The Music Show

Windborne are a vocal quartet from New England in the US. Their tagline is 'old songs, bold harmonies' and their varied repertoire puts Corsican polyphony next to 17th Century English protest songs. They’ve found a huge following online in recent years, thanks in part to a performance outside of Trump Tower. They’re in the country for a string of local shows and festival appearances and they perform live in our music studio.Yorta Yorta musician and storyteller Allara is also in our studio this week. Allara brings her poetry to life armed with a double bass, looping pedal and electronics. She chats to Andy about learning her Yorta Yorta Language and the enduring legacy of her old bandmate Archie Roach (she’s performing on the Archie Roach Foundation stage at this year’s Port Fairy Folk Festival). Windborne live in The Music Show studio (ABC: Ellie Parnell)

With sixteen albums and five Grammys under her belt, Angélique Kidjo doesn’t need much of an introduction. She’s back in Australia to perform songs from her 2021 album Mother Nature as well as gems from her catalogue that highlight her infectious energy, dazzling array of influences and multi-language pop music. Supporting most of her tour is Maatakitj (the stage name of Noongar song-maker, composer, and academic Clint Bracknell). In this special double-header interview Angélique and Clint reflect on performing in languages most of their audience don’t understand, whether music can be an ambassador, and why it’s more important than ever for us to dance. Mezzo-soprano Anna Dowsley makes her home in Germany’s opera houses these days, but she’s back on her home soil for a run of concerts with the pianist Michael Curtain, tackling a body of work called Cabaret Songs by American composer William Bolcom and the late “theatre poet” Arnold Weinstein. Even though they were written in the 70s and 80s, these songs have something distinctly 1930s about them, but also a sharp contemporary wit. Anna and Michael join Andy in studio to play selections from Cabaret Songs live and delve into this eccentric collection. 

The Music Show is about the creation and enjoyment of music.

Joseph Keckler creates operatic monologues that cover subjects such as psychedelic mushroom trips, haunted houses, and buying a jacket. He also does Schubert lieder. He’s about to tour to Australia with no-wave legend Lydia Lunch and joins Andy to unpack his unique sound and influences.Mezzo-soprano Raehann Bryce-Davis makes her Australian debut with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and conductor Jaime Martín for Mahler’s 3rd Symphony. She’s a booked and busy opera performer too, with repertoire as varied as classics like Verdi’s Aida to contemporary remounts like X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X and world premieres like 10 Days in a Madhouse.

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.