Together Alone with Crowded House and talking About Ghosts with Mary Halvorson

Brooklyn-based jazz guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson has released a new album About Ghosts. Featuring her long-time improvisatory band Amaryllis, this time she’s also added two saxophonists into the mix. Mary speaks to Andrew Ford about what adding more horns allows her music to do, how an increased focus on composition has changed the way she improvises, and about some of her more surprising musical influences (people like Elliott Smith and Robert Wyatt).

Together Alone is not Crowded House's most famous album, but for Barnaby Smith, it's their best. Recorded in the wild reaches of Karekare Beach in Aotearoa New Zealand, its sound and stories emerge directly from that place. Barnaby, who is the writer of 33 1/3: Together Alone, travelled to Karekare to absorb the atmosphere that precipitated the album joins Andy to make the case for this album in the output of one of Australasia's most successful bands.