The Music Show

Arooj Aftab’s 2021 album Vulture Prince took her ten years to write, and for the final two she had to shut all other music out of her life. “I just was trying to make a thing that didn't have a blueprint" she says, of an opus that combines jazz, experimental electronica and Sufi devotional music with her own unique voice. She's about to tour the album here and looks back at over a decade of work with Andy before she hits Australian stages.When Notre-Dame caught fire in 2019, playwright Alana Valentine was amongst those moved by the sight. That emotional response eventually sparked a collaboration with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, fittingly called Notre-Dame, which uses a narrative poem to tell the story of the disaster and the long life of the cathedral. Plus new music from Kirin J Callinan and Cameron Undy.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra's Ruban Nielson on the band's latest and fifth album V, which combines reggae with Hawaiian music and psychedelic rock. But rather than being a deliberate fusion, V is instead a reflection of Nielson's roots, ranging from a family legacy of Hawaiian reggae, Māori and Hawaiian heritage, and Auckland's punk scene's DIY ethics.Soprano Katharine Dain's album Forget This Night takes Lili Boulanger's sensual song cycle Clairières dans le ciel as a springboard for a collection of music about desire and impermanence, with other songs by Grażyna Bacewicz and Karol Szymanowski. Katharine joins Andy to trace the stories and songs of three very different composers. Plus new music from Leyla McCalla.

Lonnie Holley has dedicated his life to art, but his music career – as a recording artist at least – only started at the age of 62, decades after he became a sculptor displayed at the White House and collected by The Met, The Smithsonian, and the Art Gallery of NSW. He grew up in Jim Crow era Alabama and suffered a huge amount of abuse at the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, which has always informed his art and his music.  His first album came out in 2012 and his most recent, Oh Me Oh My, came out last year. He’s back in Australia to perform live with Moor Mother and Irreversible Entanglements.Liquid Pearls is a duo performance by harpist Hannah Lane and viola da gamba/lirone player Laura Vaughan, and it takes that name from a 1500s madrigal: “from her eyes, Cupid scattered liquid pearls…”. Hannah and Laura join Andy to perform live in studio, demonstrating how their exploration of 16th and 17th century Italy and Spain has resulted in something simultaneously “organic and rarified”.

Embarking on a nautical adventure this week, Andy is welcomed onboard the ‘floating cultural platform’ known as the Arka Kinari, sailed by musical duo Grey Filastine and Nova Ruth. Made of steel intended for a Nazi U-Boat, this seventy-tonne schooner has been fitted out as an eco-touring venue, and after leaving home waters in Indonesia last month is currently visiting Australia for a run of shows.Pitjantjatjara singer and songwriter Frank Yamma was born into music, and has since had a long and storied career. In the desert, he’s a hard rocker, and in the cities he plays “slow style”. He joins Andy in The Music Show studio ahead of a national tour to play songs from his city repertoire, and talk about his life and work.

Eddie Perfect has been to Broadway and back with music theatre composer credits including Beetlejuice and King Kong, not to mention home-grown hit Shane Warne: The Musical. Now he’s set to play as Dr Pangloss and Voltaire in Leonard Bernstein’s exquisitely convoluted opera Candide with Victorian Opera, and he talks to Andy about how a work written during McCarthyism, based on a novel written during the 7 Years War, finds new resonance now.While the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur has had countless retellings, in operas, plays, movies and more, none have been quite like Labyrinth, the new ‘dance-opera/piano concerto’ from Melbourne’s Forest Collective. In this version the absent Minotaur is felt through a “big virtuosic piano part” played by acclaimed soloist Danaë Killian. She and composer Evan J Lawson join Andy to talk about this innovative new production.Plus new music from DOBBY and Emily Wurramara.

Richard Tognetti, artistic director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, returns to The Music Show to catch up with Andy about River, the latest in the ACO’s series of cinematic collaborations, and looks back at the way the pandemic has shaped the ensemble and the classical music scene more widely.In the 1970s, trailblazing Australian dancer Phillippa Cullen developed a set of ‘pressure-sensitive floors’, but after her tragic early death they sat unused in a dusty corner of the University of Adelaide for forty-odd years. That is until Dr Iran Sanadzadeh stumbled upon them, ultimately developing her own new set of floors christened the terpsichora for the Greek muse of dance. Iran joins Andy to talk about this unusual instrument and her innovative compositional practice, culminating in her new album Ocean, Again.And we remember Broadway legend Chita Rivera, who has died at the age of 91, with a 2006 interview from The Music Show archives.

Formed out of a love for Django Reinhardt and excellent band-name puns, Cigány Weaver play in a style reminiscent of jazz Manouche, traditional swing and Romani music. We hosted the full six-piece band in The Music Show studio where they delivered a performance rich in energetic fiddling, gentle strumming and soaring vocals, playing two songs drawn from their new album Episode II: Still Water.Scottish composer Stuart MacRae had set medieval poetry to music before, but it wasn’t until he heard Australian mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean’s take on his setting of the anonymous poem ‘The Lif of this World’ that he found a collaborator that “got it straight away”. Stuart began writing new compositions specifically for Lotte’s voice, resulting in the album Earth thy cold is keen, and they joined Andy for a chat about their collaboration.And music from Irish powerhouse Lisa O’Neill, who is on tour around Australia now and will be joining us live on stage at WOMADelaide on 9 March.

When Irish singer songwriter David Keenan came onto the scene he was described as “the sound of Tim Buckley and Brendan Behan arguing over a few jars, while Kavanagh deals Dylan a suspicious hand of cards, and Anthony Cronin and Jack Kerouac furiously try to scribble it all down” – so no pressure there. He talks about wearing those comparisons, writing songs about Ireland, and the story behind his guitar as well as performing new music live.David Lumsdaine was an Australian composer who spent most of his life outside Australia, and retired from composing almost thirty years ago. He died this month at the age of 92 and Michael Hooper, who wrote the book on Lumsdaine’s music, joins Andy to talk about his legacy. And we hear Lumsdaine himself, amongst the birds of his beloved dawn chorus, from the archives.Plus new music from Maanyung and Emma Donovan.

This is the story a song written by Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly around a campfire in 1988. What started off as a casually recorded folk number has become what Carmody calls “a kind of cultural love song”: a foundational entry in the Australian songbook.2023’s NAIDOC Week theme was “For Our Elders”, so RN’s Rudi Bremer went to speak with Kev Carmody at his studio on Kambuwal Country to gather his recollections of From Little Things Big Things Grow as it started, the story of the Gurindji Walk Off that inspired it, and the many different iterations he’s performed and heard in the last thirty years.Wik and South Sea Islander rapper Ziggy Ramo, Electric Fields vocalist Zaachariaha Fielding from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands and Adelaide producer Michael Ross, and Zillmere State School Year 7 Class of 2003 student Tonii-Lee Betts join Craig Tilmouth to talk about their interpretations of the song that Carmody says “belongs to everyone now”.

Robbie speaks to Electric Fields -  Zaachariaha Fielding and Michael Ross about the perspectives that have been infused into the music through collaborative songwriting and Zaachariaha's upbringing in Mimili (APY Lands). After noticing their undeniable creative spark back in 2015, they have been making music together that hark back to the days watching Rage on the weekends, while adding their own individual sounds and stories to the mix.And Andy talks to the Stiff Gins, who are 24 years into what they hope is a lifelong partnership. Yuwaalaraay woman Nardi Simpson and Yorta Yorta and Wiradjuri woman Kaleena Briggs look back at their almost quarter century and the changing landscape of music and language with live performance in The Music Show studio.