The Music Show

Tenor saxophonist, composer and bandleader Kamasi Washington makes music that appeals to even the most avowed jazz haters. His latest album Fearless Movement puts rhythm front and centre and includes the voices of rappers alongside his signature sounds of choirs, double drum kits and pulsing horns. He speaks to Andrew ahead of his tour here next month about how fatherhood has made him hear the world differently and what drives his continual exploration across musical genres. Gregory Day is a musician and writer. His latest volume of poetry, Southsightedness, spans twenty years and draws on familiar themes of place (specifically the west coast of Victoria), and culture. He joins us to talk about his music and the sound of his poetry.

Credited with “making riverboat chic cool again”, Pokey LaFarge brings his band in live to the Music Show studio. Pokey talks to Andy about how old Black gospel, his Christian faith and working on a farm have all influenced him on his latest album, Rhumba Country. Oľga Smetanová joins Andy to remember the composer Sofia Gubaidulina, who has died at the age of 93. Gubaidulina’s music has been described as “holy modernism”, which was a powerful provocation in the Soviet Union of her early career. The theological and musicological throughlines of her composition paint a dramatic picture, which Ol’ga reflects on with her knowledge of the woman herself.

Seraphim Trio have been making chamber music together for over twenty years. Pianist Anna Goldsworthy joins Andy 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 new album Radiante.Originating in rural southwest Louisiana, Zydeco music is a blend of Cajun & Creole music, gospel and the blues. Dom Turner, one of Australia’s finest blues guitarists, explores the deep relationship between Zydeco and blues in a new collaboration with New Orleans accordion and harmonica player Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes. Sunpie is also the Big Chief of the Northside Skull & Bone Gang—a parade group that kicks off every Mardi Gras season by dressing as skeletons and waking people with song and dance, a New Orleans tradition that’s over 200 years old. And we remember Alan Lamb, the Perth-based composer, sound artist and GP, who has died at the age of 81. Lamb’s exploratory music included recordings of ‘singing’ telegraph wires on his outback property, an instrument he dubbed the Faraway Wind Organ. Hear Lamb talking to Andrew Ford about this work from the 2001 Classic FM/Radio National series Dots on the Landscape.

The Music Show comes to you from Canberra International Music Festival this week. Percussionist Niki Johnson is no stranger to unusual instruments (she's played vacuum cleaners and ceramic bowls on The Music Show before), and her latest collaborative project Shock Lines is all about glass. Working with sound designer and composer Natasha Dubler and glass artist Caitlin Dubler, Niki explores all the different sounds and textures you can get out of glass by scraping, hitting, crunching and ringing. We meet the trio at Canberra Glassworks where they're doing a site-specific performance as part of the festival.Mark Atkins invites us to sit beside the campfire with him to experience Mungangga Garlagula. Co-composed with Finnish-Australian musician Erkki Veltheim, the collaborative project blends spoken word, yidaki, violin, electronics and nature soundscapes to create a work that blends the lines between storytelling and music. Mark Atkins has had an impressive and wide-ranging career as a musician, composer, instrument maker and storyteller, and he reflects on working with the likes of Black Arm Band, Led Zeppelin and Philip Glass, ahead of the Canberra performances of Mungangga Garlagula.

We're live at the National Film and Sound Archive on Ngunnawal Country. As part of the Canberra International Music Festival’s MOSSO: Music in Motion program, we’re tuning in across the building. From the courtyard outside, where Breton piper Erwan Keravec will demonstrate France’s answer to the highland bagpipes, to the cinema where pianist Sonya Lifschitz will give the world premiere of Damian Barbeler’s Duet for One, in which a filmed version of Sonya plays alongside the real thing. The festival’s Artistic Director, Eugene Ughetti, talks to Andy about his first year at the helm of the festival, and soprano and composer Jane Sheldon gives us a preview of her sonically-enveloping set of works Flowermuscle and the River Styx.And will there be any mention of the federal election? Not a sausage. 

French composer Olivier Messiaen wrote his most famous piece, Quartet for the End of Time, from the prisoner of war camp where he was interned in 1940. A devout Catholic, Messiaen was a church organist, a Conservatoire teacher, and an ornithologist -- so his music is full of birdsong, modernism, and God. His peers accused him of mixing “the bidet with the baptismal font” (Poulenc), of writing “brothel music” (Boulez), and “sacroporn” (Richard Taruskin), but as Robert Sholl argues in his new critical biography, he was committed to “revealing his world”. Robert joins Andy to traverse the great distances of that world. 

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 Andrew on The Music Show to outline a sprawling, searching and ultimately living tradition, plus interviews with Blues legends from the Music Show archive.

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!