The Music Show

Listening to the new album by The Avalanches is like being on the dancefloor and then getting hit in the head with a whole desktop computer. Electronic, nostalgic, sample-laden and manic, their latest record is called No Bad Memories. The band - Robbie Chater, Toni Di Blasi, and Andy Szekeres - join Andy to unpack the record. Patti Smith was Andy's guest on stage at the Melbourne International Fes...

The musical voice behind Australian classics like Two Hands and Red Dog, Cezary Skubiszewski is being honoured at the 2026 Screen Music Awards for Distinguished Services to the Australian Screen.  In an extended conversation with Andy, Cezary explores building tension in bank robberies, writing music based on the time signature of a pigeon’s coo, and bringing children to tears. Music heard in this...

Cellist and composer Freya Schack-Arnott divides her time between classical and experimental music, exploring all of the possibilities of her instrument. Her latest project, Nornir - which premieres at the Melbourne Fringe Festival - is something different again: a mixture of movement and composition that breaks down the very idea of the cello. The line between foley (cinematic sound effects) and...

Emma Ruth Rundle describes herself as a guitarist - an instrument she's taken from metal bands to ambient minimalism. But it's her voice that's been front and centre on recent albums, alongside her writing, which has recently extended to a book of poetry. Her latest album, These Killing Times , is a return to full-band mode after the stripped-back and confessional Engine of Hell, and it's a culmin...

In 2020, the only way of making concerts work was suddenly to have very small audiences, so the 1:1 series allowed Sally Walker to continue to perform and connect with listeners. Sally has kept the concerts going post-lockdown, and she tells Andy about the unusual places where she’s set up a stage, and why a concert for a single person has a unique power for both performer and audience. A coming o...

Australian mezzo soprano Jenny Duck-Chong, and soprano Nicole Thomson have developed a new resource for artists, teachers, and students: an online database called the Australian Art Song Resource . They join Andy to uncover some great and little known Australian art song, and perform live in studio.  And director Garth Jennings on What Do You Do For An Encore?, his documentary covering britpop ban...

In celebration of John Coltrane's centenary this week, we trace the style and influence of one of jazz's greatest musicians, composers, and collaborators.  We’ll hear a wide range of voices from the Music Show archive: jazz legends like McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter, and Gary Bartz, who played with him; artists like Branford Marsalis, Kurt Elling, Dave Liebman, Phil Slater, Andy Sugg and Lakecia Benj...

Some might think that jazz and electronic music don't have much in common, but Japanese DJ and trumpeter Takuya Nakamura has proven all that wrong. Growing up in 1980s Tokyo, he moved to the United States in 1990 to study under the legendary jazz composer George Russell, and went on to bring this expertise to the New York jungle electronic scene. He now performs live DJ sets of jungle, trip hop, d...

For hundreds of years, the Copper family have sung for their own pleasure, and for the pleasure of the people of Rottingdean, the East Sussex village where the family have been living since at least the 1500s. Singing together in pubs and houses, the BBC first recorded them in 1951, and they've gone on to become stars, particularly in the United States, where they toured extensively.  Andy went to...

Drawing references to Kerouac, Munch, and Hildegard of Bingen, Bryce Dessner's music builds on a rich tradition of art that extends far beyond music. The classical composer (and guitarist for The National) is presenting the Australian premiere of his cello concerto, Trembling Earth, with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and talks to Andy about his influences, NY's music scene, and his new opera. In...

To mark Andy’s departure from the show at the end of this year, we’re bringing you some of his favourite conversations from 32 years on air. This week, we’ll hear the American pianist, composer and teacher Seymour Bernstein in a conversation from 2015. Bernstein died earlier this year, just before his 100th birthday, and in that long life he passed on a huge amount of wisdom about music, from how...

You’re The Voice remains a favourite for generations of Australians and the album it's on, Whispering Jack, has sold more than 1.5 million copies. But John Farnham was 37 by the time he recorded that album and the music industry wasn’t all that interested in a new direction from a 60s pop star - until word of mouth began spreading that this was something special. In some ways it’s that background...

Recorded (largely) as-live in Sweden, with a group of that country's indie luminaries, Robert Forster's latest album Strawberries shows the singer-songwriter in a playful mood and embracing the role of storyteller. Speaking to Andy for the first time in quite some time, Forster explains why he made the trip and why he refused to tour the album until he could bring the band over to play it with him...

Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich, or 'Kelso', of the great all-woman Australian rock band Camp Cope, is also a phenomenal writer. Her new book It's Not For You is part memoir, part feminist journalist project, in which she traces her own musical beginnings alongside conversations with a cross section of women and gender diverse musicians. She joins Andy to talk about the book.  Noongar composer, violist, cond...

Belinda Webster, the producer, engineer and singular force behind Australia's art music label Tall Poppies died this month at the age of 74. Across 278 releases, Webster recorded and released music by many of Australia's best classical and jazz musicians, often playing Australian music. In 2006, Andy visited Belinda at her home in Kangaroo Valley for a wide-ranging conversation about her passion a...

With a recent concerto for amplified accordion and orchestra and another for more than 60 recorders Holly Harrison clearly loves a challenge. She shares why she enjoys writing for new instruments, and how she composed a work that will be performed by everyone from virtuosos to second-grade students. Hamed Sadeghi has released two albums this year, each of which fuses his instrument, the Persian ta...

Dolly Parton said she wrote over three thousand songs, so we can barely begin to honour her extraordinary songwriting in just one hour. From her early country duets with Porter Wagoner, to the extraordinary purple patch that brought us Jolene and I Will Always Love You (allegedly written on the same day), to lending her voice and country music bona fides to Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter record, her impa...

"I think if we saw every conversation as music, we would drastically shift the course of history."  So says the poet and performer aja monet. For her latest record, the color of rain , monet worked with Meshell Ndegecello, Justin Brown, and a whole host of musical collaborators to create something that spans genre, but has seen her named as one of the early headliners of the Melbourne Internationa...

James Ellis Ford is better known as James Ford, producer for artists like Pulp, Arctic Monkeys, Florence and the Machine and Fontaines D.C. When you add the Ellis, he's a solo artist making his own music and he joins Andy to talk about his latest album Lost In Another World, and the War Child charity album HELP(2) which he made during his time as a 'boy in the bubble' of a quarantined chemotherapy...

Kate Miller-Heidke's new album, the first since 2020's Child In Reverse is a very theatrical and sometimes funny slice of gothic-folk called The Kiss and the Abyss. In between live performances of two new songs, Kate talks about referencing Handel and planning for the end of the world. Pianist Maki Namekawa has an enduring relationship with Philip Glass - performing the world premiere of several o...

Grace Cummings ’ latest album is called Bloodhorse! and it's fantastic and fantastically strange. Her ragged, bluesy voice floats through a lush, ornate sound world on tracks like 'The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Morphine', and 'WITCH! WITCH! WITCH!', the latter of which was recorded whilst Grace wielded a grim reaper style scythe in the studio. She joins Andy to take us into the highly-stru...

Can you tell the history of the world in fifty pieces of music? No, but BBC Radio 3 presenter and writer Tom Service has given it a red hot go in A History of the World in 50 Pieces: The Classical Music That Shapes Us . He joins Andy to talk through the surprising stories behind some of those pieces, from Handel to Happy Birthday.  Music heard in the show: Title: Overture from The Marriage of Figa...

All The Grateful Dead are one of the iconic bands of the last century, not just for their music, but for their extended tours, which saw their fans follow them across America and create a very special sort of travelling community. Mischa Richter shares stories from the road and explores his new documentary Summer Tour. Don Walker talks basement recordings, lessons from Nashville, and his new album...

Anita O'Day was a jazz singer who lived 'the jazz life'. She's been compared to people like Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald: an incredible singer, storyteller, and a deeply troubled drug user and alcoholic.  Despite the turmoil of her personal life, she's one of the most precise singers of her generation, on the beat and right in tune for every note.  Author James Gavin, who knew O'Day, returns...

American composer William Basinski's very long and much celebrated avant-garde electronic work The Disintegration Loops was born from the gradual decay of magnetic tape. It was created over a month in August and September 2001, during which time Basinski witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Centre from his New York apartment. 25 years later, the piece is being presented in its entirety in Mel...