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Podcasts · Music

The Music Show

ABC Australia

248 episodes

All kinds of music and all kinds of musicians in conversation with Andrew Ford.

Episodes page 3 of 5

  1. Leo Sayer is still dancing, and art and song in Warlpiri women's ceremony

    · 55 min

    Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners are advised that this program contains the voices of people who have died. As a post-war kid, Leo Sayer first heard rock & roll on Radio Luxembourg on a radio late at…

  2. Performing Assyrian-ness with Lolita Emmanuel

    · 55 min

    Lolita Emmanuel is a creative researcher. She’s a musician, a storyteller, and an academic (moments away from finishing her Doctor of Musical Arts) and she’s part of this year’s ABC Top Five Arts residency. That's…

  3. Guzheng, standards, and Yolngu manikay: three very different albums from Paul Grabowsky and friends

    · 55 min

    Most people would think of Paul Grabowsky as a jazz pianist. And they wouldn't be wrong, except he's much more than that. He's a composer of film scores, orchestra works and operas, a band leader (he founded the…

  4. Cover Story: Both Sides Now

    · 55 min

    Both Sides Now was written by Joni Mitchell in 1966, when she was just 21 years old. She wasn't the first artist to record it though - in true folk tradition, the covers began before her own version was released in…

  5. Seckou Keita retunes West African traditional music, and Rowena Wise & Didirri's couples therapy through song

    · 55 min

    Senegalese kora master Seckou Keita's relationship with the West African string instrument is delicate, thoughtful, and expansive. Through developing his own tunings, and taking his music further than the traditions of…

  6. Cover Story: Reckless

    · 54 min

    In 1983, the Manly Ferry was making its way to circular quay and James Reyne was laying down Reckless (Don't Be So...) with his band, Australian Crawl, for their EP Semantics. Since then, the song has had a permanent…

  7. The sound of County Clare with Martin Hayes; and Piotr Anderszewski connects Bach, Beethoven and Brahms

    · 54 min

    Martin Hayes is one of the world's most celebrated fiddle players, and a very influential figure in Irish traditional music. He draws from the musical tradition of County Clare and interprets it within a wider…

  8. Cover Story: Time After Time

    · 54 min

    Time After Time was a last minute addition to Cyndi Lauper's debut album She's So Unusual in 1983 - a final songwriting session between Lauper and Rob Hyman filling a gap on the tracklist. Since then, it's been…

  9. Come to the cabaret with Le Gateau Chocolat, and music from the borderlands of Iran and Afghanistan

    · 54 min

    All kinds of music and all kinds of musicians in conversation with Andrew Ford.

  10. Cover Story: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

    · 54 min

    All kinds of music and all kinds of musicians in conversation with Andrew Ford.

  11. Sorrow and songwriting: Irish musician Inni-K, and Joe Camilleri's The Black Sorrows

    · 54 min

    Inni-K, the alias of singer songwriter Eithne Ní Chatháin, blends Ireland's rich music traditions with her own playful compositional voice. Her new album Still A Day deviates from the traditional material she's focused…

  12. Cover Story: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

    · 54 min

    The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face was made famous by the version Roberta Flack recorded for her 1969 album First Take, which was then used in Clint Eastwood's 1971 film Play Misty for Me. But it started life as a…

  13. From Mao's Last Dancer to Master and Commander: Christopher Gordon on his film music and beyond, and The Apartments' Peter Milton Walsh

    · 54 min

    Composer Christopher Gordon is being handed the Distinguished Services to the Australian Screen award at this year's Screen Music Awards. Responsible for big scores to films like Mao’s Last Dancer, Ladies In Black, and…

  14. The Times They Are A-Changin'

    · 54 min

    Ahead of new episodes of Cover Story (dropping very soon!) we bring you one of our favourites from season one. Singer and rapper Ziggy Ramo and musician and broadcaster Alice Keath look at Bob Dylan’s The Times They…

  15. Inside a showtunes sing-along bar, and composer Fritz Hart's unsung career

    · 54 min

    When was the last time you gathered around a piano to belt out showtunes with friends or strangers? Marie's Crisis Cafe is a beloved New York City sing-along piano bar that's been bringing musical theatre lovers…

  16. Shellie Morris sings for our little ones and Tim Brady composes for 100 electric guitars

    · 54 min

    Wardaman and Yanyuwa woman Dr Shellie Morris AO grew up speaking English in her adopted family, but has since gone on to learn over 20 First Nations languages. Her new album Singing For Our Little Ones is in Warumungu,…

  17. Meow Meow's The Red Shoes and saxophonist Tessie Overmyer's Tidelands

    · 54 min

    Post-post-modern chanteuse Meow Meow returns to The Music Show to talk about The Red Shoes, the third show in her series of Hans Christian Anderson adaptations. She goes into both the music and the research behind the…

  18. Red Headed Stranger: how Willie Nelson's obsession spawned a classic country album

    · 54 min

    Willie Nelson first encountered the song Red Headed Stranger in the 1950s, working as a DJ at radio station KCNC in Fort Worth TX. It was a jaunty number, sung by Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith and His Cracker-Jacks,…

  19. Stormy skies, Bulgarian voices, and Mervyn Peake with Neko Case and remembering legendary bassist Danny Thompson

    · 54 min

    Neko Case's dazzling voice and kaleidoscopic band sound have developed slowly and assuredly over her 30 year recording career in what she calls "country noir", and her latest album Neon Grey Midnight Green is the…

  20. Modern monodramas: deconstructing Pierrot Lunaire and unravelling The Big Idea

    · 54 min

    Laura Bowler is often described as a "composer, performer, and prevocatrice". That may be the perfect combination for "deconstructing" Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, which she's done and is getting its Australian…

  21. Recovering and uncovering: early Black music from America and the Persian music of Afghanistan

    · 54 min

    Go Back and Fetch It: Recovering Early Black music in the Americas for Fiddle and Banjo is a new book, a collaboration between Carolina Chocolate Drops founder Rhiannon Giddens and music writer Kristina Gaddy. They…

  22. Bleak Squad: a supergroup with DNA from Magic Dirt, the Bad Seeds and Dirty Three; and a striking conversation with percussionist Steven Schick

    · 54 min

    Adalita and Marty Brown join Andy to talk about their new supergroup with Mick Harvey and Mick Taylor - they're called Bleak Squad and with a history of playing with Magic Dirt, the Bad Seeds, Dirty Three as well as…

  23. Irish trad-punk for the 21st century with the Mary Wallopers, and music for dark times with Deborah Cheetham-Fraillon

    · 54 min

    The Mary Wallopers are in Australia, far from their hometown of Dundalk in Ireland's County Louth. They're a raucous, political band with a folk/punk inheritance from bands like The Dubliners and the Pogues. Charles…

  24. Bold performances in music new and old: Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Havlat

    · 54 min

    Carolyn Sampson is an English soprano who began her career in early music (Bach and before), working with some of the world's best-known specialists in historically informed performance. These days, she is just as…

  25. Music teachers on screen, and how to score a film

    · 54 min

    Was your music teacher anything like the ones in the movies? Three academics - Hugh Gundlach and Rhiannon Simpson from Melbourne University and Katrina Rivera from ANU - join Andy to interrogate cinematic depictions of…

  26. 80 years since the end of WWII: the Music of Remembrance with Jeremy Eichler

    · 54 min

    Four pieces of music written in the years after World War II – Strauss’s Metamorphosen, Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, Britten’s War Requiem, and Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony, ‘Babi Yar’ – paint a complicated…

  27. A musical portrait of Guinea-Bissau, and pianist Ana-Maria Vera on surviving as a child prodigy

    · 54 min

    As a child prodigy, pianist Ana-Maria Vera made her concerto debut when she was nine, going on to record and perform with some of the world’s great orchestras (Philadelphia, Cleveland, London Philharmonic, Baltimore…

  28. "I have seen rock and roll's future and its name is Bruce Springsteen": Born To Run at 50

    · 54 min

    On the 25th of August, 1975, Bruce Springsteen released Born to Run, the "dividing line" of his career. Starting with the title track, written on the edge of his bed in a rented cottage in New Jersey, Born to Run…

  29. Beyond bluegrass with Molly Tuttle, and harpist Marshall McGuire on bravery and leadership

    · 54 min

    The harpist Marshall McGuire is Chair of the Australian Music Centre. He made his name playing impossibly virtuosic music by modern composers, often pieces written specifically for him. He has worked with the ELISION…

  30. Liz Pelly on the Spotify machine, and remembering jazz greats Judy Bailey and Sheila Jordan

    · 54 min

    Liz Pelly's book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist has been received as an evisceration of the streaming platform and the way it has fundamentally changed the business model of…

  31. Leading an orchestra with Jaime Martín and putting words to music with DOBBY and Leah Senior

    · 54 min

    It's Poetry Month and our Middle of the Air competition (run in collaboration with Red Room Poetry) is in full swing. Two of our listeners who submit the winning poems will have their words turned into songs and…

  32. Gregory Porter on his jazz foundations and Michael Collins on the clarinettist-composer relationship

    · 54 min

    Gregory Porter is becoming a harder and harder singer to pigeonhole. His voice is at home in gospel, blues, soul, and R&B, but the foundation of it all, he tells Andrew Ford, is jazz. Gregory and his band are returning…

  33. Jerrah Patston's world in songs, and the music of outback fences and pied butcherbirds

    · 54 min

    Jerrah Patston is a singer and songwriter who’s part of Club Weld—a Parramatta-based studio for neurodiverse musicians run by the Arts & Cultural Exchange. Jerrah’s music contains observations about his everyday life -…

  34. Legacies and laughs: Tom Lehrer and Dame Cleo Laine

    · 54 min

    Two legendary singers and favourite guests of The Music Show passed away this week at 97 years old: Tom Lehrer and Dame Cleo Laine. Dame Cleo Laine was one of England’s most acclaimed jazz singers, with a distinctive…

  35. Storytelling, beats and soundscapes on Warlpiri Country, and Gordon Kerry's new Requiem

    · 54 min

    Lajamanu is one of the most remote places in Central Australia, and it’s where we meet Wanta Jampijinpa Pawu-Kurlpurlurnu, his father Jerry Jangala Patrick OAM, and the music producer Marc ‘Monkey’ Peckham. Crown &…

  36. Ozzy Osbourne - the melodic voice of Black Sabbath, and announcing poetry and lyric competition Middle of the Air

    · 54 min

    Nicole Smede is a proud Warrimay woman with Irish ancestry, whose bio includes poet, musician, singer and composer. She’s on The Music Show to talk about how all of these things have come to intersect in her work, and…

  37. Michael Atherton: A lifetime student of music from ancient Egypt, medieval Europe and beyond

    · 54 min

    Michael Atherton has had his fingers in so many musical pies it's hard to know how to sum him up. He is a composer, a music therapist, an educator, a writer of books and a multi-instrumentalist. Indeed, with the…

  38. Together Alone with Crowded House and talking About Ghosts with Mary Halvorson

    · 54 min

    Brooklyn-based jazz guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson has released a new album About Ghosts. Featuring her long-time improvisatory band Amaryllis, this time she’s also added two saxophonists into the mix. Mary…

  39. Ben Lee on mistakes, longevity and the power of pop music

    · 54 min

    Ben Lee is responsible for some of the most ubiquitous Australian songs of the last two decades (‘Catch My Disease’, ‘We’re All In This Together’, and ‘Cigarettes Will Kill You’). His breakthrough fifth album Awake Is…

  40. Midge Ure on punk, pop and Ultravox and Nina Korbe on opera and advocacy

    · 54 min

    Midge Ure is a musical chameleon, his career having taken him from boy band, Slik (stable mates of the Bay City Rollers), to punk band, Rich Kids (with ex-Sex Pistol, Glen Matlock), to singer, guitarist and keyboard…

  41. Putting together the pieces of Meredith Monk, and Christine Anu wins the 2025 NAIDOC Creative Talent Award

    · 54 min

    Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners are warned that the following program may contain the name and voices of people who have died. Meredith Monk is the subject of Billy Shebar's documentary Monk in Pieces,…

  42. Listening to Country with composer James Howard, and the Stiff Gins celebrate 25 years

    · 54 min

    For Jaadwa composer, sound artist and electronic musician James Howard, sound, Country and identity are inextricable. His latest release is a reworking of his score for Australian Dance Theatre's Marrow, a work which…

  43. Remembering Lalo Schifrin, and how an organ can make a town come alive

    · 54 min

    The Argentine composer and pianist, Lalo Schifrin, will be best remembered as the creator of the syncopated, five-in-a-bar theme for Mission: Impossible, but he was much more than that. As a child in Buenos Aires, he…

  44. Brian Campeau's country-tinged left turn, and Erik Satie—from the sublime to the surreal

    · 54 min

    Brian Campeau Presents Jo Dellin And The Bone Spurs is the latest album from the Canadian-born, Melbourne-based singer songwriter. Reinventing his sound with each record, the music here forays into country and…

  45. Lorde reborn

    · 54 min

    Lorde’s fourth studio album Virgin is a rebirth for a generational artist still in her 20s. Ella Yelich-O’Connor became a household name as a teenager after her debut album Pure Heroine delivered a new minimalist…

  46. Margret RoadKnight—60 years in the business

    · 54 min

    Singer and guitarist Margret RoadKnight doesn't write her own songs but she's had a six decade career interpreting other people's. She has a voice able to sit across a range of musical styles—from blues to gospel, folk…

  47. A Plastic Ocean Oratorio from Omar Musa and Mariel Roberts Musa, and a new Chapter for Guy Blackman

    · 54 min

    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…

  48. Collecting Scots songs on horseback and remembering The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson

    · 54 min

    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…

  49. Singing the Aphrodite myth, and a new take on golden age of Persian contemporary music

    · 54 min

    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…

  50. John Luther Adams on earth

    · 54 min

    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…

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