The Music Show

Andrea Keller is not only a pianist, composer, bandleader and educator, she's also the Jazz Ambassador at this year's Clarence Jazz Festival, celebrating its 30th year. She joins Andy to talk about creating a web of collaborators in her Transients series. Ian Thompson's book, Synths, Sax and Situationists, examines the music of the French underground that began with the Paris 'events' of May 1968. For the next decade, bands such as Daevid Allen's Gong, Red Noise and Heldon were sometimes overtly political, but always subversive. Andy talks to Ian Thompson about the times and the music.

Tim Finn and Neil Finn have worked together in a number of guises over the years: Crowded House, The Finn Brothers, and guesting on each other’s solo projects. But it all began with Split Enz, and there’s something about that music that keeps bringing them back together. Neil and Finn reminisce about their early collaborations, explain how a setlist comes together, and share how The Eagles were a surprising influence on the band.Back in 1948, a major scientific expedition travelled to Arnhem Land to catalogue that place and its people, including recordings of the music and ceremony they witnessed there. Those recordings drew the ethnomusicologist Dr Reuben Brown to Arnhem Land many decades later and, on that trip, Reuben met senior western Arnhem Land songmen who invited him to make recordings of his own - to document their songs for future generations. It also led to a book, The Gift of Song.Andy Irvine is on tour now - Newcastle, Bathurst, Sydney. And next week, Andy (Ford) will be in conversation with him at the Gaelic Club in Sydney, at 6pm - all welcome.Split Enz's Australian tour dates are available here.Listeners are advised that the episode discusses people who have died. The music in this episode is the Indigenous cultural intellectual property (ICIP) of Bininj/Arrarrkpi ceremony leaders and custodians. Use without proper attribution of the ICIP owners may breach customary laws as well as copyright and moral rights under the Copyright Act 1968 (Australian Govt).Reuben Brown wishes to thank the people of Gunbalanya, Warruwi, and Jabiru and surrounding outstations who have hosted him on their Country and to the Bininj and Arrarrkpi ceremony leaders, custodians, and knowledge holders who generously contributed to the book and knowledge discussed in this episode.Music in this program:Title:  Nganaru songset Artist: Billy NamunurrAlbum: Archival recordingTitle: Give It A WhirlArtist: Split Enz Composer: Neil Finn, Tim FinnAlbum: FrenzyLabel: MushroomTitle: Late Last NightArtist: Split EnzComposer: Phil JuddAlbum: Second ThoughtsLabel: MushroomTitle: I Got YouArtist: Split Enz Composer: Neil FinnAlbum: True ColoursLabel: MushroomTitle: One Step AheadArtist: Split EnzComposer: Neil FinnAlbum: WaiataLabel: MushroomTitle: Missing PersonArtist: Split EnzComposer: Neil FinnAlbum: True ColoursLabel: MushroomTitle: Six Months In A Leaky BoatArtist: Split EnzComposer: Split Enz, Tim FinnAlbum: Time and TideLabel: MushroomTitle: Spellbound (Eddie Rayner remix)Artist: Split EnzComposer: Phil Judd, Tim FinnAlbum: Enzyclopedia: Volumes One & TwoLabel: Warner Music AustraliaTitle:  Marrwakara ‘goanna’ and Mularrik Mularrik ‘green frog’ songsetArtist: Harold Warrabin & Micky YalbarrAlbum: Archival recordingTitle:  Inyjalarrku ‘mermaid' songArtist: Rupert Manmurulu, Renfred Manmurulu, Solomon NangamuAlbum: Archival recordingTitle:  Mirrijpu ‘seagull’ songset featuring the Nigi or ‘mother’ song Artist: Solomon Nangamu, Russell Agalara, Rupert ManmuruluAlbum: Archival recordingTitle: My Heart's Tonight In IrelandArtist: Andy IrvineComposer: Andy IrvineAlbum: Rain On The RoofLabel: AK RecordsThe Music Show is made on Gadigal, Gundungurra, and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung CountryTechnical production by Ann-Marie Debettencor

Lucy Dacus is now perhaps best known for being one third of boygenius, one of the great sad girl groups of all time. But her latest album, Forever is a Feeling, is bursting with romantic joy. On her way to Australia for a series of shows, she talks to Andy about finding its lush sound, performing it live, and about singing for Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral inauguration in New York City.Útóipe Cheilteach (Celtic Utopia), a film by Dennis Harvey and Lars Lovén, explores what has happened to Irish folk music in both the south and north of the island in the century since independence, how it keeps alive tradition, history and grievance, while also encouraging conciliation and healing. Andy speaks to the film makers.

Singer and actor Ursula Yovich joins Andy to talk about Nina Simone. Yovich has been taking on Simone's music for a show at Sydney Festival and she explores what set Simone apart, what part of her story she wanted to tell, the continuing importance of Simone's politics, and the cost to an artist to perform and share themselves on the stage.And Toshi Maeda, from the Australian punk band Mach Pelican, shares the band's first new music in almost two decades, and explains how he got involved in tour promotion - bringing Japanese bands to Australia and vice-versa.Music in this program:Title: Born to DeliveryArtist: Mach PelicanComposer: Mach PelicanAlbum: Mach PelicanLabel: ShagpileTitle: I Put a Spell on YouArtist: Nina SimoneComposer: Jalacy Hawkins, Herb Slotkin; Arranged by Hal MooneyAlbum: Feeling Good (The Very Best Of Nina Simone)Label: MercuryTitle: You Can Have HimArtist: Nina SimoneComposer: Irving Berlin; Arranged by Nina SimoneAlbum: Nina Simone At Town HallLabel: Spectra RecordsTitle: SinnermanArtist: Nina SimoneComposer: Les Baxter, Will Holt; Arranged by Nina SimoneAlbum: Feeling Good (The Very Best Of Nina Simone)Label: MercuryTitle: Strange FruitArtist: Nina SimoneComposer: Lewis Allen; Arranged by Nina SimoneAlbum: Feeling Good (The Very Best Of Nina Simone)Label: MercuryTitle: Four WomenArtist: Nina SimoneComposer: Nina SimoneAlbum: Ultimate Nina SimoneLabel: Verve RecordsTitle: Partita no 6 in E Minor - AirArtist: Vikingur OlafssonComposer: Johann Sebastian Bach; Arranged by Vikingur OlafssonAlbum: Opus 109Label: Deutsche GrammophonTitle: Dance In ChicagoArtist: Mach PelicanComposer: Mach PelicanAlbum: Mach PelicanLabel: ShagpileTitle: Remember ItArtist: Mach PelicanComposer: Toshi MaedaAlbum: A Secret SessionLabel: Cheersquad Records & TapesTitle: Just Another DayArtist: DYGLComposer: DYGLAlbum: Who's In The HouseLabel: Easy EnoughThe Music Show is made on Gadigal, Gundungurra and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung CountryTechnical production by Mickey Grossman

From a teenage band driving up and down the coast in a station wagon to one of the biggest Australian bands of all time, Midnight Oil survived on the backbone of drummer, founding member, and songwriter Rob Hirst. Hirst, who has died at the age of 70, was a frequent guest on The Music Show, both as an Oil and with his blues band the Backsliders, and we remember him with a selection of appearances, including his demonstration of the musical washboard.And Pinchgut Opera remembers three great opera performers with a new release of the 2019 production of Vivaldi's Farnace. Featuring stunning performances by Taryn Fiebig (1972-2021), Max Riebl (1991-2022), and Jacqueline Dark (1967-2023), it's a vivid record of the production in its own right, but also a memorial to the memories of three artists gone too soon. Pinchgut artistic director and conductor Erin Helyard joins Andy to listen to their voices. Music heard in the program:Title: Beds Are BurningComposer: Hirst, Rob; Moginie, Jim; Garrett, PeterArtist: Midnight OilAlbum: Diesel and DustLabel: ColumbiaTitle: Feeling BlueComposer: John FogertyArtist: BackslidersAlbum: Starvation BoxLabel: Fuse MusicTitle: US ForcesComposer: Hirst, Rob; Moginie, Jim; Garrett, Peter, Rotsey, Martin, Gifford, PeterArtist: Midnight OilAlbum: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1Label: ColumbiaTitle: Sinfonia. Allegro (1)Composer: Antonio VivaldiArtist: Taryn Fiebig, Pinchgut Opera, Orchestra of the Antipodes, Erin HelyardAlbum: FarnaceLabel: Pinchgut LiveTitle: Tito Manlio, RV 738, Act II Scene 18: Aria. Fra le procelleComposer: Antonio VivaldiArtist: Max Riebl (Gilade), Pinchgut Opera, Orchestra of the Antipodes, Erin HelyardAlbum: FarnaceLabel: Pinchgut LiveTitle: Farnace Act III Scene 1: Aria: Non trova mai riposo Composer: Antonio VivaldiArtist: Jacqueline Dark (Berenice), Pinchgut Opera, Orchestra of the Antipodes, Erin HelyardAlbum: FarnaceLabel: Pinchgut LiveTitle: Ottone in villa, RV 729, Act II Scene 6: Aria. Leggi almeno, tiranna infedeleComposer: Antonio VivaldiArtist: Taryn Fiebig (Selinda), Pinchgut Opera, Orchestra of the Antipodes, Erin HelyardAlbum: FarnaceLabel: Pinchgut LiveTitle: Don't Let Me Be MisunderstoodComposer: Bennie Benjamin, Horace Ott, Sol MarcusArtist: Nina SimoneAlbum: Broadway-Blues-BalladsLabel: PhilipsThe Music Show is made on Gadigal, Gundungurra and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country. Technical production by Micky Grossman.

The bouzouki has been a feature of Irish folk music since the mid-1960s, and one of the instrument’s finest modern exponents is Daoirí Farrell. He’s also a singer and a song collector, and he's brought his instrument into our studio to demonstrate how the three things fit together.Post-post-modern chanteuse Meow Meow returns to The Music Show to talk about The Red Shoes, the third show in her series of Hans Christian Anderson adaptations. She goes into both the music and the research behind the show, including the revelation of a Danish ballet dancer whose "feet ran away with her", that may have inspired the tale. 

In February 1975, Keith Jarrett turned up at the Cologne Opera House to play a solo concert. He was tired, hungry and in pain, and the Bösendorfer piano was falling apart. Technicians worked on the instrument before and after that night’s opera performance, and the 18-year-old promoter talked Jarrett into going on. Still tired, still hungry (dinner arrived too late), still in pain, and very much against his better judgement, Jarrett took the stage at 11.30pm and played what we now know as The Köln Concert, the biggest selling solo jazz album and biggest solo piano album of all time. Jazz pianist and composer Matt McMahon joins Andy at the ABC’s well-maintained Bösendorfer to talk us through that night and its resultant music.

Lajamanu is one of the most remote places in Central Australia, and it’s where we meet Wanta Jampijinpa Pawu-Kurlpurlurnu, his father Jerry Jangala Patrick OAM, and the music producer Marc ‘Monkey’ Peckham. Crown & Country is a new album and film that’s come out of more than a decade of friendship and collaboration between Wanta, Jerry and Monkey. Blending Warlpiri Jukurrpa (Dreaming) songs, cultural stories, soundscapes from the desert, and electronic beats, it’s a compelling and immersive way of sharing Warlpiri culture with new audiences.The Shangri-Las were responsible for hits like Leader of the Pack and Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand), teenage soap opera songs that sounded like nothing else on radio at the time. Melbourne historian and musician Lisa MacKinney has written the first full-length history of 1960s New York pop group.MacKinney’s book Dressed In Black: The Shangri-Las and their Recorded Legacy flips a lot of the accepted narrative about the group on its head, and argues that their talent and musicality has been overlooked due to their age and gender, and that the emotional impact of their (relatively small) collection of songs is of lasting importance.

On the 25th of August, 1975, Bruce Springsteen released Born to Run, the "dividing line" of his career. Starting with the title track, written on the edge of his bed in a rented cottage in New Jersey, Born to Run signalled the arrival of Springsteen, and the E Street Band. A child of the Kennedy, King, and Malcolm X assassinations, Springsteen transformed classic rock and roll images - the road, the car, the girl - into something potent and virile that reflected the sense of dread in the air. Musician and academic Toby Martin and writer and critic Kerryn Goldsworthy join Andy to trace the arc of Born to Run's story through one violent night in the city, and the root system of its influences, from Roy Orbison, to the Bible, and West Side Story. 

The Glasgow-based singer Quinie travelled across Argyll on her horse Maisie to collect old Scots songs for her new album Forefowk, Mind Me. On this record, Quinie (whose real name is Josie Vallely) pays tribute to her ancestors as well as Scots Traveller singers like Lizzie Higgins, whose deep connection to the land has been expressed beautifully in song for generations. She speaks to Andy about arranging ballad and piping traditions, the melodic influence of the Irish uilleann pipes on this record, and why travelling across the landscape on a horse changes one’s perspective and approach to music.For a band that weren't around very long and only really put out one studio album, the cultural and musical impact of the Sex Pistols is staggering. Guitarist Steve Jones opens up to Andrew Ford about starting the group when he was just a kid, how it feels to be considered a guitar hero now, and why he thinks we're still talking about the band fifty years on. 

“Ships become obsolete; fine furs are ravaged by moths, faded by the sun, worn by rubbing against show cases; garments go out of style; the gold watch grandfather handed down is replaced by a thin one. Change and decay is all around — except in violins. Death rarely comes to the violin.” So wrote Arland Weeks in 1929, in The Scientific Monthly.Dr Laura Case gives Andy a potted history of the violin in Australia, from 1788 to 1914 – and beyond. It's a history of class and gender lines in the colony but it's also about how the violin has been an instrument of both assimilation and resistance by First Nations violinists.

Seraphim Trio have been making chamber music together for over twenty years. Pianist Anna Goldsworthy joins Andrew Ford to talk about her relationship with violinist Helen Ayres and cellist Tim Nankervis, as well as the women composers – famous and lesser known – they have recorded as part of their latest album Radiante.Written from the small shed on his allotment in Northern England, the lyrics on Richard Dawson’s album End of the Middle are filled with small observations and rich characters. He's a prolific and verbose songwriter, likening his habit of jamming too many syllables into the end of lines with "putting too many clothes in a suitcase". Rich's record is replete with his unusual guitar tunings and arresting singing voice. 

Aspirations of modernity, progress and innovation drove music through the 20th century. For French composer Maurice Ravel, inspiration from (and imitation of) his peers, of the voices and styles around him, made him a true original. He pulled from Spanish music, 18th century music, Viennese waltz and jazz, and yet within seconds it’s always possible to hear Ravel’s own, distinct, voice. To mark the 150th anniversary of Ravel’s birth, director-composer-lyricist-translator and friend of The Music Show Jeremy Sams is Andy’s guest, to explore not only where Ravel’s music came from, but where it led. 

Almost every description of South African singer, cellist and composer Abel Selaocoe starts with a phrase like “genre-defying”, but Abel refers to himself as genre defining. Wherever he tours, he brings with him a lifetime of musical influences ranging from his childhood in Sebokeng, a township outside Johannesburg, to adolescence at Soweto’s African Cultural Organisation of South Africa, to study at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. His classical cello chops, his Xhosa throat singing, his improvisational spirit and his storytelling combine in an open, blossoming sound on his latest album Hymns of Bantu.Bush Gothic are “unafraid of Australian songs”. From colonial-era folk songs to the Divinyls, their latest album What Pop People Folk This Popular is a showcase of what the band does best: dreamy, detailed, genre-bending music in conversation with Australian musical history. Jenny M Thomas and Dan Witton join Andrew Ford. 

Ellen Stekert has spent a lifetime in folk music. She got her first guitar at 13 (to assist with her rehab after contracting polio) and soon after high school she became enmeshed in the Greenwich Village folk scene, crossing paths with the likes of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Ellen released four albums of traditional songs in the 1950s and then focused her career on academia, teaching English, American and folklore studies.There’s been a resurgence of interest in Ellen’s life and music, thanks in large part to singer songwriter Ross Wylde. Ross has been helping Ellen to remaster her old recordings, leading to her first release in over 60 years: Go Around Songs Vol. 1. Both musicians are guests on The Music Show to talk about their deep love of folk music, their intergenerational friendship and how a Bob Dylan photograph for sale on eBay first brought them together.Check out Ellen Stekert's website for photos, music and archive, and Ross Wylde's music is available on Bandcamp.This program originally aired in May 2025.

Brisbane trad band Amaidí say they perform "doofy folk stuff": accordion, guitar, banjo and fiddle augmented by stomp box and electronics. Amaidí means nonsense in Gaelic but it's more than just silly stuff, with their new album Beyond Cape Capricorn reflecting the broad and often dark influences of Scottish and Irish music in the Australian folk tradition. That being said, there's plenty to dance to, as you'll hear when they join Andy to play some tunes live in the studio. Well before he was Chair of the ABC, Kim Williams was a composition student of Italian arch-modernist Luciano Berio, whose centenary we celebrate in 2025. Kim joins Andy to demonstrate his encyclopedic knowledge of Berio's music, to recall his personal relationship with the composer, and to review the olive oil of Berio's hometown. 

What do an actress mired in scandal, a grieving political dissident, a previously enslaved African celebrity, and a court composer have in common? They’re all integral to the story of Messiah becoming a cornerstone of the musical repertoire. Heard now more often at Christmas, it was premiered at Easter in 1742 after three rapid weeks of writing by Handel, and it suggests, as author Charles King says, the staggering possibility that things might turn out all right. Charles joins Andy to reveal the characters in his book Every Valley, which in the American edition comes with the pleasing subtitle The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel’s Messiah. 

Tony Wellington returns to the show to race through the 1980s in a single episode. It's a decade of contradictions, where big hair, commercial pop hits, lip syncing and the music video meet rap, independent rock, and house music. From girls on film to video killing the radio star, from talking about a revolution to being touched for the very first time: how do you sum up the triumphs and tragedies? 

JJJJJerome Ellis styles their name with five Js because it’s the word they stutter on the most. The artist, writer, composer and multi-instrumentalist has released a new album Vesper Sparrow which layers spoken word, vocals, saxophone, hammered dulcimer, organ, electronics and more. JJJJJerome speaks to Andrew Ford about the musical opportunities that speech disfluency provides, and what we can learn from the spaces and clearings between words.And we get a chromatic harmonica masterclass from musician and composer Ariel Bart, who blends European jazz traditions with Middle Eastern music. She’s about to begin her debut Australian tour, teaming up with a local cellist and pianist.

Reed and Oak - composed and performed by DOBBY, words by Cate Kennedy.One of two winning poems from our Middle of the Air competition, run in collaboration with Red Room Poetry.