The Music Show

Fred Smith is that classic combo: troubadour and a diplomat. Now based back in Canberra, his career as a singer-songwriter is defined by his time in Bougainville and Afghanistan. But his new album, Look, is "a collection of songs that are not about Afghanistan", and features tributes to Leonard Cohen and Helen Garner, the latter of which he performs live in The Music Show studio. Jazz duo Claire Cross and Harry Cook's debut album for ABC Jazz, Dialect, melds her electric bass with his genre-bending piano. They join Andy from Berlin to talk about an album firmly rooted in the Australian landscape. 

Gelareh Pour and Brian O'Dwyer have been playing music together for over 10 years and have just released their debut full-length album under the project name ZÖJ. They describe the ZÖJ as an "ongoing conversation" that combines Gelareh's Persian music background and Brian's experimental percussion to create new Australian music. Their album Fil O Fenjoon was recorded in the Primrose Potter Salon of the Melbourne Recital Centre.Cellist Anthony Albrecht is co-director of The Bowerbird Collective alongside Simone Slattery, a project "crossing the arts/science divide" in blending music and conservation. As they gear up for the inaugural Lyrebird Festival, Anthony talks about historical performance, finding music in nature, and whether frogs sing quite so beautifully as birds.

Robyn Archer has spent the past year touring An Australian Songbook – it’s not The Australian songbook but it takes a swathe of Australian songwriting from household singalongs to new art song and weaves a wry and touching portrait of the continent. She spends an hour with Andy looking at the songbook as it has taken shape: from First Nations folksong, to yodelling, to the menstruation blues.

‘So much of traditional jazz is about romantic love,’ says saxophonist Holly Moore. ‘I feel like there’s never really that much on friendships and the other relationships in our lives”. Her debut album for ABC Jazz, Reunion, is a five-part suite about those bonds, from adolescence to adulthood.  We catch up with 2022 Classical Freedman Fellow Katie Yap about the project she undertook with the prize. Multitudes has seen Katie improvising, composing and performing with four unique collaborators. We talk about birds, words and get an update on what's cooking in Katie's kitchen.And we get a glimpse into The Journey Down - a project that took a car wreck-turned-sonic sculpture on the road from Kununurra to Perth.

Good times and bum times, she’s seen them all and she’s here: Geraldine Turner, lynchpin of the Australian music theatre scene from 1970s repertory to the current run of Wicked, reflects on her massive career (so far), her love of Sondheim, and Judy Garland.

The Music Show catches up with Lance Ferguson and Kylie Auldist from funk/soul stalwarts The Bamboos in between their month-long Melbourne residency and a multi-city European tour, to hear about the new album This Is How You Do It, featuring Kylie's son Reginald AK. In Song Circle at the upcoming Clancestry festival, Troy Cassar-Daley celebrates the life of his late mother and the sharing of songs and stories that got him through the grieving process of Sorry Business. With his daughter Jem joining him for this performance and on recent tours, he tells Andrew about the intersection of music and family.And Sarah Blasko on writing music for Shakespeare’s most musical play, Twelfth Night, which is underway at Bell Shakespeare.

Conor Oberst and his trio Bright Eyes are by many accounts the group most responsible for the indie-folk boom of the mid-2000s. Bright Eyes is touring the country and Conor swings by The Music Show to talk about revisiting and reworking his old songs after the band’s return from a long hiatus.Vanessa Perica’s second album, The Eye Is The First Circle, builds on the lush foundations of her first. In a time when the big band seems somewhat nostalgic she joins Andy to prove that the Vanessa Perica Orchestra has its feet firmly planted in the present. And she remembers Carla Bley, the unique bandleader who died last week.

Two musically different Australian outfits in Melbourne and Adelaide join The Music Show with live performances.Hand to Earth grew out of a musical conversation started by vocalist Sunny Kim and Yolŋu Songman Daniel Wilfred during an Australian Art Orchestra residency in the remote highlands of Tasmania. Since that first collaboration, Hand to Earth has become an ensemble involving Aviva Endean, David Wilfred and Peter Knight, and they are on the cusp on a new record release and performance at the Melbourne International Jazz Festival.Joined by Polish violinist Amalia Umeda, their show The Crow is a new commission that follows the songline of the crow (waak waak) in Arnhem Land. And ahead of their second appearance at OzAsia Festival, Hyoshi in Counterpoint drop by our the studio in Adelaide to give us a taste of their music. They're an ensemble of six women from different musical backgrounds, bringing together the sounds of Shamisen, Guzheng, strings, keyboard and a rather quirky drum-kit to create musical responses to visual artworks.

New Zealand composer Annea Lockwood has become a staple in the American experimental community over the last 60 years. Her extensive body of work includes Piano Transplants – a series that includes her well-known Piano Burning and Southern Exposure – the premiere of which went awry when the piano went AWOL in Perth… The Music Show goes to the art gallery, where Annea is rehearsing for the premiere of a new piece, created with Brisbane composer and percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson at the AGNSW’s Volume Festival. We chat about her career, listening to rivers and her latest release – Tête-à-tête – a record made with her late partner Ruth Anderson.

Jazz singer Cécile McLorin Salvant's latest album Mélusine brings together the high-concept dreaminess of her lockdown album Ghost Song with the powerful band leadership of her earlier work. Cécile joins Andy ahead of her tour to Australia to draw a line from her Kate Bush covers to her 12th Century Occitan folk song renditions.Author Stephen Downes reveals the strange and shortened life of the American pianist William Kapell, who died in a plane accident seventy years ago.Violist Henry Justo is the 2023 recipient of one of Australia’s major instrumental prizes, the Freedman Classical Fellowship, which gives him a grant towards a major performance project. Henry stops by The Music Show studio to reveal his plans for the fellowship and how Debussy clinched the final competition for him.