The Music Show

Omar Musa and Mariel Roberts Musa’s collaborative performance work The Offering is subtitled ‘A Plastic Ocean Oratorio’. For Musa, it is “an offering of borderlessness in an archipelago of humanity”. It confronts the present – climate change, colonisation, personal histories – with an imagined future narrative through Omar’s inimitable spoken word and Mariel’s fearless cello, which we’ll get a sneak preview of from the Riverside Theatres rehearsal room. Guy Blackman was a Pink Floyd-obsessed teenager living in Perth when he started a Syd Barrett fanzine which eventually morphed into the beloved indie record label Chapter Music. For 33 years the label has released albums by Australian bands and artists like NO ZU, Twerps, June Jones, Laura Jean, alongside reissues and compilations from international artists like Kath Bloom and Smokey. This year Guy is winding the label back, choosing to focus solely on reissues. He chats to Andrew about three decades of change in the music landscape, and about his new solo album Out Of Sight, which belatedly follows up his 2008 debut Adult Baby. And Andy remembers Alfred Brendel, the pianist who has died at the age of 94. 

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. The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson was a pop genius. He wrote some of the loveliest tunes of the 1960s and fitted them out with harmonies that sounded like no one else's. He also produced the recording, so can legitimately be credited with creating the band's sonic image. He drew inspiration from Chuck Berry's guitar licks, tuning them into the sound of surf, and Phil Spector's studio-built orchestration, adding harpsichord, sleigh bells and a theremin. What resulted, was something completely distinctive and instantly recognisable as the Beach Boys.The Music Show pays tribute to Brian with some gems from the archives, including an interview with Andrew Ford from 2002.

Growing up in Iran, Ashkan Shafiei would listen to 'forbidden music' on cassette tapes—songs recorded before the revolution, or by Iranian artists living overseas. Ashkan plays the rubab, a plucked-string instrument popular in Afghanistan, but rarely heard in Iran despite having an ancient history there. Now living in Australia, Ashkan's own music blends 'forbidden music' influences with traditional Persian music and his love of jazz and funk. His new EP Hunter was developed as part of the Artist Accelerator Program by Music in Exile — an initiative supporting artists from non-English language backgrounds to launch music careers in Australia. Is it Aphrodite’s fault that the beauty industry has never been more powerful? That’s the question that Aphrodite, a new work by American composer Nico Muhly and Australian playwright Laura Lethlean, asks in its world premiere by Sydney Chamber Opera. Starring Sydney Chamber Opera stalwart Jessica O’Donoghue, and Puerto Rican soprano Meechot Marrero in her Australian debut, it’s an exploration of beauty and pleasure underscored by Omega Ensemble. Jess, Meechot and SCO Artistic Director Jack Symonds join Andy to give a sneak preview of the work.We say farewell to Terry Harper who is retiring after 49 years tuning the pianos in the ABC studios in Sydney. His work has been heard on thousands of recordings and live performances across Radio National, Jazz, Classic, local radio and more. We’ll hear from Terry about the two essential skills that every piano tuner must have.Plus, a track to remember Sly Stone who died this week at 82.

John Luther Adams describes himself, tentatively, as an “elemental extremist”. New Yorker music critic Alex Ross describes him as “one of the most original musical thinkers of the 20th century”. Deeply attuned to the natural world, particularly his adopted home of Alaska, Adams’ music has confronted the climate change, anger, and grief since the 1970s. He might be best known for his trio of Become works, one of which, Become Ocean, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2014. Despite his love of extremes, he’s found himself residing in Canberra where Andy spoke to him about his career, his landscapes, and what’s brought him to our nation’s fair capital. 

“Chicago is a case study”, says one of the witnesses to the birth of House music in the new film, Move Ya Body. In the 1980s Chicago was in the throes of segregation and violence, and its warehouses became the site of a new kind of dancefloor as the disco era faded away. At the epicentre was music producer Vince Lawrence, who joins Andy with Move Ya Body director Elegance Bratton to describe the creation and the Utopian aspirations of House. Move Ya Body: The Birth of House is at Sydney Film Festival 8th and 10th of JuneHolly Laessig and Jess Wolfe are the dual lead singers of the band Lucius. Between them, they have three voices: Holly’s, Jess’s, and a third voice, a sort of Holly-and-Jess chimera that rises up out of their voices together. Their self-titled album Lucius has just been released, and Holly and Jess tell Andy about why it was time to return to a familiar sound, and to finally name an album after the band. 

Jenny Mitchell recorded her fourth and latest album at a sprawling rural property in Wairarapa, a town in Aotearoa’s North Island. Forest House captures the sounds (figurative and literal) of the landscape, along with the playfulness and musicality of her band. Jenny is currently on tour with Kasey Chambers, before launching her own album in July. She joins Andy to reflect on a decade in music (she released her first album at 15) and how she builds her lush songs that meander from folk to country and beyond.Trombonist, composer and bandleader Elliot Lamb’s new album In My Own Little World captures small and joyful moments of gender euphoria—tracks like 5 O’Clock Shadow describe shaving for the first time, and Alone... is about finding their trans and non-binary community. Elliot is on The Music Show to talk about the palette available to them when writing for an octet, and how their other musical projects - a trio and a big orchestra - stretch their musical chops in different ways.

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 Andy. Netia Jones is an English opera director and she’s in Sydney to take on Henry Purcell’s odd but beautiful “Restoration Spectacular” The Fairy Queen for Pinchgut Opera. Under rain on a tin roof of the rehearsal room, she and Andy sit to talk about the peculiarities of the piece, and of English language opera. 

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.

Tangerine Dream were founded in West Berlin in 1967 by Edgar Froese, the band has had scores of lineup changes but is still going strong under the helm of Thorsten Quaeschning, who joined in 2005 - despite being younger than the band itself. Thorsten chats to Andy ahead of the band’s return to Australia about embracing old and new technologies, how their music puts “order into chaos”, and building setlists when they have 60 years of material to draw upon.Jonathon Crompton is a saxophonist, composer, and scholar. His new album, Cantata No. 1: An Island Seen and Felt, is a single extended work for his sax with guitar, two sopranos and a string quartet. Jon joins Andy from New York, where he’s now based, to talk about how he brought together influences from Bach, Renaissance counterpoint, and jazz to describe the Australian coastline.

Ellen Stekert, who is about to turn 90, 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.