The Music Show

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, which will have its Australian premiere at Melbourne International Film Festival. Monk, now 82, has a storied career as a composer, vocalist and choreographer as well as many other artistic pursuits, leading to savage reviews and bumpy relationships with traditional opera companies across her career. But her unique creativity has inspired people like David Byrne and Björk, both of whom appear as her advocates in Monk in Pieces. Billy Shebar joins Andy to trace the process by which he assembled the pieces. 

Australian music icon and proud Torres Strait Islander Christine Anu has just been given the NAIDOC Creative Talent Award for 2025. Last year, she released her first album of new music in 20 years. Waku-Minaral A Minalay was recorded across the Pacific in places like New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Torres Strait Islands and the Solomon Islands - utilising traditional percussion instruments like the Warup (drums), the Urub (shakers) and the Kulap (seed pot rattles). It’s a deeply personal bilingual album which includes songs written by Christine Anu, her grandfather and her daughter. 

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 interrogates our dominant cultural narratives, written amidst the 2023 referendum. He also recently had his orchestral composition Nyirrimarr Ngamatyata / To Lose Yourself at Sea premiered by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

The Stiff Gins are 25 years into what they hope is a lifelong partnership. Yuwaalaraay woman Nardi Simpson and Yorta Yorta and Wiradjuri woman Kaleena Briggs look back at a quarter century of making music together, from their first meeting at Eora college, to the changing landscape of language and touring. Back in 2023 they chatted to Andy and performed two songs live in The Music Show studio. 

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 studied piano with Enrique Barenboim (father of Daniel) and later, in Paris, composition with Olivier Messiaen. In addition to his other TV work (Mannix, Starksy & Hutch) and film scores (Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Enter the Dragon), Schifrin composed and arranged for Dizzy Gillespie and pioneered "Jazz meets the Symphony" concerts, with which he travelled the world. He died last week, aged 93, and we remember him with an interview from 2006.

This year marks 200 years of organ music in Australia, after the first instrument was brought on a convict ship to Hobart from London in 1825. Thomas Heywood is an organist based in Bendigo and speaks to Andrew about how the gold rush a few decades later lead to an influx of pipe organs in his region, changing the personalities of the towns (and seeing Bendigo dubbed "the Vienna of the south"). The Keys Of Gold festival is happening throughout July in Bendigo, Castlemaine, Maldon and Inglewood, and Thomas speaks to Andrew about programming organ repertoire for modern tastes, and his abiding love of these grand instruments.

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 bluegrass, with songs of love and loss punctuated by fiddle, pedal steel guitar and… yodelling. Brian is in The Music Show studio to perform two songs from the album live and talk about his endless musical flexibility.

And on the 100th anniversary of his death, Andy remembers Erik Satie, composer of delicate, contemplative piano works, and “obscene” operas. A true eccentric, his personal quirks (such as keeping two broken pianos on top of each other in his flat, one filled to the brim with unopened mail) paint a complicated picture when set alongside his meditative, introspective Gnossiennes and Gymnopédies. Pianist and conductor Reinbert De Leeuw speaks about the unique challenges of performing them, in an interview from The Music Show archives.

Plus, hear new music from jazz guitarist Mary Halvorson, and The Rolling Stones pay tribute to 'the king of zydeco' Clifton Chenier.

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 art-pop sound with hip hop production and a persona of magnetic self-assurance. The albums that followed represented two very different coming of age moments – 2017’s Melodrama and 2021’s Solar Power – for a young artist confronted with fame. Now, after over a decade in the public eye, Virgin walks the tightrope between experimentation and hitmaking pop, metaphorical obscurity and confessional sincerity. Ella joins Andy via zoom. 

Composer Christine Pan’s new song cycle The Parts We Give has already had multiple lives. It’s being performed live this weekend with two singers (Megan Kim and Wesley Yu) who perform the roles of Jiejie and Didi (‘sister’ and ‘brother’). But it’s also a DIY video game. Producer Ce talks to Christine about how operatic vocals, glitchy hyperpop, and 8-bit gameplay can tell the story of love in a Chinese-Australian home.

The Parts We Give is at ESCAC by Brand X in Sydney, 27-28 June

You can play the game via Fable Arts here

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 to jazz.

This career spanning conversation was originally recorded in 2019, and we’re running it again to celebrate four of Margret's albums from the 1980s and 90s being made available on Bandcamp for the first time (via Chapter Music).

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 present – climate change, colonisation, personal histories – with an imagined future narrative through Omar’s inimitable spoken word and Mariel’s fearless cello, which we’ll get a sneak preview of from the Riverside Theatres rehearsal room. 

Guy Blackman was a Pink Floyd-obsessed teenager living in Perth when he started a Syd Barrett fanzine which eventually morphed into the beloved indie record label Chapter Music. For 33 years the label has released albums by Australian bands and artists like NO ZU, Twerps, June Jones, Laura Jean, alongside reissues and compilations from international artists like Kath Bloom and Smokey. This year Guy is winding the label back, choosing to focus solely on reissues. He chats to Andrew about three decades of change in the music landscape, and about his new solo album Out Of Sight, which belatedly follows up his 2008 debut Adult Baby. 

And Andy remembers Alfred Brendel, the pianist who has died at the age of 94. 

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 ancestors as well as Scots Traveller singers like Lizzie Higgins, whose deep connection to the land has been expressed beautifully in song for generations. She speaks to Andy about arranging ballad and piping traditions, the melodic influence of the Irish uilleann pipes on this record, and why travelling across the landscape on a horse changes one’s perspective and approach to music. 

The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson was a pop genius. He wrote some of the loveliest tunes of the 1960s and fitted them out with harmonies that sounded like no one else's. He also produced the recording, so can legitimately be credited with creating the band's sonic image. He drew inspiration from Chuck Berry's guitar licks, tuning them into the sound of surf, and Phil Spector's studio-built orchestration, adding harpsichord, sleigh bells and a theremin. What resulted, was something completely distinctive and instantly recognisable as the Beach Boys.

The Music Show pays tribute to Brian with some gems from the archives, including an interview with Andrew Ford from 2002.

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 popular in Afghanistan, but rarely heard in Iran despite having an ancient history there. Now living in Australia, Ashkan's own music blends 'forbidden music' influences with traditional Persian music and his love of jazz and funk. His new EP Hunter was developed as part of the Artist Accelerator Program by Music in Exile — an initiative supporting artists from non-English language backgrounds to launch music careers in Australia. 

Is it Aphrodite’s fault that the beauty industry has never been more powerful? That’s the question that Aphrodite, a new work by American composer Nico Muhly and Australian playwright Laura Lethlean, asks in its world premiere by Sydney Chamber Opera. Starring Sydney Chamber Opera stalwart Jessica O’Donoghue, and Puerto Rican soprano Meechot Marrero in her Australian debut, it’s an exploration of beauty and pleasure underscored by Omega Ensemble. Jess, Meechot and SCO Artistic Director Jack Symonds join Andy to give a sneak preview of the work.

We say farewell to Terry Harper who is retiring after 49 years tuning the pianos in the ABC studios in Sydney. His work has been heard on thousands of recordings and live performances across Radio National, Jazz, Classic, local radio and more. We’ll hear from Terry about the two essential skills that every piano tuner must have.

Plus, a track to remember Sly Stone who died this week at 82.

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 natural world, particularly his adopted home of Alaska, Adams’ music has confronted the climate change, anger, and grief since the 1970s. He might be best known for his trio of Become works, one of which, Become Ocean, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2014. Despite his love of extremes, he’s found himself residing in Canberra where Andy spoke to him about his career, his landscapes, and what’s brought him to our nation’s fair capital.