The Music Show
ABC Australia
248 episodes
All kinds of music and all kinds of musicians in conversation with Andrew Ford.
Episodes page 4 of 5
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The birth of House, and the rebirth of Lucius
“Chicago is a case study”, says one of the witnesses to the birth of House music in the new film, Move Ya Body. In the 1980s Chicago was in the throes of segregation and violence, and its warehouses became the site of…
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Gender euphoria and jazz with Elliot Lamb and entering the forest house with Jenny Mitchell
Jenny Mitchell recorded her fourth and latest album at a sprawling rural property in Wairarapa, a town in Aotearoa’s North Island. Forest House captures the sounds (figurative and literal) of the landscape, along with…
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Bush Gothic on the fine line between pleasure and pain, and director Netia Jones on Purcell's wild semi-opera The Fairy Queen
Bush Gothic are “unafraid of Australian songs”. From colonial-era folk songs to the Divinyls, their latest album What Pop People Folk This Popular is a showcase of what the band does best: dreamy, detailed,…
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From broken piano to bestseller—Keith Jarrett's The Köln Concert
In February 1975, Keith Jarrett turned up at the Cologne Opera House to play a solo concert. He was tired, hungry and in pain, and the Bösendorfer piano was falling apart. Technicians worked on the instrument before…
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Tangerine Dream bring order into chaos and Jonathon Crompton maps out the coastline
Tangerine Dream were founded in West Berlin in 1967 by Edgar Froese, the band has had scores of lineup changes but is still going strong under the helm of Thorsten Quaeschning, who joined in 2005 - despite being…
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Ellen Stekert: a full life in folk music
Ellen Stekert, who is about to turn 90, has spent a lifetime in folk music. She got her first guitar at 13 (to assist with her rehab after contracting polio) and soon after high school she became enmeshed in the…
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Kamasi Washington's Fearless Movement and Gregory Day's Southsightedness
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…
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Pokey LaFarge takes us to Rhumba Country, and the radical spirituality of Sofia Gubaidulina
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…
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Three centuries of chamber music by women with Anna Goldsworthy, and where blues and zydeco meet
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…
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Glass percussion with Shock Lines and campfire storytelling with Mark Atkins
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…
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Music in Motion: Live at the Canberra International Music Festival
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…
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Modernism, Catholicism, and Birdsong: Olivier Messiaen
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…
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Deep Inside the Blues
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…
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Messiah
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…
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Irish music new and old: Fontaines D.C. and Daoirí Farrell
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…
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Gospel meets disco with family band Annie & the Caldwells, and Tenzin Choegyal and Matt Corby team up
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…
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In rehearsal with Zubin Kanga's cyborg piano, and at the art gallery with Julius Eastman's Femenine
The Music Show is live at Canberra International Music Festival on 3 May - come join our audience! Zubin Kanga is known as the ‘cyborg pianist’, because throughout his career he’s been using technology to expand the…
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Marlon Williams' te reo Māori album, and canons in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Who hasn't sung a canon or round at some point in their life? 'Frère Jacques', 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' and 'Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree' are among the best-known children's songs and they're all meant to be…
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Genre-defining strings with Abel Selaocoe and Aaron Wyatt
Almost every description of South African singer, cellist and composer Abel Selaocoe starts with a phrase like “genre-defying”, but Abel refers to himself as genre defining. He’s here to perform with the Australian…
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Stasis, flux and stamina: saxophonist Adam Page can improvise for 24-hours non-stop
Saxophonist, composer, improviser and master looper, Adam Page, has brought a bunch of looping pedals and instruments into our Adelaide studio to show us how he builds layers of music on the fly. Adam's just finished a…
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Allison Russell on jamming with Joni Mitchell, Annie Lennox, Hozier and more; and Lucy Sante's Six Sermons for Bob Dylan
Allison Russell’s jazz, blues, and folk influences create a sound that seems infinitely adaptable across her many projects. Her collaborators include Joni Mitchell, Annie Lennox, Hozier, Brandi Carlile, and Orville…
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Organised Delirium: Pierre Boulez at 100
People talking about the French composer Pierre Boulez tend to wear out the word iconoclast pretty quickly. To celebrate the “High Priest of Modernism” on the occasion of his centenary, The Music Show looks beyond…
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The legacy of the Shangri-Las, and Palestinian band 47SOUL
Melbourne historian and musician Lisa MacKinney has written the first full-length history of 1960s New York pop group The Shangri-Las. They were responsible for hits like Leader of the Pack and Remember (Walkin’ in the…
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From the Bronx to BBQs to Barkaa—the evolution of Australian hip hop
In the years since it originated in New York City in the late 1970s, hip hop has become a global music phenomenon. Reaching Australian shores in the early 1980s, tensions quickly arose between those looking to emulate…
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Anarchy and acoustics: Sex Pistols and Pistols in St. Paul's
For a band that weren't around very long and only really put out one studio album, the cultural and musical impact of the Sex Pistols is staggering. Guitarist Steve Jones opens up to Andrew Ford about starting the…
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Nana Benz du Togo, Sauljaljui and The Joy live at WOMADelaide
The Music Show is back on Kaurna Land at Adelaide's Botanic Park for WOMADelaide 2025, a festival celebrating music from all over the world. Named after a group of powerful grandmas in the 1970s and 80s who sold wax…
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Eleanor Jawurlngali, Duo Ruut and Ana Carla Maza at WOMADelaide
Alice Keath presents The Music Show for International Women’s Day, with some of the great international and local women on the WOMADelaide line-up. Latin American pop and classical sensibilities meet in the music of…
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Cover Story: The Times They Are A-Changin'
In the final episode, for now, of Cover Story, singer and rapper Ziggy Ramo and musician and broadcaster Alice Keath look at Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ – a political anthem just vague enough to apply to…
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Innovation and imitation: Maurice Ravel at 150
Aspirations of modernity, progress and innovation drove music through the 20th century. For French composer Maurice Ravel, inspiration from (and imitation of) his peers, of the voices and styles around him, made him a…
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Cover Story: Under The Milky Way
In 1987, Steve Kilbey and Karin Jansson were living together, and armed with a joint and a piano, one night they came up with the bones of Under The Milky Way. It became a hit for The Church as part of their fifth…
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Otherworldly sounds with Charm of Finches and The Cloud Maker
Sisters Mabel and Ivy Windred-Wornes have been making music as Charm of Finches since they were children. Now seasoned touring artists with four albums under their belts, they swing by The Music Show studio to play…
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Cover Story: Running Up That Hill
In 1985, Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love album made a moderate showing in the pop charts. In 2022, the single Running Up That Hill burst back into the charts after a particularly impactful needle-drop in the Netflix show…
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Richard Dawson's evocative songwriting, and remembering Vic Simms
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners are advised that this program contains the name and voice of someone who has died. Written from the small shed on his allotment in Northern England, the lyrics on…
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Cover Story: Heart of Gold
“This song put me in the middle of the road. Travelling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch”, said Neil Young about his only major hit, Heart of Gold, from the 1972 album Harvest. Whether or not the…
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An obscure orchestra and an opera for the dead
Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra has more of an ethos than a sound. A twenty five piece indie band with constantly evolving membership, it began as a solo project by Matt Hsu, whose values and “punk-trained” composition…
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Cover Story: Lay All Your Love On Me
Metal, marimbas, vampires and EDM: ABBA’s Lay All Your Love On Me as you’ve never heard it before, with producer Paul Mac and composer Alice Chance. This is the first episode of Cover Story, a new series from The…
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The Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band and remembering Marianne Faithfull
British singer and songwriter Marianne Faithfull has died at the age of 78. In 1996, Andy spoke to her about finding her true voice, why she was drawn to the music of Kurt Weill and the Weimar Republic, and why she was…
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The Violin in the Colony
“Ships become obsolete; fine furs are ravaged by moths, faded by the sun, worn by rubbing against show cases; garments go out of style; the gold watch grandfather handed down is replaced by a thin one. Change and decay…
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Tamworth's prodigal son Andy Golledge, and Australians in America with Lisa Moore and Lloyd Van't Hoff
Country singer songwriter Andy Golledge cut his teeth in Sydney’s Inner West band scene before returning to his hometown of Tamworth a local hero. He and his band have racked up thousands of kilometres of touring, and…
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Percussionists and poets in Caroline Shaw's music; David Keenan's Irish Songs
American composer Caroline Shaw’s latest album, a collaboration with Sō Percussion, is called Rectangles and Circumstance. It’s a collection of ten songs run through with words by Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte, William…
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Remembering Ruby Hunter, with Emily Wurramara and Dan Sultan
The Music Show explores the legacy of the late Ruby Hunter – short in stature, a giant in music, and a mentor and parental figure to so many First Nations musicians in subsequent generations. We’ll hear Ruby from the…
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Folk singers and the FBI
Some of the most prominent folk singers of the twentieth century like Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan were being surveilled and, in some cases, blacklisted by the FBI due to their political activism and ties…
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Ziggy Ramo's exploration of dark histories and big questions
Ziggy Ramo returns to The Music Show with a new album that’s more than just an album. Human? is a new and beautifully contradictory sound for Ziggy. It blends folk (with guest vocals from Vonn) and his signature rap,…
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The last violin of Harry Vatiliotis; the exile of Arooj Aftab
Romano Crevici has been playing violins made by Harry Vatiliotis for decades. Now drawing to the end of their respective careers, Harry has made one final instrument, which will be Romano's last violin too. The…
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Becoming Ella Fitzgerald
For someone referred to as "the Queen of Jazz" and "First Lady of Song", there's a surprising amount we don't know about legendary jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. She didn't fit the image of a star: she was incredibly…
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Polyrhythms and pop music with Tune-Yards; Omar Musa turns poetry into music
Harnessing looping pedals, percussion and vocal manipulation, Tune-Yards make a very big sound for a core membership of two people. It's been ten years since the experimental pop project released their third album…
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Music for Prime Time
From the rattling charge of The Lone Ranger to the slick, warbling vocals of White Lotus, music for television has been beckoning us to the couch for the best part of a century. In Music for Prime Time: A History of…
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Víkingur Ólafsson's infinite variety; Angélique Kidjo's re-imagining of a Talking Heads’ classic
In 2024 Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson undertook an international tour that saw him playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations almost a hundred times, including his first ever performances in Australia. He joins Andy in…
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Lisa O'Neill and Cormac Begley live at WOMADelaide
Live from WOMADelaide 2024, an hour with two Irish living legends, singer songwriter Lisa O’Neill and concertina master Cormac Begley. Both stalwarts of the Irish traditional music scene, they united for an intense,…
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Experiencing Sound
Though best known as a musicologist - the author of 16 books - Lawrence Kramer's other life as a composer shines through all his writings. He says he has become increasingly aware that music is made of sound, a fact…
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