent

Title: TähtisilmävalssiComposer: Konsta JylhäArtist: Teho.Album: (E2 + ε + V) x I3 = PLabel: Independent

Music at the end of the show:

Title: No. 1: "Múzika igráyet tak bódro" (Olga, Masha, Irina)Composer: Peter EötvösArtist: Orchestre de l'Opéra national de Lyon, conducted by Kent NaganoAlbum: Eötvös: Three SistersLabel: Deutsche Grammophon E4596942

American composer Caroline Shaw’s latest album, a collaboration with Sō Percussion, is called Rectangles and Circumstance. It’s a collection of ten songs run through with words by Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte, William Blake and Christina Rossetti, as well as Caroline herself. She joins Andy from her home in the US to talk about her collaborators and her co-poets.

When Irish singer songwriter David Keenan came onto the scene he was described as “the sound of Tim Buckley and Brendan Behan arguing over a few jars, while Kavanagh deals Dylan a suspicious hand of cards, and Anthony Cronin and Jack Kerouac furiously try to scribble it all down” – so no pressure there. He talks about wearing those comparisons, writing songs about Ireland, and the story behind his guitar as well as performing new music live.

American composer Caroline Shaw’s latest album, a collaboration with Sō Percussion, is called Rectangles and Circumstance. It’s a collection of ten songs run through with words by Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte, William Blake and Christina Rossetti, as well as Caroline herself. She joins Andy from her home in the US to talk about her collaborators and her co-poets.

German cellist Nicolas Altstaedt takes the role of guest director, soloist, and conductor in his first tour with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Nestling Haydn’s jubilant Cello Concerto in C major amongst works by significantly more angular composers like Kurtag, Veress and Xenakis, he joins Andy on The Music Show to map out his versatile and prolific life on the concert platform and beyond.

Music heard in the show: 

Title: Partita for 8 Voices i. AllemandeComposer: Caroline ShawArtist: Roomful of TeethAlbum: Partita for 8 VoicesLabel: New Amsterdam

Title: Sing On, And So, The Parting Glass, and To MusicComposer: Caroline Shaw, Sō PercussionArtist: Caroline Shaw, Sō PercussionAlbum: Rectangles and CircumstanceLabel: Nonesuch

Title: Cello Concerto in C Major; iii. FinaleComposer: Joseph HaydnArtist: Nicolas Altstaedt, Australian Chamber OrchestraCourtesy of the ACO

Title: Atlas; iii. Perpetuum Mobile – Ladon the DragonComposer: Helena WinkelmanArtist: Nicolas Altstaedt, Lockenhaus ArtistsAlbum: CreationLabel: Alpha ALPHA861

Technical production by Simon Branthwaite

The Music Show is made on Gadigal and Gundungurra Land.

Jazz singer Cécile McLorin Salvant's latest album Mélusine brings together the high-concept dreaminess of her lockdown album Ghost Song with the powerful band leadership of her earlier work. Cécile joins Andy ahead of her tour to Australia to draw a line from her Kate Bush covers to her 12th Century Occitan folk song renditions.

Author Stephen Downes reveals the strange and shortened life of the American pianist William Kapell, who died in a plane accident seventy years ago.

Violist Henry Justo is the 2023 recipient of one of Australia’s major instrumental prizes, the Freedman Classical Fellowship, which gives him a grant towards a major performance project. Henry stops by The Music Show studio to reveal his plans for the fellowship and how Debussy clinched the final competition for him.

Sisters Mabel and Ivy Windred-Wornes have been making music as Charm of Finches since they were children. Now seasoned touring artists with four albums under their belts, they swing by The Music Show studio to play live and tell Andy about the joy of singing in unison, and why they’re drawn to really dark stories. 

Comprised of five female musicians The Cloud Maker transports listeners through song, using cello, drums, clarinet and Taonga Pūoro (Maori Singing Treasures) to channel the power of breath, collaboration and the energy of the moon. Taking inspiration from folkloric takes and their relationship to music, the Cloud Maker celebrates goddesses across Maori, Filipino, Jewish and Irish cultures with an eerie, and at times fierce, musical performance.

Andrew Ford speaks to Te Kahureremoa Taumata, Aviva Andean and Freya Schack-Arnott following a performance at Judith Neilson’s Phoenix Central Park.

Australian pianist, Aura Go plays Chopin - both the character, and all 24 of his Preludes - in the stage production of Paul Kildea's book Chopin's Piano. Combining live musical performances with theatre, the production brings to life the story of the piano made by the local Majorcan craftsman, Juan Bauza in Palma. Threaded together by Chopin's 24 Preludes, the story follows the piano from its time with Chopin during that historic winter in Majorca, to its new life in Paris with Wanda Landowska, and through the hands of Nazis during World War II. 

Leaning into a bit of a method-acting scenario, Aura joins us on one of the ABC's most quirky pianos in the Melbourne live music studio to play some of the Preludes that Chopin wrote on Bauza's eccentric piano.

We speak to Aura about her take on Chopin as the pianists' composer and her acting debut, and contemplate the music of Chopin with some guests from The Music Show's archive, featuring interviews with Paul Kildea in 2018, Ruth Slenczynska in 2020, Roger Woodward in 2010, and Susan Tomes in 2021. 

Chopin's Piano is now on tour around Australia.

Australian music icon and proud Torres Strait Islander Christine Anu has just released her first album of new music in 20 years. Waku-Minaral A Minalay was recorded across the Pacific in places like New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Torres Strait Islands and the Solomon Islands - utilising traditional percussion instruments like the Warup (drums), the Urub (shakers) and the Kulap (seed pot rattles). It’s a deeply personal bilingual album which includes songs written by Christine Anu, her grandfather and her daughter. 

British countertenor Iestyn Davies is about to make his Australian debut singing music by JS Bach and Arvo Pärt alongside the Australian Chamber Orchestra and dancers from Sydney Dance Company. He speaks to Andrew Ford about what links these two composers (born nearly three centuries apart) and the changing attitudes, and repertoire, for high male voices.

Christine Anu performs at the Mt Isa Rodeo on 8 August, at Cairns Festival on 23 August and at North Australian Festival of Arts on 13 October.

Iestyn Davies performs with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Sydney Dance Company in Silence & Rapture from 2-19 August.

Music in Christine Anu's interview:

Title: Aukum of SaibaiComposer: Christine Anu, David BridieArtist: Christine AnuAlbum: Waku - Minaral A MinalayLabel: ABC Music ABCM0029

Title: Koey Dhoerim Composer: Nadi AnuArtist: Christine AnuAlbum: Waku - Minaral A MinalayLabel: ABC Music ABCM0029

Title: My Popu Nadhi AnuComposer: Christine Anu, David BridieArtist: Christine AnuAlbum: Waku - Minaral A MinalayLabel: ABC Music ABCM0029

Title: Laga Saibai Composer: Nadi AnuArtist: Christine AnuAlbum: Waku - Minaral A MinalayLabel: ABC Music ABCM0029

Title: Dhibagaw GabuComposer: Zipporah Corser AnuArtist: Christine AnuAlbum: Waku - Minaral A MinalayLabel: ABC Music ABCM0029Music in Iestyn Davies' interview:

Title: King DavidComposer: Herbert Howells, words Walter de la MareArtist: Iestyn DaviesAlbum: Divine Music: An English SongbookLabel: Signum Classics SIGCD725

Title: 'Wer Sünde tut, der ist vom Teufel' from Cantata No. 54, 'Widerstehe doch der Sünde,' BWV 54 (BC A51)Composer: Johann Sebastian BachArtist: Iestyn Davies, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen conductorAlbum: Cantatas Nos 54, 82 & 170Label: Hyperion CDA68111

Title: Or la tromba (from Rinaldo)Composer: George Frideric HandelArtist: Iestyn Davies, La Nuova Musica, artistic director David BatesAlbum: Handel’s Unsung HeroesLabel: Pentatone 5186892

Music at the end of the show:

Title: (I’m) StrandedArtist: The SaintsComposer: Chris Bailey, Ed KuepperAlbum: (I’m) StrandedLabel: EMI -- EMC-2570

Technical production by Russell Stapleton

The Music Show is produced on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country

Formed out of a love for Django Reinhardt and excellent band-name puns, Cigány Weaver play in a style reminiscent of jazz Manouche, traditional swing and Romani music. We hosted the full six-piece band in The Music Show studio where they delivered a performance rich in energetic fiddling, gentle strumming and soaring vocals, playing two songs drawn from their new album Episode II: Still Water.

Scottish composer Stuart MacRae had set medieval poetry to music before, but it wasn’t until he heard Australian mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean’s take on his setting of the anonymous poem ‘The Lif of this World’ that he found a collaborator that “got it straight away”. Stuart began writing new compositions specifically for Lotte’s voice, resulting in the album Earth thy cold is keen, and they joined Andy for a chat about their collaboration.

And music from Irish powerhouse Lisa O’Neill, who is on tour around Australia now and will be joining us live on stage at WOMADelaide on 9 March.

Andrew is at the Canberra International Music Festival, where we get to catch up with an Australian who lives in the UK, a Belgian who tours the world, and another Belgian who lives in Australia.

Lotte Betts-Dean, Aussie mezzo-soprano now based in London, makes a trip home to perform a series of form-expanding vocal works from composers like Michael Finnissy, one of the masters of so-called "new complexity". 

Belgian jazz pianist Bram de Looze invites The Music Show into the Belgian Embassy where he's staying with the two resident llamas to talk about where improvisation and composition meet for him, and what he's taken from jazz idols like Hank Jones, Keith Jarrett and Thelonious Monk. 

And CIMF Artistic Director Roland Peelman looks back on his ten years leading the festival, the joys and tribulations of wearing multiple hats, and the particular way the city of Canberra has shaped the festival. 

Look out for Bram De Looze on ABC Jazz’s Jazztrack Live in June.

Music heard in the show:

Title: Spotting GatewaysArtist: Bram de LoozeLive in Canberra – courtesy of ABC Jazz

Title: Blessed Be IArtist: Lotte Betts-Dean, Marsyas TrioComposer: Michael FinnissyAlbum: Alternative ReadingsLabel: Divine Art MEX77102

Title: Botany BayArtist: Lotte Betts-Dean, Marsyas TrioComposer: Michael FinnissyAlbum: Alternative ReadingsLabel: Divine Art MEX77102

Title: parallaxis formaArtist: Lotte Betts Dean, Explore EnsembleComposer: Catherine LambAlbum: 3 Compositions for Voices and EnsembleLabel: Another Timbre at-215CD

Title: BowArtist: Bram De LoozeComposer: Bram De LoozeAlbum: Spotting GatewaysLabel: Independent release

Title: Monk’s MoodArtist: Bram De Looze, Joey Baron, Robin VerheyenComposer: Thelonious MonkAlbum: MiXMONKLabel: UCJ

Technical production by Simon BranthwaiteRecorded on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country, produced on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country.

Forty years on, to the day, from when Do They Know It's Christmas? stormed the UK charts and remained at number #1 for five weeks, Bob Geldof is a guest on The Music Show to talk about the song's complicated legacy, how he looks back on Live Aid, and why he thinks pop music doesn't unite us like it used to.

Sydney soul artist CINTA has lived a life of performing and sharing, over-sharing she says, on the streets as an itinerant young busker, touring in the giant 27-piece funk collective The Regime, and now with her own band. Drawing on the best of classic soul and modern groove, her deeply resonant voice rings out on songs of love and betrayal on second album WORTH CONTROL, and she discusses it with producer Niall on this week’s Music Show.

This week on the Music Show, we take a look into the archives to an interview with the late, great Clive James. Andy spoke to Clive back in 2003 about what it was like writing for the song and the stage, and they discussed some of Clive's favourite pieces of musical poetry — from Stephen Sondheim to Aretha Franklin. 

As ever, we’re indebted to Penny Lomax and Maureen Cooney for producing the first thirtyish years of this show from which to draw this archive.

Technical production from Roi Huberman and Nathan Turnbull. 

The Music Show is produced on Gadigal land and Gundungurra country.

German countertenor Andreas Scholl returns to The Music Show whilst he’s in the country with the Australian World Orchestra. He talks to Andrew about the life of a countertenor: old repertoire, new repertoire, and looking after a voice when great demands are made of it.

American pianist Donna Coleman deep dives into the life and influence of American modernist composer Charles Ives, whose 150th anniversary is this year. There’s more to this composer than the experimental (and sometimes chaotic) sounds he is best-known for.

Benjamin Northey picked up the baton as Chief Conductor of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra only a few years after the devastating 2011 earthquake. In a wide-ranging conversation he talks to Andrew Ford about the rebuilding of the musical life of the city (there was a period where the CSO performed at an Air Force museum after many performance venues were damaged). He also looks back on his years learning under the great Finnish conductor Jorma Panula, and why starting his career as a saxophone player put him in perfect stead to be on the podium. 

And we hear an interview with New Orleans singer and pianist Clarence 'Frogman' Henry. "I sing like a girl and I sing like a frog....." Clarence Henry croaked on his 1956 debut hit Ain't Got No Home, which earned him the nickname of 'Frogman'. In 2000 Andrew Ford crossed the Mississippi to Clarence's home in Algiers, New Orleans and sat down in his garden amongst the decorative frogs for a chat. Clarence Henry died on 7 April 2024 at the age of 87.

Music heard in this program

Title: (I Don't Know Why) But I DoArtist: Clarence 'Frogman' HenryComposer:  Paul Gayten and Bobby CharlesAlbum: You Always Hurt The One You LoveLabel: Viking AUSLP 1009

Title: Ain't Got No HomeArtist: Clarence 'Frogman' HenryComposer: Clarence HenryAlbum: Ain't Got No HomeLabel: Chess CHD 9346

Title: McPancakeArtist: ApollineComposer: Stuart Morison, John Morris Rankin, Jonathan BerkahnAlbum: Home Home EPLabel: Blythe Records

Title: Finlandia, Op. 26 Artist: Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, Jorma Panula conductorComposer: Jean SibeliusAlbum: The Very Best of SibeliusLabel: Naxos 8.552135-36

Title: Symphony in F sharp, Op. 40, ii. Scherzo: Allegro moltoArtist: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Daniel de Borah piano, Benjamin Northey conductorComposer: Erich KorngoldLive recording: Courtesy ABC Classic, 2022

Title: Waratah BayArtist: Duo WindborneComposer: improvised by Ryan Williams and Rodney WatermanAlbum: Venus Bay Fireside Sessions Label: Independent

In 1961, the first elected leader of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was assassinated just months after the country’s newfound independence. Unbeknownst to themselves, US jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Dizzie Gillespie, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln played an unlikely role in his death. Belgian director Johan Grimonprez joins us on The Music Show to explain the bizarre link between jazz and the CIA involvement in this Congolese coup, detailed in his new documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, playing as part of Melbourne International Film Festival. 

Sinking Cities is a new work from jazz saxophonist, composer and arranger Rafael Karlen. It laments the 2019 flooding of 12,000-year old Türkish city Hasankeyf (one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world) to make way for a controversial dam. Karlen, who has never been to Türkiye, explains to Andrew Ford why this issue inspired him to write a large-scale piece of music for string orchestra, choir and saxophone.

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, directed by Johan Grimonprez is showing as part of Melbourne International Film Festival on 12 + 24 August, and New Zealand International Film Festival on 15 + 17 August.

Rafael Karlen's album Sinking Cities is out now on ABC Classic.

Technical production by Ann-Marie Debettencor

The Music Show is produced on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country

Conor Oberst and his trio Bright Eyes are by many accounts the group most responsible for the indie-folk boom of the mid-2000s. Bright Eyes is touring the country and Conor swings by The Music Show to talk about revisiting and reworking his old songs after the band’s return from a long hiatus.

Vanessa Perica’s second album, The Eye Is The First Circle, builds on the lush foundations of her first. In a time when the big band seems somewhat nostalgic she joins Andy to prove that the Vanessa Perica Orchestra has its feet firmly planted in the present. And she remembers Carla Bley, the unique bandleader who died last week.

It was hard to miss Corinne Bailey Rae’s ubiquitous track from 2006 'Put Your Records On'. And it’s still heard in coffee shops the world over. The English singer songwriter released her fourth studio album late last year and it represented a complete left turn in both sound and subject. Black Rainbows is her first album not on a major label and spans genres like rock, jazz and punk. It's a celebration of Black history and resilience, with each track inspired by books, photographs and objects that Corinne encountered at the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago.

Ju Ben is a Fijian hip hop artist who won ABC’s Pacific Break competition, and a slot on stage at WOMADelaide. Producer Ce Benedict caught up with him backstage to talk about the song 'Sema Mai' and the messages behind his music.

Angélique Kidjo shares the story behind her 2018 album Remain In Light, a track-for-track re-imagining of the Talking Heads’ classic, highlighting the African influences across the record.

Music in Corinne Bailey Rae:

Title: Peach Velvet SkyComposer: Corinne Bailey Rae, Stephen James BrownArtist: Corinne Bailey RaeAlbum: Black RainbowsLabel: Thirty Tigers

Title: ErasureComposer: Corinne Bailey RaeArtist: Corinne Bailey RaeAlbum: Black RainbowsLabel: Thirty Tigers

Title: Before The Throne Of The Invisible GodComposer: Corinne Bailey RaeArtist: Corinne Bailey RaeAlbum: Black RainbowsLabel: Thirty Tigers

Music in Ju Ben:

Title: Sema MaiComposer: Peni Tupou Roqara (Ju Ben)Artist: JU BENAlbum: Tauyavu EPLabel: VTBOP Music/Precise

Music in Angelique Kidjo:

Title: Once In A LifetimeComposer: Brian Eno, Christopher Frantz, David Byrne, Jerry Harrison, Tina WeymouthArtist: Talking HeadsAlbum: Remain In LightLabel: Sire SRK 6095

Title: Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)Composer: Brian Eno, Christopher Frantz, David Byrne, Jerry Harrison, Tina WeymouthArtist: Talking HeadsAlbum: Remain In LightLabel: Sire SRK 6095

Title: Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)Composer: Brian Eno, Christopher Frantz, David Byrne, Jerry Harrison, Tina WeymouthArtist: Angélique KidjoAlbum: Remain In LightLabel: Kravenworks

Technical production by Simon Branthwaite, Nathan Turnbull and Harvey O'Sullivan

The Music Show was produced this week on Gadigal, Gundungurra and Kaurna Country

Getting to know the cornetto (the instrument, not the ice cream), PNG singer songwriter Danielle, and Matt Davis from Foreign Correspondent shares his chat with singer, activist and ex-battlefield nurse Sahra Halgan in Hargeisa.

Courtney Barnett and Hachiku on 10 years of artist-run indie label Milk!, and Elliott Gyger and longtime collaborator Jenny Duck-Chong on their latest (scientific) musical endeavour.

“This song put me in the middle of the road. Travelling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch”, said Neil Young about his only major hit, Heart of Gold, from the 1972 album Harvest. 

Whether or not the dozens of artists who’ve covered it since consider it “middle of the road”, they’ve certainly taken it right off the beaten track. Andy’s guest analysts in this second edition of our new Cover Story series are singer-songwriters and broadcasters Henry Wagons and Georgia Mooney.

Music details:

Heart of GoldComposed by Neil YoungOriginally performed by Neil Young for the album Harvest (1972) on Reprise Records

Covers by:

Johnny CashWillie NelsonMidnight ShineTori AmosBettye LaVetteBoney M.OndaraNeil Young & Stray Gators (live in Tuscaloosa)

Technical production by Harvey O’Sullivan and Bethany Stewart.

The Music Show is made on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country 

Metal, marimbas, vampires and EDM: ABBA’s Lay All Your Love On Me as you’ve never heard it before, with producer Paul Mac and composer Alice Chance.

This is the first episode of Cover Story, a new series from The Music Show in which Andy and his guests take songs of the popular music canon and examine their cover versions, for better, worse, and weirder. 

Music details:

Lay All Your Love On MeComposed by Benny Andersson & Björn UlvaeusOriginally recorded by ABBA for the album Super Trouper (1980) on Atlantic Records

Covers by:

ErasureBrian David GilbertBentley RoblesAmberian DawnPale HoneySiv JakobsenCaroline Shaw & So Percussion

Paul Mac’s Tekno Train: The Album is out now. 

German vocal ensemble Sjaella perform works by Alice Chance in July:

Hobart Festival of Voices 1/7/25, 2/7/25Ballina 6/7/25Brisbane - QPAC 10/7/25Sydney - Utzon Room 13/7/25Adelaide - Ukaria 19/7/25, 20/7/25Canberra 23/7/25Melbourne Recital Centre 25/7/25

The Music Show is made on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country. Technical Production by John Jacobs and Bethany Stewart

In 1985, Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love album made a moderate showing in the pop charts. In 2022, the single Running Up That Hill burst back into the charts after a particularly impactful needle-drop in the Netflix show Stranger Things. So perhaps it’s no surprise that there are dozens of cover versions from around 2022 - as well as a handful from earlier in the song’s 40 year lifespan. Cover Story this week looks at some of the best, worst and weirdest, with singer and producer June Jones, and opera artist Jane Sheldon.

In 1987, Steve Kilbey and Karin Jansson were living together, and armed with a joint and a piano, one night they came up with the bones of Under The Milky Way. It became a hit for The Church as part of their fifth studio album, Starfish, and since then it’s featured in almost every list of great Australian rock songs (and a fair few car ads too). On Cover Story, Andy is joined by poet, singer-songwriter and academic Kate Fagan, and Youth Group member, singer-songwriter, academic Toby Martin to analyse the song’s wide – and wild – range of versions.

Music details:

Under the Milky WayComposed by Steve Kilbey and Karin JanssonOriginally recorded by The Church for the album Starfish (1988) on Mushroom Records

Covers by:

Emily Barker, Lukas Drinkwater, Fanny Lumdsen - Room 822 (2022)The James Valentine Quartet- The Power and the Passion (2011)George - Special Ones (2001)The Cherry Pickers - Hand Picked (2016) John Kane & Ian Simpson - Banjo Australis (2013)Strawpeople - Broadcast (1994)Jimmy Little - Messenger (1999)The Church and the George Ellis Orchestra - Live at the Sydney Opera House (2014)

Kate Fagan's latest book is Song in the Grass (Giramondo 2024), and she's doing an author event talk at Megalong Books in Leura on 5 March. 

Toby Martin's latest album is Dang Lan and Toby Martin, 'Song Khúc Lượn Bay (Two Sounds Gliding) (ABC Music). 

The Music Show is made on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country. Technical Production by Hamish Camilleri and Bethany Stewart

Crooked Fiddle Band refer to their music as “chainsaw folk”, but their fourth studio album The Free Wild Wind & the Songs of Birds is heavier on the folk than on the chainsaw. The band comes into The Music Show studio to play live from the new album, and talk about eighteen years playing together.

What’s it like to have thousands of fans sing your own words back at you? Angie McMahon knows this feeling well after touring last year’s ARIA-nominated album Light, Dark, Light Again. And she recently surprised us with the five-track companion EP Light Sides. 

Angie joins Andrew Ford to talk about the catharsis she gets from songwriting, and how she also loves to 'live inside' other peoples' songs (ABBA, Bonnie Tyler, Australian Crawl). 

A story of music, dance and culture seeding and flourishing in seemingly disparate lands.

Australian artists talk about how they use music to tell stories. 

David Arden is a Kokatha/Gunditjmara musician who has been writing and performing songs that tell stories of his family and spark conversation in the wider community. He tells Robbie about his career as a musician and his new album,  MEERTA: The Ballad of James Arden, which tells the story of his Great-Grandfather, James. 

And Andrée Greenwell drops by the Music Show studio ahead of the premiere of her new opera Three Marys at the Sydney Opera House.

When Irish singer songwriter David Keenan came onto the scene he was described as “the sound of Tim Buckley and Brendan Behan arguing over a few jars, while Kavanagh deals Dylan a suspicious hand of cards, and Anthony Cronin and Jack Kerouac furiously try to scribble it all down” – so no pressure there. He talks about wearing those comparisons, writing songs about Ireland, and the story behind his guitar as well as performing new music live.

David Lumsdaine was an Australian composer who spent most of his life outside Australia, and retired from composing almost thirty years ago. He died this month at the age of 92 and Michael Hooper, who wrote the book on Lumsdaine’s music, joins Andy to talk about his legacy. And we hear Lumsdaine himself, amongst the birds of his beloved dawn chorus, from the archives.

Plus new music from Maanyung and Emma Donovan.

The Music Show goes Deep Inside the Blues with photographer and writer Margo Cooper, who’s assembled a beautiful book of photographs and interviews with blues musicians from Chicago to the Mississippi Delta. She joins Andy on The Music Show to outline a sprawling, searching and ultimately living tradition, plus interviews with Blues legends from the Music Show archive.

Deep Inside the Blues is published by University Press of Mississippi. 

Archive interviews heard in the show:

Cedric Burnside, 2016 and 2019

Billy Boy Arnold, 2006

Buddy Guy, 1996

Music heard in the show:

Title: Mannish BoyArtist: Muddy WatersAlbum: Hard AgainLabel: Blue Sky Records

Title: Messin’ with the KidArtist: Buddy Guy & Junior WellsAlbum: Buddy Guy & Junior Wells Play The BluesLabel: Rhino Records

Title: Hard TimesArtist: Cedric Burnside & Trenton AyersLive in The Music Show studio

Title: Damn Right I’ve Got the BluesArtist: Buddy GuyAlbum: Damn Right I’ve Got the BluesLabel: Silvertone

Title: Shake the BoogieArtist: Sonny Boy Williamson (I)Album: Million Years of Blues Vol. 4Label: Quadromania

Title: Born With ItArtist: Cedric Burnside ProjectAlbum: I Be TryingLabel: Single Lock Records

Title: The Blues Is Alive and WellArtist: Buddy GuyAlbum: The Blues Is Alive and WellLabel: Silvertone Records

Title: Bo DiddleyArtist: Bo DiddleyAlbum: single releaseLabel: Checker Records

Title: Whiskey, Beer and ReefaArtist: Billy Boy ArnoldLive on The Music Show from Wangaratta Jazz Festival

Title: We Made ItArtist: Cedric BurnsideAlbum: Benton County RelicLabel: Single Lock

The Music Show is made on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country.

Technical production by Isabella Tropiano. 

Indie-rock veterans Deerhoof are set to make their first appearance in Australia in a decade, and drummer Greg Saunier joins us on The Music Show to discuss their journey. With a repertoire spanning nineteen albums and a diverse range of styles, Greg talks to us about politics, conceptual art, and his own foray into solo work for the first time in the band's long career. 

Soprano Anna Fraser sings brand new contemporary opera, renaissance chant, and Schubert… under water. She’s also the curator of the sadly land-based concert IMPOSTO, where her eclectic tastes bring together not only disparate repertoire but disparate composer/performers too – she’s joined by singer Jane Sheldon, baryton player Laura Vaughan, and koto player Satsuki Odamura – and there’s music based on everything from Sylvia Plath to a jellyfish.

And do you remember The Beatles’ 1964 tour of Australia? Beatles superfan and co-author of When We Was Fab: Inside The Beatles Australasian Tour 1964 will be joining us to talk about the phenomenon — but we want your memories too! 

Were you at one of 1964 Beatles' concerts? Did you catch a glimpse of them on the street? Send us your memories via email at: musicshow_rn@abc.net.au

Performance details:

Deerhoof

12 June, Brunswick Ballroom, Melbourne, VIC13 June, VIVID Sydney, Machine Hall, Sydney, NSW14 June, The Zoo, Brisbane, QLD15 June, The Jive Bar, Adelaide, SA16 June, The Milk Bar, Perth, WA

Anna Fraser

14 June, IMPOSTO: Sympathetic Resonance Vibrations, Woodburn Creatives Redfern

Technical production by Bella Tropiano

The Music Show is produced on Gadigal Land and on Gundungurra Country

A musical call to action to protect Country and water from a rapper, composer and songwriter.

Two of Australia’s best songwriters share their newest offerings. 

The Music Show on RN Summer revisits conversations with Don Walker and Rob Hao.

Duo Windborne are two of Australia’s finest recorder players: Rodney Waterman and Ryan Williams. Their debut album, Venus Bay Fireside Sessions, is a record of their improvisational partnership. Originally intended to be recorded outside as a direct response to the natural world of Venus Bay, the weather drove them indoors and beside the fire – hence the title. They join Andy in studio with a fraction of their huge instrument collection to talk about their relationship with nature, their collaboration, and mount a defence of their much maligned instrument.

Coral Reid is a fiddle player, a clog dancer, and a sword dancer (!) too. She’s an English folk music specialist and she’s brought her violin, her clogs, but sadly no swords into studio to demonstrate some of the traditions that spilled out from the mills, the mines and the pubs of northern England around the Industrial Revolution.

Plus new music from Tonya Lemoh and Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion.

Duo Windborne launch their album Venus Bay Fireside Sessions on 19 April at Victorian Artists Society in Melbourne.

Coral Reid is on tour with the Sofa of Fools across Victoria and NSW until 21 April.

Tonya Lemoh’s album I Dream A World is out now via ABC Classic.

Music heard in the show:

Title: BrownsArtist: Duo WindborneComposer: improvised by Rodney Waterman and Ryan WilliamsAlbum: Venus Bay Fireside SessionsLabel: Independent release

Title: Dances in the Canebrakes No. 1; Nimble FeetArtist: Tonya LemohComposer: Florence PriceAlbum: I Dream A WorldLabel: ABC Classic

Title: Mangrove InletArtist: Duo WindborneComposer: improvised by Rodney Waterman and Ryan WilliamsAlbum: Venus Bay Fireside SessionsLabel: Independent release

Three improvised pieces performed live in The Music Show studio by Duo Windborne – Rodney Waterman and Ryan Williams

Title: The Bonny Miller (trad)Performed live by Coral Reid in The Music Show studio

Clog dances “Sam Sherry’s Beginner Hornpipe”, and “Mrs. Willis’s Rag” demonstrated by Coral Reid in The Music Show studio

Title: Road to PoyntonComposer: Rob HarbronPerformed live by Coral Reid in The Music Show studio

Title: Rectangles and CircumstanceArtist: Caroline Shaw and Sō PercussionComposer: Caroline Shaw and Sō PercussionAlbum: Rectangles and CircumstanceLabel: Nonesuch (releasing 14 June)

Technical production by Tim Jenkins, Tim Symonds, and Hamish “Tim” Camilleri

This episode of The Music Show was produced on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung, Gadigal and Gundungurra Land

Saskia Rao-de Haas took her Dutch cello to India, learnt the complex raga system and stayed. She’s modified the instrument whose ‘voice’ sits curiously well in the world of Indian classical music. With her musical partner and husband Shubhendra Rao they’re in Australia performing ‘jugalbandi’, blending the music of northern and southern India. And they pay respects to their musical gurus Pandit Ravi Shankar and Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia.

Mark Isaacs is impossible to pigeon-hole as one of Australia’s most talented musicians. Once he was a jazz pianist.  But things change.  He’s written three symphonies,  conducts, composes film music and he fiddles impressively with standards.  Mark sits down at the piano to preview his latest work Sonata.  And he gives us a bonus rumination on Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now which is part of a forthcoming concert re-imagining songs by Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach, and others.

Eddie Perfect has been to Broadway and back with music theatre composer credits including Beetlejuice and King Kong, not to mention home-grown hit Shane Warne: The Musical. Now he’s set to play as Dr Pangloss and Voltaire in Leonard Bernstein’s exquisitely convoluted opera Candide with Victorian Opera, and he talks to Andy about how a work written during McCarthyism, based on a novel written during the 7 Years War, finds new resonance now.

While the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur has had countless retellings, in operas, plays, movies and more, none have been quite like Labyrinth, the new ‘dance-opera/piano concerto’ from Melbourne’s Forest Collective. In this version the absent Minotaur is felt through a “big virtuosic piano part” played by acclaimed soloist Danaë Killian. She and composer Evan J Lawson join Andy to talk about this innovative new production.

Plus new music from DOBBY and Emily Wurramara.

Robbie speaks to Electric Fields -  Zaachariaha Fielding and Michael Ross about the perspectives that have been infused into the music through collaborative songwriting and Zaachariaha's upbringing in Mimili (APY Lands). After noticing their undeniable creative spark back in 2015, they have been making music together that hark back to the days watching Rage on the weekends, while adding their own individual sounds and stories to the mix.

Electric Fields made their orchestral debut last year with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Hamer Hall, where the show ended with the audience dancing in the aisles of the concert hall. Following the success of that show, they're returning to the stage with the MSO again for NAIDOC Week this year.

Bouncing off the her explorations in Blak Mass, Naretha Williams' new release Into Dusk We Fall shifts the focus from the grand organ to soft synthesisers and the voice. Written and produced with her husband, Cyrus Williams, this album was made throughout intensive lockdowns, with access to MESS restricted and both Naretha and Cyrus stuck in different timezones. She talks us through their remote collaborative process and how the restrictions helped her hone the music on the album. 

And an excerpt of Wash My Soul in the River's Flow, a cinematic portrait of Archie Roach, Ruby Hunter and their relationship and collaboration captured in the run-up to their iconic performance with Paul Grabowsky and the Australian Art Orchestra in 2004.

Robbie speaks to Electric Fields -  Zaachariaha Fielding and Michael Ross about the perspectives that have been infused into the music through collaborative songwriting and Zaachariaha's upbringing in Mimili (APY Lands). After noticing their undeniable creative spark back in 2015, they have been making music together that hark back to the days watching Rage on the weekends, while adding their own individual sounds and stories to the mix.

And Andy talks to the Stiff Gins, who are 24 years into what they hope is a lifelong partnership. Yuwaalaraay woman Nardi Simpson and Yorta Yorta and Wiradjuri woman Kaleena Briggs look back at their almost quarter century and the changing landscape of music and language with live performance in The Music Show studio.

Singer songwriter Eliza Hull has been writing and performing piano-driven pop music for over a decade. She's also a disability advocate and has championed increased visibility and access for musicians around Australia. Only in the last couple of years has she started sharing more about her own disability in her songwriting, including last year's EP Here They Come. Eliza is on The Music Show ahead of Alter State - a Deaf and Disability-led arts festival in Melbourne.

Sir Donald Runnicles is the Principal Guest Conductor of the Sydney Symphony, the outgoing Music Director of Deutsche Oper Berlin, Artistic Director of Grand Teton Music Festival and Chief Conductor Designate at the Dresden Philharmonic. Between all that he managed to swing by the studio to talk about “having all the fun without too much responsibility” with the Sydney Symphony, and bringing Duruflé’s requiem to the orchestra for the first time.

We spend the hour with two of Australia's award-winning woodwind musicians.

ABC Classic’s Young Performer of the Year Eliza Shephard, plays repertoire that's not for the faint-hearted. A talented flautist, she calls on singing, acting and an extraordinary technique to perform extremely ambitious music which ranges from Cage and Takemitsu to Hindson and Vine. Eliza plays live on The Music Show with percussionist Alexander Meagher and discusses her uncompromising concert programming and the enigmatic glissando head joint.

Clarinets were once a mainstay of jazz but less so these days. Phillippa Murphy-Haste received a gong this week for her clarinet work and a nice swag of money to match, taking out the Freedman Jazz Fellowship. Equally ambitious in playing and programming as her colleague above, Phillippa writes for and performs in a multitude of bands and this week heads to Sweden to complete her large work-in-progress Kairos, as part of her Freedman prize.

Errollyn Wallen’s memoir Becoming a Composer is a look into the mind of the composer as well as the life of one. Born in Belize but now based in the far-flung north of Scotland, where she sometimes inhabits a lighthouse, she works at a brisk pace, composing prolifically for orchestra, chamber ensemble, choir, and over twenty operas.

Her major public commissions have included music for The Last Night of the Proms, the Paralympic Opening Ceremony, and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and she joins us from her home in the Orkney Islands to talk about Becoming a Composer, and becoming a composer.

Music heard in the show:

Title: Horseplay i. Dark and mysteriousArtist: The Continuum Ensemble/Philip HeadlamComposer: Errollyn WallenAlbum: The Girl In My AlphabetLabel: Avie AV0006

Title: DervishArtist: Matthew Sharp (cello), Dominic Harlan (piano)Composer: Errollyn WallenAlbum: The Girl In My AlphabetLabel: Avie AV0006

Title: Sojourner TruthArtist: Madeleine Mitchell (violin), Errollyn Wallen (piano)Composer: Errollyn WallenAlbum: Violin ConversationsLabel: Naxos 8574560

Title: Cello ConcertoArtist: Matthew Sharp (cello), Ensemble X, Nicholas KokComposer: Errollyn WallenAlbum: PhotographyLabel: NMC NMCD221

Title: Boom BoomArtist: Palaver Strings, Nicholas PhanComposer: Errollyn WallenAlbum: A Change is Gonna ComeLabel: Azica Records 71365

The Music Show is made on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country

Technical Production by Simon Branthwaite and Tegan Nicholls

Composer, bass player and vocalist Esperanza Spalding has become one of the most important voices in 21st century jazz. She has also worked across almost every style of music with some legendary musicians (Wayne Shorter, Stevie Wonder, and Janelle Monáe to name a few). Her latest collaboration is an album with Brazilian singer songwriter Milton Nascimento and includes songs in Portuguese and English, as well as surprising covers of The Beatles and Michael Jackson.

Melbourne-based Affinity Quartet drop by The Music Show studio to perform live. This award-winning ensemble has found considerable success in performance competitions both here and overseas. There’s a lot of repertoire out there for string quartets, and they let us in on their process for selecting and performing the classics, as well as commissioning new pieces from Australian composers like Alice Chance.

The Music Show is back on Kaurna Land at Adelaide's Botanic Park for WOMADelaide 2024, a festival celebrating music from all over the world.

Marta Pereira da Costa was the first woman to make a career as a Fado guitarist. From Lisbon, Portugal, she gave up a career as a civil engineer to pursue the music full time and keep Portugal’s major musical tradition alive.

The Good Ones formed in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda as a way of processing, healing and finding hope. There is a universality to their sound—fingerpicked acoustic guitar, simple percussion and haunting harmonies, which is deeply affecting even if we don't speak Kinyarwanda.

Katanga Junior grew up in Tanzania's mountainous region of Arusha, but he now calls Mparntwe/Alice Springs home. His style ranges from acoustic folk to hip hop to reggae, and he brings a unique sound and perspective to the vibrant music scene of Central Australia. 

Performed live by Marta Pereira da CostaTerraDia de Feira

Performed live by The Good OnesThe FarmerMon Cheri

Performed live by Katanga JuniorKwenye MaishaMapenzi Business

Technical production by Tom Henry, Tim Symonds, Olivia Aquilina and Ann-Marie Debettencor

WOMADelaide technical crew Alex Mollison, Jess Wolfendale, Jamie Mensforth, Cambell Lawrence, Alex Hadden, Jared Jackson, Greg Pickle, Ryan O'Dea

With special thanks to Tiki Menegola and Tayla Carlaw

The Music Show was produced this week on Gadigal and Kaurna Country

Two friends of The Music Show drop by the live music studio with performances from their 2023 releases.

The Cat Empire frontman on his solo musical identity.

Marcia Hines marks fifty years since her debut recording, but her life in music started long before that. Raised with gospel in Boston, she was at Woodstock when she was 16 and then shortly after on her way to Australia to star in the local production of Hair. And then she stayed. After Hair came touring in a jazz band with B.B. King, then Jesus Christ Superstar, before being crowned Queen of Pop. A huge career across pop, jazz, disco and more followed and is still going with Marcia touring across her adopted Australia.

As a reflection of his Butchulla, Garrwa, South-Sea Islander and Tongan backgrounds, Fred Leone's music is captivating cocktail of Language, collaboration and storytelling. He speaks to Andrew about his own musical upbringing and how he works with other musicians including trials (A.B. Original), Birdz and Samuel Pankhurst.

Fred Smith is that classic combo: troubadour and a diplomat. Now based back in Canberra, his career as a singer-songwriter is defined by his time in Bougainville and Afghanistan. But his new album, Look, is "a collection of songs that are not about Afghanistan", and features tributes to Leonard Cohen and Helen Garner, the latter of which he performs live in The Music Show studio. 

Jazz duo Claire Cross and Harry Cook's debut album for ABC Jazz, Dialect, melds her electric bass with his genre-bending piano. They join Andy from Berlin to talk about an album firmly rooted in the Australian landscape. 

In 2019, Freya Josephine Hollick travelled to the famed Rancho de la Luna studio in Joshua Tree to record her most recent album titled The Real World. Growing up in regional Victoria, her music education mainly stemmed from Black Swan Record Store in the heart Ballarat, wihch eventually sparked her passion for music by the likes of Gram Parsons, Townes Van Zandt, and other giants of the Cosmic and Outlaw Country scene. Ahead of her appearance at the Adelaide Guitar Festival, Freya joins Andrew to talk about her evolving sound and the stories and musicians she encountered in Joshua Tree. 

Longtime Music Show mate, Matt Davis, stops by with some musicians he's met while on the road filming his new documentary Changing Tides. Following Dharug artist and surfer Billy Bain on a trip up the coast of NSW, Matt talks to us about First Nations communities he met who live on the coast and their connections with the land and the ocean, and musicians from these nations who use their songs to explore their identities as saltwater people. 

And producer Ce speaks to Acholi musician and singer, Otim Alpha who started his career in traditional wedding music, but has ended up on the dancefloor. Dubbed "Acholitronix," Otim's music combines the tunes and instruments of traditional wedding songs with electronic beats that still capture the soul of the rhythmic grooves at the heart of Acholi traditonal music. He talks to The Music Show before landing in Adelaide for the Illuminate Festival. 

This is the story a song written by Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly around a campfire in 1988. What started off as a casually recorded folk number has become what Carmody calls “a kind of cultural love song”: a foundational entry in the Australian songbook.

This year’s NAIDOC Week theme is “For Our Elders”, so RN’s Rudi Bremer went to speak with Kev Carmody at his studio on Kambuwal Country to gather his recollections of From Little Things Big Things Grow as it started, the story of the Gurindji Walk Off that inspired it, and the many different iterations he’s performed and heard in the last thirty years.

Wik and South Sea Islander rapper Ziggy Ramo, Electric Fields vocalist Zaachariaha Fielding from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands and Adelaide producer Michael Ross, and Zillmere State School Year 7 Class of 2003 student Tonii-Lee Betts join Craig Tilmouth to talk about their interpretations of the song that Carmody says “belongs to everyone now”.

From Little Things Big Things Grow, as performed by:

Kev Carmody, Paul Kelly and the Tiddas from the 1993 album Bloodlines

Paul Kelly & the Messengers from the 1991 album Comedy

Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly live at the national memorial service for Gough Whitlam, 2014

The Waifs, from the 2020 album Cannot Buy My Soul: The Songs of Kev Carmody

Electric Fields from the 2020 album Cannot Buy My Soul: The Songs of Kev Carmody

Ziggy Ramo, from the 2021 single From Little Things

Zillmere State School Year 7 Class of 2003

Paul Kelly & Jess Hitchcock live in 2019 on the album People

You also heard Kev Carmody’s song Thou Shalt Not Steal from the 1988 album Pillars of Society, and the opening of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (‘Choral’), performed by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Wilhelm Furtwängler.

This is the story a song written by Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly around a campfire in 1988. What started off as a casually recorded folk number has become what Carmody calls “a kind of cultural love song”: a foundational entry in the Australian songbook.

2023’s NAIDOC Week theme was “For Our Elders”, so RN’s Rudi Bremer went to speak with Kev Carmody at his studio on Kambuwal Country to gather his recollections of From Little Things Big Things Grow as it started, the story of the Gurindji Walk Off that inspired it, and the many different iterations he’s performed and heard in the last thirty years.

Wik and South Sea Islander rapper Ziggy Ramo, Electric Fields vocalist Zaachariaha Fielding from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands and Adelaide producer Michael Ross, and Zillmere State School Year 7 Class of 2003 student Tonii-Lee Betts join Craig Tilmouth to talk about their interpretations of the song that Carmody says “belongs to everyone now”.

Gelareh Pour and Brian O'Dwyer have been playing music together for over 10 years and have just released their debut full-length album under the project name ZÖJ. They describe the ZÖJ as an "ongoing conversation" that combines Gelareh's Persian music background and Brian's experimental percussion to create new Australian music. Their album Fil O Fenjoon was recorded in the Primrose Potter Salon of the Melbourne Recital Centre.

Cellist Anthony Albrecht is co-director of The Bowerbird Collective alongside Simone Slattery, a project "crossing the arts/science divide" in blending music and conservation. As they gear up for the inaugural Lyrebird Festival, Anthony talks about historical performance, finding music in nature, and whether frogs sing quite so beautifully as birds.

A lush soundscape for the National Museum of Australia with composer and collaborator Genevieve Lacey, plus countertenor James Bowman (1941-2023) from the Music Show archives. 

Camp Cope's Georgia Maq on her new EP Live from the Sydney Opera House, Gyan remembers Christine McVie, and Alastair McKean on the madness and marginalia of being a music librarian. 

Friends of the show Fanny Lumsden and Georgia Mooney join Andrew to play songs from their new albums live in The Music Show studio. 

One quarter of All Our Exes Live in Texas, Georgia Mooney, has released her long-awaited debut solo album called Full of Moon. Made in the times of travel restrictions with musicians in London, Brighton, Bonn, Los Angeles, New York and Sydney, the album is a collage of lush musical landscapes and melodies with a certain nostalgic touch. 

We catch up with Australian country singer-songwriter Fanny Lumsden, who was previously on the show with her album Fallow. Hey Dawn is Fanny's fourth studio album, threaded together by her memories of growing up in the Snowy Mountains. Fanny chats to Andrew about the new world of Hey Dawn, and the characters and muses that have inspired the songs on the album. 

Good times and bum times, she’s seen them all and she’s here: Geraldine Turner, lynchpin of the Australian music theatre scene from 1970s repertory to the current run of Wicked, reflects on her massive career (so far), her love of Sondheim, and Judy Garland.

The gods are unhappy with a despotic king (Gilgamesh). They create a half-man, half-beast to topple him (Enkidu). They meet, Enkidu doesn’t topple him. They fall in love, destroy a forest, there’s retribution from the gods. Enkidu dies and Gilgamesh wonders what the point of life is. He searches for immortality. And of course there are dancing scorpions.

That’s the shortest possible version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, as summarised by composer Jack Symonds, who’s taken on the tale for its first English language opera adaptation. Gilgamesh brings together Sydney Chamber Opera with the Australian String Quartet, Ensemble Offspring, and support from Opera Australia to stage this enormously ambitious piece at inner-city post-industrial venue Carriageworks.

Andy pops into rehearsal to talk to Jack, Jeremy Kleeman (Gilgamesh), and Mitchell Riley (Enkidu), and to hear a live performance from Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and those dancing scorpions. 

And with the sad news this week that Australian-Tatar singer, folk musician and director of The Boîte, Zulya Kamalova has died, The Music Show remembers her energy and her music with a live performance from Zulya and the Children of the Underground, and an interview from the archives. 

Behind Pinchgut Opera's production of Legrenzi's neglected military epic Giustino, and Polish pianist composer Hania Rani pulls apart the piano. 

British singer songwriter Grace Petrie has an EP called “There’s No Such Thing As A Protest Singer” – but if there was such a thing she would definitely be one of the preeminent ones. Her musical career started in the early years of the UK Conservative Party’s now 15 years in government, and she’s railed against injustice throughout those years. She’s on The Music Show to talk about hope, activism, and cynicism and to play live in studio.

Unsound is a Polish festival with an adventurous spirit. Co-director Mat Schulz has made Adelaide Unsound's Australian home for the past ten years, and he joins us on The Music Show to talk about the genesis of the festival, the similarities between jazz and grimy electronica, and why he was accused of Satanism.

Unsound Adelaide runs from 19 - 20 July at Dom Polski Centre, Adelaide SA.

Grace Petrie tours Australia from 25 September to 4 October playing Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney. More details here. 

Music heard in the show:

Title: Pandemonium InstituteComposer: Lee GambleArtist: Lee GambleAlbum: Diversions 1994-1996 Label: Independent

Title: King & Country Composer: Grace PetrieArtist: Grace PetriePerformed Live in The Music Show studio

Title: Fixer UpperComposer: Grace PetrieArtist: Grace PetrieAlbum: Build Something BetterLabel: The Robots Needs Home Collective TRNHC013

Title: Black Tie Composer: Grace PetrieArtist: Grace PetriePerformed Live in The Music Show studio

Title: Our Good Deeds Will Lead to a Better Life for the Next GenerationComposer: TraditionalArtist: Yeshi, Bhutan BalladeersAlbum: Your Face Is Like the Moon, Your Eyes Are StarsLabel: Independent

Title: CruisingComposer: Bendik GiskeArtist: Bendik GiskeAlbum: CracksLabel: Smalltown Supersound STS381

Title: Yuangan (Dugong)Composer: Fred Leone, Sam PankhurstArtist: YirindaAlbum: YirindaLabel: Chapter Music CH187LP

Title: Concerto for Four Keyboards in A minor (after Vivaldi), BWV1065 - II. LargoComposer: Johann Sebastian BachArtists: Kenneth Gilbert (harpsichord), Lars Ulrik Mortensen (harpsichord), Nicholas Kraemer (harpsichord), The English Concert/Trevor Pinnock (director/harpsichord)Album: JS Bach: The Concertos for 3 and 4 HarpsichordsLabel: DG Archiv 4000412

Technical production by John Jacobs and Michelle Barry

The Music Show is made on Gadigal and Gundungurra Land

György Ligeti (1923 – 2006), the avant-garde Hungarian composer, celebrates his 100th anniversary this year. He was one of the most unique composers of the 1950s and 60s, and then kept pushing his musical language so that in the 1990s he was still one of the most radical composers working.

His music education was interrupted by the Holocaust: he was Jewish and he was sent to a forced labour brigade whilst his brother and parents were sent to Mathausen-Gusen and Auschwitz. His mother was the only family member to survive. Despite the darkness he experienced, his music became more complex and beautiful, developing a sound he called “micropolyphony” – a precise series of musical lines that change slowly,  blurring together like clouds moving across the sky.

We hear from Dr Amy Bauer, Professor in the Music Department at the University of California Irvine. Her writing on Ligeti includes the monograph Ligeti’s Laments and co-editing Ligeti’s Cultural Identities.

And from The Music Show archives, Ligeti’s late biographer Richard Toop, and conductors Clark Rundell and Elgar Howarth. 

Two musically different Australian outfits in Melbourne and Adelaide join The Music Show with live performances.

Hand to Earth grew out of a musical conversation started by vocalist Sunny Kim and Yolŋu Songman Daniel Wilfred during an Australian Art Orchestra residency in the remote highlands of Tasmania. Since that first collaboration, Hand to Earth has become an ensemble involving Aviva Endean, David Wilfred and Peter Knight, and they are on the cusp on a new record release and performance at the Melbourne International Jazz Festival.

Joined by Polish violinist Amalia Umeda, their show The Crow is a new commission that follows the songline of the crow (waak waak) in Arnhem Land. 

And ahead of their second appearance at OzAsia Festival, Hyoshi in Counterpoint drop by our the studio in Adelaide to give us a taste of their music. They're an ensemble of six women from different musical backgrounds, bringing together the sounds of Shamisen, Guzheng, strings, keyboard and a rather quirky drum-kit to create musical responses to visual artworks.

2023 marks the centenary of Hank Williams' birth. Even if you’re allergic to country music, the music you listen to would likely be somehow traced back to this seminal singer and songwriter. In fact, there might be quite a few songs you’ve heard by some of your favourite legendary singers that were actually written many years earlier by Hank. Get to know Hank’s music, his life and his legacy through archive interviews with his biographer Colin Escott, a chat with Lucky Oceans from 2019, and a story from Billy Joe Shaver that he shared in 2002.

And Emily Granger joins us in the live music studio with her harp to talk through the ins and outs of her instrument and share some very handy tips about writing for the harp. Emily was raised in Missouri but has called Australia home for the last seven years, and he’s just released an album of duets for harp and Sally Walker’s flute called Something Like This. She has been appointed Principal Harp at the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and is about to head down to the Mornington Peninsula for their annual Peninsula Summer Music Festival. 

Romano Crevici has been playing violins made by Harry Vatiliotis for decades. Now drawing to the end of their respective careers, Harry has made one final instrument, which will be Romano's last violin too. The process, challenged by sore joints, thin skin, and Harry's caring responsibilities to the love of his life Maria, have been captured in a moving film called The Last Violin by Carla Thackrah. Romano and Carla are in the studio with the titular violin.

Arooj Aftab’s album Vulture Prince took her ten years to write, and for the final two she had to shut all other music out of her life. “I just was trying to make a thing that didn't have a blueprint" she says, of an opus that combines jazz, experimental electronica and Sufi devotional music with her own unique voice. 

Legendary jazz pianist Herbie Hancock returns to The Music Show. He’s a bandleader, a composer and a professor, and at the age of 84 he’s got one of the longest living memories in the jazz world. He joins Andy to remember collaborators like Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter, and to ask whether jazz can be a path towards peace. 

Tenzin Choegyal is a Tibetan multi-instrumentalist, and as he shares Tibetan music and story around the world he’s become a sort of activist by default. His new album Whispering Sky is the product of slow, experimental recording process across Australia, Japan, Canada and the UK which blends the voices of international collaborators with his nomadic Tibetan roots. 

Herbie Hancock is in Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth in October. 

Whispering Sky is out now via 4000 Records.

Music heard in the show:

Title: Kailish Roof of the WorldArtist: Tenzin Choegyal feat. Tony White and Evie Composer: Tenzin ChoegyalAlbum: Whispering SkyLabel: 4000 Records

Title: The Sorcerer Artist: Miles Davis (trumpet), Wayne Shorter (tenor sax), Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass), Tony Williams (drums)Composer: Herbie HancockAlbum: SorcererLabel: Columbia CK 65 680

Title: Visitor from NowhereArtist: Herbie Hancock & Wayne ShorterComposer: Herbie Hancock & Wayne ShorterAlbum: 1 + 1Label: Verve Records 537 564-2

Title: RiverArtist: Corinne Bailey Rae (vocals), Herbie Hancock (piano), Wayne Shorter (soprano sax), Lionel Loueke (guitar), Dave Holland (bass), Vinnie Colaiuta (drums)Composer: Joni MitchellAlbum: River: The Joni LettersLabel: Verve Records – B0009791-02

Title: Dolma Whispering SkyArtist: Tenzin Choegyal feat. Taro Terahara and Manao DoiComposer: Tenzin ChoegyalAlbum: Whispering SkyLabel: 4000 Records

Title: Gyallu Tibetan AnthemArtist: Tenzin Choegyal feat. Matt Antal and Metta StringsComposer: TraditionalAlbum: Whispering SkyLabel: 4000 Records

Title: Jampa A Big HugArtist: Tenzin Choegyal feat. Hico Natsuaki and Tenzin KunsangComposer: Tenzin ChoegyalAlbum: Whispering SkyLabel: 4000 Records

The Music Show is made on Gadigal, Gundungurra, Turrbal and Yuggera Country

Technical production by Russell Stapleton and Bethany Stewart

Screen composer Hildur Guðnadóttir is becoming a household name, having written the music to films such as The Joker, Tár and series Chernobyl. Most recently, she has crafted an eerie score to accompany the latest instalment in Kenneth Branagh's film series based on Agatha Christie's Poirot. In the soundtrack for the new film, A Haunting in Venice, Guðnadóttir incorporates plainchant-like themes and darkly jarring melodies. She brings us into the world of screen music and different ways in which she has worked with directors to bring these stories to life.

Melbourne-based new music outfit Rubiks Collective join forces with choreographer and dancer Gerard van Dyck, visual artist Sal Cooper and composer Kate Neal for the premiere of A Book of Hours. We speak to co-Artistic Directors of Rubiks Collective Kaylie Melville and Tamara Kohler about the expanded forms of music they commission, as well as brushing their teeth; and Kate Neal looks at time through the music of Scarlatti, Rameau and Couperin. 

‘So much of traditional jazz is about romantic love,’ says saxophonist Holly Moore. ‘I feel like there’s never really that much on friendships and the other relationships in our lives”. Her debut album for ABC Jazz, Reunion, is a five-part suite about those bonds, from adolescence to adulthood.  

We catch up with 2022 Classical Freedman Fellow Katie Yap about the project she undertook with the prize. Multitudes has seen Katie improvising, composing and performing with four unique collaborators. We talk about birds, words and get an update on what's cooking in Katie's kitchen.

And we get a glimpse into The Journey Down - a project that took a car wreck-turned-sonic sculpture on the road from Kununurra to Perth.

Can The Music Show do an entire decade in an hour? We’re certainly going to give it a go with the help of Tony Wellington, former Mayor of Noosa, current bird photographer, and author of Vinyl Dreams: How The 1970s Changed Music.

From the collapse of the 1960s dream with the end of the Beatles, the deaths of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, to the arrival of rap and the Walkman at the end of the decade, it was a time of change, prompting at least one 70s artist to ask: What’s Going On?

New albums from some of the most iconic voices of 2023: Hozier chats about Unreal Unearth, and Benjamin Appl on Forbidden Fruit.