The Music Show

ELISION Ensemble began as a Melbourne new music ensemble, but have gone on to become international in both focus and reputation, building enduring collaborations with some of the world's best modern composers. Elision turns 40 this year and the artistic director Daryl Buckley reflects on the ensemble's history and their birthday celebrations. The Go Twos began as a collaboration between Rosie McDo...

Guringai writer and creator Kaylene Langford is behind the mic for NAIDOC Week, with a celebration of Koori Radio for its 25th anniversary. "It's an ecosystem for song people" says Stiff Gins' Nardi Simpson, one of the acts championed by Sydney's Indigenous station. From beginnings in a Redfern terrace with a knocked-through wall to a cornerstone of Indigenous culture, it's a story of local connec...

It’s almost impossible to choose a Beatles song for Cover Story (we’ve been putting it off for three series). The band’s productivity in 1964 alone would give us ten good options. It was the year of their first - and second! - US tours, their one Australian tour, and the film A Hard Day’s Night. Can’t Buy Me Love inspired a wide and wild range of covers, so strap in with DOBBY and Vanessa Hughes f...

Stephen Foster's songs remain among the best known music to come out of the United States, with classics like Oh! Susannah, Hard Times (Come Again No More), and Old Folks At Home still covered to this day. He wrote with an ear to melody that saw his songs performed both in minstrel shows and in the parlour, and with an ambiguity that led to his lyrics being claimed by both sides prior to the civil...

Never Tear Us Apart began its life as a bluesy demo by INXS’s keyboardist and songwriter Andrew Farris. Frontman Michael Hutchence gave it lyrics, producer Chris Thomas gave it synthesisers, and the public gave it a place on every  Australian Music best-of list .  And the covers come from far and wide: you’ll hear English, American, Welsh, French and Lanarkshire accents amongst the covers.  Andy’s...

Alina Pash was last on the show back in 2021, before the Russian invasion of her country began. At that point, Pash said that she wanted to stay in Ukraine and be part of a strong emerging music scene there. Circumstances changed and Alina is now based in the USA, but she returned home last year with the Belgian-Canadian producer Apashe. Together, they recorded with local choirs in Kyiv, drawing o...

A love song, a football anthem, and a weapon of war for men with acoustic guitars: Noel Gallagher said he thought Wonderwall was an annoying song when he wrote it.  Cover Story dips more than a toe into the world of Britpop with composer and ex-Go-Between Amanda Brown, and conductor, composer and singer Dan Walker.  Every great song gets covered. Sometimes beautifully, sometimes badly, and sometim...

As one-half of A.B. Original, Trials was responsible for one of the key moments in Australian hip-hop over the last decade with the album Reclaim Australia. Away from that collaboration he’s worked with everyone from Paul Kelly to the Hilltop Hoods. His latest work though marks a debut of sorts - his first solo release, called Hendle . Shadow puppetry, dance theatre, and music are all part of a ne...

Cover Story makes a long overdue visit to the songwriting of Carole King, who with her then-husband Gerry Goffin wrote Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow as songwriters-for-hire in the Brill Building music factory of 1960s New York. Originally recorded and made famous by The Shirelles, King's own version of the song on 1971's Tapestry might be its most famous iteration, but there are many brilliant,...

Comedian David Mills takes his acerbic humour into the world of cabaret for this year's Adelaide Cabaret Festival. He joins Andy to talk about pessimism, storytelling, and picking the right song for the moment. Violist Lawrence Power joins the Australian Chamber Orchestra this month for a program wending its way through the rolling hills of English music, from Thomas Tallis and Henry Purcell to Jo...

Daniel Avery has been filling dancefloors around the world for more than a decade, both as a dj and with his own critically acclaimed records. On his latest, Tremor, Avery has embraced his love of rock and shoegaze, blending driving guitars with his normal electronics. Not content with one set of songs, Avery completely remixed his own album, turning it back to the dancefloor with his Midnight Ver...

Every great song gets covered. Sometimes beautifully, sometimes badly, and sometimes by people who clearly should have known better. Cover Story, returning for its third series, hunts down the best, the worst, and the downright strange versions of classic songs, and asks the question: why does this version give us goosebumps while that one makes our skin crawl? According to some Dolly Apocrypha, D...

A portrait of the legendary trumpeter Miles Davis on his centenary. We hear how Miles not only changed music but also the lives of those he played with. We've pulled interviews from The Music Show's archives with former bandmates including pianists Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, saxophonists Wayne Shorter and Gary Bartz, guitarist John McLaughlin, bassist Dave Holland as well as big fans of his m...

We pay tribute to Sonny Rollins, who died this week at the age of 95. Rollins played with many of the greats of jazz, but was himself something of loner. Driven by ideas of perfection, Rollins played into his 80s, but spent years away the music industry, including a famous three-year sabbatical where he played for no one other than himself on the Williamsburg Bridge in NYC. Andy spoke to Rollins i...

Hilary Geddes is a guitarist of understated virtuosity, and a composer of music that takes jazz into a rolling, lush, environmental register. Her latest album Redleaf, with the Hilary Geddes Quartet, is a record of the sounds she's heard, the music she's created, and the relationship between the players over the past four years. Kae Tempest returns to The Music Show ahead of his appearance at Vivi...

Barry Conyngham’s piece Ice Carving isn’t performed very often, and almost never in its intended configuration - a solo violinist surrounded by an audience, who are then surrounded by 4 string orchestras. It’s finally getting its proper form at The Ian Potter Centre in Melbourne and Barry takes us back to the inspiration, at The Imperial Palace in Tokyo. It's been 30 years since Mogwai released th...

Judy Small is a fixture of the Australian folk scene, a writer and performer of songs about politics and people. She joins Andy to recap the thirty-ish years since she was last on the show, including a career in family law and as a federal judge, and the process she's been undertaking of recording some of her last songs (Swansongs) and appearing at the 60th National Folk Festival. And Ce Benedict...

Xiu Xiu has been a leading figure in American avant-pop for more than two decades: combining abrasive noise and extremely dark subject matter with a catchy pop sensibility. It’s perhaps no surprise then that they’ve been drawn to the work of David Lynch, releasing their version of the music of Twin Peaks, and now, appearing at Dark Mofo in Tasmania to present their take on Eraserhead. Jamie Stewar...

American Singer-songwriter Connie Converse would be hard enough to pigeonhole had she not disappeared without a trace in 1974. She wrote folk songs, and art songs, and the story of her life and disappearance is a fascinating one. It's the subject of a biography called To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse  by Howard Fishman, who joins Andy to tell the tale and li...

Voiceless Mass, by Raven Chacon, can be performed in 'any space of worship with high ceilings and pipe organ' and plays with the amplifying power of a church's architecture, while commenting on the silencing of voices and languages that churches have been active in throughout their history. It won the composer the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2022 and is heading to the Rising Festival in Melbourne....

The American pianist Ruth Slenczynska, who died last week at the age of 101, was a childhood prodigy (although she denies the label). That came at a huge price, including a punishing concert schedule from the age of 4, orchestrated in the main by a tyrannical teacher-father. She went on to be one of the great pianists of the 20th century, playing duets with Harry Truman, touring with Arthur Fiedle...

Scottish composer Anna Meredith creates a meeting place between the concert platform and the rave in her music. Her piece for electronics and string quartet, Tuggemo, takes its name from an archaic English word for a swarm of bees, and demands to be heard loud. It's being given its Australian premiere by Omega Ensemble as part of their Howl concert season. Sophia Brous is an Australian composer ba...

Jeremy Sams is a composer, theatre director and a long-time friend of the show. He's the latest in our series of long conversations with old friends. He joined Andy recently in London to talk about how opera, music theatre and the industries behind the art forms have transformed over the years.  Music heard in the show: Title: Balloon MusicArtist: Royal Philharmonic OrchestraComposer: Jeremy SamsA...

ZÖJ, the collaboration between Gelareh Pour and Brian O'Dwyer perform the opening track from their new album, May The Devil’s Ear Be Deaf, live in the music show studios. The album was recorded at an artists retreat in Banff, Canada, and features music “built on fragility and on the fear of its own erasure." They also talk about performing a live score to a remarkable 1925 silent film, Grass: A Na...

The Mountain Goats started out as a solo project by then-psych nurse John Darnielle recording directly into a boombox in his room. Their latest album (Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan) is a "full-on musical", complete with french horn and a string section, recorded on what sound like very nice microphones. Darnielle's tastes and influences are esoteric and wide ranging, and so is this co...