The Music Show

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. 

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. Daoirí Farrell is currently on his fourth tour of Australia, playing the National Folk Festival this weekend, and then dates in Sydney, Avoca, St Kilda, Bendigo, Upwey, Adelaide and Perth. Irish post-punk band Fontaines D.C. have had a huge year: they’re currently in the midst of a world tour, with their album Romance topping 2024 best of lists all over the place. Carlos O’Connell talks to Andy about the ten years since they formed in the city of Dublin (the D.C. in their name), and the way that the band’s collaborative approach helps them keep pushing the boundaries of their sound.

The Music Show is live at Canberra International Music Festival on 3 May - come join our audience!Annie & the Caldwells make music that could equally be at home in the church or at the club. The family band from West Point, Mississippi, fuse gospel with soul and disco. Their debut album Can’t Lose My (Soul) was released last month to critical acclaim and features Annie Caldwell out front, her husband of fifty years on guitar, her daughters singing, and her sons holding down the rhythm section. Andrew speaks to Annie and daughter Anjessica about making music as a family, holding onto their day jobs, and how God is helping them deal with their new-found fame.Tibetan multi-instrumentalist Tenzin Choegyal is one of Australia’s most open-minded and in-demand collaborators, working with the likes of Phillip Glass, Patti Smith and now Matt Corby. Matt and Tenzin join Andrew to talk about Snow Flower, their meditative new album that fuses Tenzin’s dranyen lute, Matt’s Moog One synth and lyrics and mantras from the key tenets of Tibetan Buddhism.Plus, a cello and mezzo-soprano duet, and a track to remember Amadou Bagayoko, the Malian musician who died this week aged 70.Annie & the Caldwells are performing at City Recital Hall in Sydney on June 5 and at RISING Festival in Melbourne on June 7.The Music Show is live at Canberra International Music Festival on 3 May - come join our audience!

The Music Show is live at Canberra International Music Festival on 3 May - come join our audience!Zubin Kanga is known as the ‘cyborg pianist’, because throughout his career he’s been using technology to expand the idea of what the piano is and what it can do. As part of his major research project, Cyborg Soloists, he has commissioned dozens of experimental works, including one by composer Tristan Coelho. Andy drops in on them both at rehearsal for Ensemble Offspring’s Lumen Machine, where they demonstrate the honeycomb-like Lumatone keyboard and a small but powerful motion-sensor ring that responds to Zubin’s hands on and off the piano.And as the Earshift Orchestra prepares to perform Julius Eastman’s expansive, ‘organic’ work Femenine, saxophonist and bandleader Jeremy Rose and percussionist Niki Johnson meet Andy in front of Femenine in Nine, a series of paintings by the American artist Julie Mehretu, inspired by Eastman’s work.Ensemble Offspring’s Lumen Machine is at ACO on the Pier in Sydney on Saturday 12 April and Newcastle Conservatorium of Music on Sunday 13 April. The Earshift Orchestra perform Femenine at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney on Thursday 17 April as part of Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory. The Music Show is live at Canberra International Music Festival on 3 May - come join our audience!

Who hasn't sung a canon or round at some point in their life? 'Frère Jacques', 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' and 'Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree' are among the best-known children's songs and they're all meant to be sung as rounds. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, composers loved playing with canons in both sacred and profane music (some of it very profane indeed). The University of Queensland Chamber Singers has just made an album of music from the 14th to the 16th centuries, and Denis Collins of UQ's School of Music joins us to talk about it.Aotearoa singer songwriter Marlon Williams has just released Te Whare Tīwekaweka, his first album sung entirely in te reo Māori. Collaboration is at the heart of the record, with Marlon crediting his friend and Māori language teacher Kommi Tamati-Elliffe, as well as long-term band the Yarra Benders and singer Lorde, for creating this record ‘by committee’. Taking five years to write and record, Marlon opens up to Andrew Ford about his experience of reconnecting with language and culture, and how it felt having a film crew follow him around for much of that time. The documentary Marlon Williams: Ngā Ao E Rua - Between Two Worlds is out next month.

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. He’s here to perform with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and 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 new album Hymns of Bantu.Noongar composer, conductor, musician, academic and programmer Aaron Wyatt returns to The Music Show to catch up with Andy on his multifaceted career. With his first string quartet, subtitled ‘Under the Canopy’, set to be premiered across two concerts in Melbourne and Shepparton, he reflects on new ways of describing the landscape through old forms of music.

Saxophonist, composer, improviser and master looper, Adam Page, has brought a bunch of looping pedals and instruments into our Adelaide studio to show us how he builds layers of music on the fly. Adam's just finished a run performing a live improvised score for Australian Dance Theatre’s A Quiet Language, which sampled percussive sounds captured by the dancers' bodies in rehearsal. He’s also working on a PhD exploring new techniques for improvisational looping, and occasionally undertakes ‘durational performances’, like the 24-hour non-stop solo improvisation he did in front of a live audience a few years back.Adam Page performs a 12-hour show on 16 August at The Lab in Adelaide. Sign up for details here.Solomon Islands singer, songwriter, and panpipe player Chris Kamu’ana Rohoimae is the latest winner of the ABC’s Pacific Break competition. Ce Benedict sat down with him after his WOMADelaide set to talk about how he is honouring his late father, a pipe master himself, through his music.Chris Kamu’ana Rohoimae is releasing a new EP soon. Keep up to date with him here. 

Allison Russell’s jazz, blues, and folk influences create a sound that seems infinitely adaptable across her many projects. Her collaborators include Joni Mitchell, Annie Lennox, Hozier, Brandi Carlile, and Orville Peck, as well as making music with her husband JT Nero, and with three other banjo players (including Music Show alumni Rhiannon Giddens and Leyla McCalla). She talks to Andy ahead of her Australian tour dates. Please note this interview makes mention of child abuse, support is available. Lucy Sante has worked with Bob Dylan for over 25 years, but she’s never met him. Despite being a go-to writer for liner notes, speeches, press kits and prefaces, she doesn’t consider herself a dylanologist. She joins Andy to talk about the sermons she wrote to be delivered by an actor in a film project based on Dylan’s ‘Gospel Years’, which have now been published as Six Sermons for Bob Dylan, a set of ‘rollicking and clarifying exhortations’ that draw on the tradition of recorded sermons in 1920s and 30s Black churches.  

People talking about the French composer Pierre Boulez tend to wear out the word iconoclast pretty quickly. To celebrate the “High Priest of Modernism” on the occasion of his centenary, The Music Show looks beyond Boulez’s clockwork reputation to the sensuality and emotion of his music and his kind, collegiate relationship with other musicians. Authors Edward Campbell and Caroline Potter, pianist Paavali Jumppanen and archive from the man himself bear witness to Boulez’s complex and beautiful legacy.Caroline Potter is the author of Pierre Boulez: Organised Delirium, published by Boydell.Edward Campbell is the editor of the forthcoming Boulez in Context and several other Boulez books published by Cambridge University Press.Paavali Jumppanen performs as part of ANAM’s Boulez Rules! at Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne on Friday 11 April. Listen to David Robertson talk to Andy about Boulez the conductor from The Music Show's archives.Technical production by Simon BranthwaiteThe Music Show is made on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country

Melbourne historian and musician Lisa MacKinney has written the first full-length history of 1960s New York pop group The Shangri-Las. They 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.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.47SOUL are a band with members scattered between Jordan, London and the US, all sharing roots in Palestine. Responsible for pioneering the genre 'Shamstep', their music blends Dabke (Levantine folk dance) traditions with electronica, R&B and hip hop. Synthesiser player Ramzy Suleiman sat down with producer Ce Benedict to talk about how his synth can emulate the sounds of traditional instruments like the mijwiz (pipe), mijwad (bagpipes) and rebab (a bowed string instrument). He also reveals what it's like taking his group's music to the other side of the world, and why he wants people to listen, and to dance. 47SOUL's new EP Dualism Pt. 1 is due 2 May.Lisa MacKinney launches her book Dressed In Black: The Shangri-Las and their recorded legacy at Readings in Carlton, Melbourne on Friday 28 March.