Eddie Perfect has been to Broadway and back with music theatre composer credits including Beetlejuice and King Kong, not to mention home-grown hit Shane Warne: The Musical. Now he’s set to play as Dr Pangloss and Voltaire in Leonard Bernstein’s exquisitely convoluted opera Candide with Victorian Opera, and he talks to Andy about how a work written during McCarthyism, based on a novel written during the 7 Years War, finds new resonance now.While the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur has had countless retellings, in operas, plays, movies and more, none have been quite like Labyrinth, the new ‘dance-opera/piano concerto’ from Melbourne’s Forest Collective. In this version the absent Minotaur is felt through a “big virtuosic piano part” played by acclaimed soloist Danaë Killian. She and composer Evan J Lawson join Andy to talk about this innovative new production.Plus new music from DOBBY and Emily Wurramara.

Richard Tognetti, artistic director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, returns to The Music Show to catch up with Andy about River, the latest in the ACO’s series of cinematic collaborations, and looks back at the way the pandemic has shaped the ensemble and the classical music scene more widely.In the 1970s, trailblazing Australian dancer Phillippa Cullen developed a set of ‘pressure-sensitive floors’, but after her tragic early death they sat unused in a dusty corner of the University of Adelaide for forty-odd years. That is until Dr Iran Sanadzadeh stumbled upon them, ultimately developing her own new set of floors christened the terpsichora for the Greek muse of dance. Iran joins Andy to talk about this unusual instrument and her innovative compositional practice, culminating in her new album Ocean, Again.And we remember Broadway legend Chita Rivera, who has died at the age of 91, with a 2006 interview from The Music Show archives.

Formed out of a love for Django Reinhardt and excellent band-name puns, Cigány Weaver play in a style reminiscent of jazz Manouche, traditional swing and Romani music. We hosted the full six-piece band in The Music Show studio where they delivered a performance rich in energetic fiddling, gentle strumming and soaring vocals, playing two songs drawn from their new album Episode II: Still Water.Scottish composer Stuart MacRae had set medieval poetry to music before, but it wasn’t until he heard Australian mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean’s take on his setting of the anonymous poem ‘The Lif of this World’ that he found a collaborator that “got it straight away”. Stuart began writing new compositions specifically for Lotte’s voice, resulting in the album Earth thy cold is keen, and they joined Andy for a chat about their collaboration.And music from Irish powerhouse Lisa O’Neill, who is on tour around Australia now and will be joining us live on stage at WOMADelaide on 9 March.

When Irish singer songwriter David Keenan came onto the scene he was described as “the sound of Tim Buckley and Brendan Behan arguing over a few jars, while Kavanagh deals Dylan a suspicious hand of cards, and Anthony Cronin and Jack Kerouac furiously try to scribble it all down” – so no pressure there. He talks about wearing those comparisons, writing songs about Ireland, and the story behind his guitar as well as performing new music live.David Lumsdaine was an Australian composer who spent most of his life outside Australia, and retired from composing almost thirty years ago. He died this month at the age of 92 and Michael Hooper, who wrote the book on Lumsdaine’s music, joins Andy to talk about his legacy. And we hear Lumsdaine himself, amongst the birds of his beloved dawn chorus, from the archives.Plus new music from Maanyung and Emma Donovan.

This is the story a song written by Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly around a campfire in 1988. What started off as a casually recorded folk number has become what Carmody calls “a kind of cultural love song”: a foundational entry in the Australian songbook.2023’s NAIDOC Week theme was “For Our Elders”, so RN’s Rudi Bremer went to speak with Kev Carmody at his studio on Kambuwal Country to gather his recollections of From Little Things Big Things Grow as it started, the story of the Gurindji Walk Off that inspired it, and the many different iterations he’s performed and heard in the last thirty years.Wik and South Sea Islander rapper Ziggy Ramo, Electric Fields vocalist Zaachariaha Fielding from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands and Adelaide producer Michael Ross, and Zillmere State School Year 7 Class of 2003 student Tonii-Lee Betts join Craig Tilmouth to talk about their interpretations of the song that Carmody says “belongs to everyone now”.

Robbie speaks to Electric Fields -  Zaachariaha Fielding and Michael Ross about the perspectives that have been infused into the music through collaborative songwriting and Zaachariaha's upbringing in Mimili (APY Lands). After noticing their undeniable creative spark back in 2015, they have been making music together that hark back to the days watching Rage on the weekends, while adding their own individual sounds and stories to the mix.And Andy talks to the Stiff Gins, who are 24 years into what they hope is a lifelong partnership. Yuwaalaraay woman Nardi Simpson and Yorta Yorta and Wiradjuri woman Kaleena Briggs look back at their almost quarter century and the changing landscape of music and language with live performance in The Music Show studio.

Author Oliver Soden tackles the public and private personas of Noël Coward in his biography Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward. He joins Andy on to unpack the way that life yielded one of the most productive artistic careers of the 20th century.Including scenes from Private Lives, performed by Geraldine Turner, Dennis Olsen, and Guy Noble from The Music Show archives. 

Marcia Hines marks fifty years since her debut recording, but her life in music started long before that. Raised with gospel in Boston, she was at Woodstock when she was 16 and then shortly after on her way to Australia to star in the local production of Hair. And then she stayed. After Hair came touring in a jazz band with B.B. King, then Jesus Christ Superstar, before being crowned Queen of Pop. A huge career across pop, jazz, disco and more followed and is still going with Marcia touring across her adopted Australia.As a reflection of his Butchulla, Garrwa, South-Sea Islander and Tongan backgrounds, Fred Leone's music is captivating cocktail of Language, collaboration and storytelling. He speaks to Andrew about his own musical upbringing and how he works with other musicians including trials (A.B. Original), Birdz and Samuel Pankhurst.

An hour in the company of music writer James Gavin whose biographies include George Michael, Chet Baker and Peggy Lee. Gavin discusses ‘ravaged’ voices;  singers whose voices became utterly wrecked in old age like Billie Holiday and Alessandro Moreschi. Or in the case of Marianne Faithful where age wearied the voice in a new and haunting way. We hear high voices that never dropped like Jimmy Scott and Peter Pears and Joan Baez whose technique only improved with age. And not forgetting the drama that became the hallmark of Johnny Cash’s late singing.

ANOHNI & the Johnsons return with My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, and Robbie visits the ACO studios to chat with Will Gregory and his Moog Ensemble.

Pop music is an art, it’s a science, it’s an industrial complex. Ring in the new year with some of your favourite pop hits, and a favourite conversation from 2023.

New albums from some of the most iconic voices of 2023: Hozier chats about Unreal Unearth, and Benjamin Appl on Forbidden Fruit. 

Two friends of The Music Show drop by the live music studio with performances from their 2023 releases.

The Music Show on RN Summer revisits conversations with Don Walker and Rob Hao.

Andy Irvine is the quintessential Irish traditional musician and songwriter, but he was born in 1940s London. Since then he’s been a huge part of the wave that popularised Irish music and folk music more broadly, and he joins us in The Music Show studio to play and reflect on a life on stage.

The Sound of White was Missy Higgins' debut album and includes tracks written in her teenage bedroom, on her post-high school backpacking trip, and in LA studios sponsored by her new record label. She rocketed to stardom back in 2004 and as that breakthrough record is about to celebrate its twentieth anniversary, Missy talks to The Music Show producer Ce Benedict about how it came together and how she looks back on it now.Judith Hill is one of the subjects of the documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, having been a backing vocalist for many years. Now she’s about to head to Sydney Festival and her parents – who met when they joined the same 70s funk band – are on tour with her.  These days, she is very much a frontwoman, and she tells Andrew about her life as a hardworking musician and finding her own sound whilst working with stars like Michael Jackson and Prince.And composer, dramaturg, director, writer, collaborator, and friend of the Music Show Felix Cross talks about a project that has been simmering away over the last few years that is coming to fruition early next year in India. Working with the Akshar Trust, Felix is creating new musical opportunities for children with hearing impairment, and devising a stage adaptation of the short film Vishwamitri Villas with his collaborator in life and theatre, Kristine Landon-Smith.

Richard Mills finishes up thirteen years at the helm of Victorian Opera at the end of this year, and his opera Galileo gets its concert premiere as a kind of farewell. He’s got plenty to look back on and to look forward to as well as opera in Australia and worldwide goes through a kind of sea change.And we look back at some of The Music Show’s favourite live sessions from the year with jazz piano, classical chamber music, monk punk and a vacuum cleaner plugged into a clarinet. Not to mention the banjos – multiple banjos. Music from Throat Pleats, Party Dozen, Buddhadatta and Shogo Yoshii, Mike Nock, members of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and Abigail Washburn and Bela Fleck.

2023 marks the centenary of Hank Williams' birth. Even if you’re allergic to country music, the music you listen to would likely be somehow traced back to this seminal singer and songwriter. In fact, there might be quite a few songs you’ve heard by some of your favourite legendary singers that were actually written many years earlier by Hank. Get to know Hank’s music, his life and his legacy through archive interviews with his biographer Colin Escott, a chat with Lucky Oceans from 2019, and a story from Billy Joe Shaver that he shared in 2002.And Emily Granger joins us in the live music studio with her harp to talk through the ins and outs of her instrument and share some very handy tips about writing for the harp. Emily was raised in Missouri but has called Australia home for the last seven years, and he’s just released an album of duets for harp and Sally Walker’s flute called Something Like This. She has been appointed Principal Harp at the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and is about to head down to the Mornington Peninsula for their annual Peninsula Summer Music Festival. 

British violinist Anthony Marwood returns to our shores where he’s playing a series of concerts in duet with accordionist James Crabb for the Australian Chamber Orchestra.As a soloist, chamber musician, orchestra director, and festival director he’s a man with many strings to his bow, but we’ll try not to let that horrific pun get in the way of a good, in-depth conversation between Anthony and Andrew.They talk about working with composers like Thomas Adès, Sally Beamish, learning from Emanuel Hurwitz, and collaborating with Sinead O'Connor. 

Following the release of her second studio album Hertz, Perth-based singer-songwriter Carla Geneve chats to Andrew about channelling the experiences of her bipolar diagnosis into her music and resisting the temptations of becoming the “tortured artist”. Describing the record as a “concept album,” Hertz is a continuation of her previous release Learn to Like It, but takes on a new, raw sound that still maintains an authentic Aussie twang.Reflecting the melting pot of Adelaide, Nexus Arts Orchestra adds new dimensions to the idea of “Contemporary Australian Music”. The group is made up of performers from varying musical backgrounds, and include instruments like the guzheng, shamisen and santur alongside a string section, vocals and flamenco guitar. They have just released a three-track EP, featuring co-composed music and songs by Ngaanyatjarra singer-songwriter Vonda Last.And we remember one of the greatest Irish songwriters and frontman of The Pogues, Shane MacGowan, who died this week at the age of 65. He was renowned for the powerful sound he derived from Irish traditional music and punk.

Celebrate 100 years of  broadcast radio in Australia with The Music Show in a live recording at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) in Canberra!In front of a live audience, we are joined by the NFSA's Sound Curator Thorsten Kaeding, pianist and Deputy Head of School at the ANU School of Music Scott Davie, and local experimental musician Sia Ahmad for a chat about the impact of broadcast radio on music, and music's influence on the development of media.We delve into the archives of the NFSA and the ABC to listen to recordings from lacquer discs recorded by ABC's war correspondent Chester Wilmot in Tobruk during the second world war, some of a Prix Italia winning work, and live performances by Sia and a boombox and Thorsten playing an original wax cylinder.

Ashley Naylor is guitarist who has played in many bands. He has his own bands, like Even, plays in other bands like The Church, and is even in bands on TV, like The RocKwiz Orkestra. In fact, you may have heard his guitar on The Music Show, but this time, he is on the program to talk about his most recent release - a new album of instrumental music called Soundtracks Volume 2, a follow up to his 2020 lockdown album Soundtracks Volume 1.Founding member of No Fixed Address and Mixed Relations and the godfather of Australian reggae, Bart Willoughby makes his Music Show debut. He is an alumni of CASM (Centre for Aborignal Studies in Music) in Adelaide and has toured internationally with bands like Yothu Yindi. In this interview, we journey into Bart’s incredible story as a multi-instrumentalist, and how he came to be one of the most significant figures in Australian songwriting. 

Fred Smith is that classic combo: troubadour and a diplomat. Now based back in Canberra, his career as a singer-songwriter is defined by his time in Bougainville and Afghanistan. But his new album, Look, is "a collection of songs that are not about Afghanistan", and features tributes to Leonard Cohen and Helen Garner, the latter of which he performs live in The Music Show studio. Jazz duo Claire Cross and Harry Cook's debut album for ABC Jazz, Dialect, melds her electric bass with his genre-bending piano. They join Andy from Berlin to talk about an album firmly rooted in the Australian landscape. 

Gelareh Pour and Brian O'Dwyer have been playing music together for over 10 years and have just released their debut full-length album under the project name ZÖJ. They describe the ZÖJ as an "ongoing conversation" that combines Gelareh's Persian music background and Brian's experimental percussion to create new Australian music. Their album Fil O Fenjoon was recorded in the Primrose Potter Salon of the Melbourne Recital Centre.Cellist Anthony Albrecht is co-director of The Bowerbird Collective alongside Simone Slattery, a project "crossing the arts/science divide" in blending music and conservation. As they gear up for the inaugural Lyrebird Festival, Anthony talks about historical performance, finding music in nature, and whether frogs sing quite so beautifully as birds.

Robyn Archer has spent the past year touring An Australian Songbook – it’s not The Australian songbook but it takes a swathe of Australian songwriting from household singalongs to new art song and weaves a wry and touching portrait of the continent. She spends an hour with Andy looking at the songbook as it has taken shape: from First Nations folksong, to yodelling, to the menstruation blues.

‘So much of traditional jazz is about romantic love,’ says saxophonist Holly Moore. ‘I feel like there’s never really that much on friendships and the other relationships in our lives”. Her debut album for ABC Jazz, Reunion, is a five-part suite about those bonds, from adolescence to adulthood.   We catch up with 2022 Classical Freedman Fellow Katie Yap about the project she undertook with the prize. Multitudes has seen Katie improvising, composing and performing with four unique collaborators. We talk about birds, words and get an update on what's cooking in Katie's kitchen. And we get a glimpse into The Journey Down - a project that took a car wreck-turned-sonic sculpture on the road from Kununurra to Perth.

Good times and bum times, she’s seen them all and she’s here: Geraldine Turner, lynchpin of the Australian music theatre scene from 1970s repertory to the current run of Wicked, reflects on her massive career (so far), her love of Sondheim, and Judy Garland.

The Music Show catches up with Lance Ferguson and Kylie Auldist from funk/soul stalwarts The Bamboos in between their month-long Melbourne residency and a multi-city European tour, to hear about the new album This Is How You Do It, featuring Kylie's son Reginald AK.  In Song Circle at the upcoming Clancestry festival, Troy Cassar-Daley celebrates the life of his late mother and the sharing of songs and stories that got him through the grieving process of Sorry Business. With his daughter Jem joining him for this performance and on recent tours, he tells Andrew about the intersection of music and family. And Sarah Blasko on writing music for Shakespeare’s most musical play, Twelfth Night, which is underway at Bell Shakespeare.

Conor Oberst and his trio Bright Eyes are by many accounts the group most responsible for the indie-folk boom of the mid-2000s. Bright Eyes is touring the country and Conor swings by The Music Show to talk about revisiting and reworking his old songs after the band’s return from a long hiatus. Vanessa Perica’s second album, The Eye Is The First Circle, builds on the lush foundations of her first. In a time when the big band seems somewhat nostalgic she joins Andy to prove that the Vanessa Perica Orchestra has its feet firmly planted in the present. And she remembers Carla Bley, the unique bandleader who died last week.

Two musically different Australian outfits in Melbourne and Adelaide join The Music Show with live performances. Hand to Earth grew out of a musical conversation started by vocalist Sunny Kim and Yolŋu Songman Daniel Wilfred during an Australian Art Orchestra residency in the remote highlands of Tasmania. Since that first collaboration, Hand to Earth has become an ensemble involving Aviva Endean, David Wilfred and Peter Knight, and they are on the cusp on a new record release and performance at the Melbourne International Jazz Festival. Joined by Polish violinist Amalia Umeda, their show The Crow is a new commission that follows the songline of the crow (waak waak) in Arnhem Land.  And ahead of their second appearance at OzAsia Festival, Hyoshi in Counterpoint drop by our the studio in Adelaide to give us a taste of their music. They're an ensemble of six women from different musical backgrounds, bringing together the sounds of Shamisen, Guzheng, strings, keyboard and a rather quirky drum-kit to create musical responses to visual artworks.

New Zealand composer Annea Lockwood has become a staple in the American experimental community over the last 60 years. Her extensive body of work includes Piano Transplants – a series that includes her well-known Piano Burning and Southern Exposure – the premiere of which went awry when the piano went AWOL in Perth…  The Music Show goes to the art gallery, where Annea is rehearsing for the premiere of a new piece, created with Brisbane composer and percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson at the AGNSW’s Volume Festival. We chat about her career, listening to rivers and her latest release – Tête-à-tête – a record made with her late partner Ruth Anderson.

Jazz singer Cécile McLorin Salvant's latest album Mélusine brings together the high-concept dreaminess of her lockdown album Ghost Song with the powerful band leadership of her earlier work. Cécile joins Andy ahead of her tour to Australia to draw a line from her Kate Bush covers to her 12th Century Occitan folk song renditions. Author Stephen Downes reveals the strange and shortened life of the American pianist William Kapell, who died in a plane accident seventy years ago. Violist Henry Justo is the 2023 recipient of one of Australia’s major instrumental prizes, the Freedman Classical Fellowship, which gives him a grant towards a major performance project. Henry stops by The Music Show studio to reveal his plans for the fellowship and how Debussy clinched the final competition for him.

No-No Boy is a project conceived by academic and musician Julian Saporiti that channels his research on Asian-American histories into song. His music is built on samples he has recorded at Japanese-American interment camps, in national parks, and with museum archives. Julian has just released his third album, Empire Electric, which is a melting pot of American folk, field recordings and a melange of English, French and Vietnamese languages.  And The Music Show takes a trip to Art Gallery New South Wales to meet some of the artists performing at their new festival of sound and vision, Volume. We speak to Japanese sound artist FUJI||||||||||TA who has travelled to Australia with his hand-fabricated Pipe Organ for his southern hemisphere premiere. We also get a sneak peek of his performance at his sound check in the Oil Tank Gallery of Sydney Modern, the new wing of the Art Gallery of NSW.  

Iranian composer and pianist Shervin Mirzeinali’s opera Panbe Zan recreates the process of preparing cotton to be turned into cloth, featuring traditional Persian music interleaved with the rhythms and timbres of the Panbe Zani’s ritual. He’s also set to open the inaugural Iranian Music Festival in Sydney, and brings in the co-founder and setar player Ehsan Kachooei to demonstrate some of the music the audience will get to hear at the Festival. Christopher Sainsbury’s new opera The Visitors is the latest in a series of interpretations of Jane Harrison’s play of the same name. Christopher tells Andy how the score is inspired not only by the play text but by the sound world of Eora and Dharug Country, from the echoes of sandstone gullies to the song of the butcherbird.

“When you’re singing Byrd’s music today, you’re just taking his instructions from four hundred years ago, but you’re making contemporary music with them”. William Byrd was a composer of sacred – and secret – Catholic music in Protestant England. To mark 400 years since his death, Andy talks to Early Music specialist Christopher Watson, who is gearing up to perform his work with the Song Company, and we’ll hear Byrd’s biographer Kerry McCarthy from the Music Show archives.

South African vocal group the Soweto Gospel Choir consider Australia to be a kind of second home. They’re on a mammoth four month tour of the continent, performing at venues across NSW and Victoria across October, via a stop to sing for us live in the Music Show studio. The baryton is a small character in the history of music – you’d be forgiven if you’d never heard of the instrument, let along heard it played. Melbourne-based Laura Vaughan is a specialist early music performer who plays the baryton in the Gryphon Baryton Trio, alongside Katie Yap on Viola and Joesphine Vains on cello. They are presenting a concert of pieces for baryton trio by the instrument’s most prolific composer Joseph Haydn, and join us in the studio to give us a taste of music from the Esterházy court. And we remember Australian opera singer Jacqueline Dark who has died at the age of fifty five.

Can The Music Show do an entire decade in an hour? We’re certainly going to give it a go with the help of Tony Wellington, former Mayor of Noosa, current bird photographer, and author of Vinyl Dreams: How The 1970s Changed Music. From the collapse of the 1960s dream with the end of the Beatles, the deaths of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, to the arrival of rap and the Walkman at the end of the decade, it was a time of change, prompting at least one 70s artist to ask: What’s Going On?

Jim Denley and the natural environment have been longtime collaborators, in fact, he is perhaps one of the very few musicians who has played outdoors more than inside. Over the past few years, he’s been documenting those collaborations across various locations, including the Budawangs and the city of Sydney, and recently released two albums.  Sydney Chamber Opera stages a triple bill of one act operas for single singer in a program called earth.voice.body. Director Clemence Williams and soprano Celeste Lazarenko join Andrew to reveal their treatment of works by Francis Poulenc and Kaija Saariaho that pull apart the operatic form and the human psyche.

Author Oliver Soden tackles the public and private personas of Noël Coward in his autobiography Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward. He joins Andy on to unpack the way that life yielded one of the most productive artistic careers of the 20th century.

Led by husband and wife Mohamed and Anna Camara, Jarabi Band fuses West African instruments with jazz to explore stories of contemporary African and Australian musical culture. They are releasing their debut album Duniama, which features songs written in Guinean languages Malinke and Susu. And the Alma Moodie Quartet, featuring violinists Kristian Winther and Anna da Silva Chen, take their name from one of Australia’s great historical violinists. They perform live in studio ahead of gigs at the Sydney Opera House and Baroque Hall Adelaide, revealing how Moodie’s legacy feeds into what and how they play.

Saskia Rao-de Haas took her Dutch cello to India, learnt the complex raga system and stayed. She’s modified the instrument whose ‘voice’ sits curiously well in the world of Indian classical music. With her musical partner and husband Shubhendra Rao they’re in Australia performing ‘jugalbandi’, blending the music of northern and southern India. And they pay respects to their musical gurus Pandit Ravi Shankar and Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia. Mark Isaacs is impossible to pigeon-hole as one of Australia’s most talented musicians. Once he was a jazz pianist.  But things change.  He’s written three symphonies,  conducts, composes film music and he fiddles impressively with standards.  Mark sits down at the piano to preview his latest work Sonata.  And he gives us a bonus rumination on Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now which is part of a forthcoming concert re-imagining songs by Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach, and others.

Screen composer Hildur Guðnadóttir is becoming a household name, having written the music to films such as The Joker, Tár and series Chernobyl. Most recently, she has crafted an eerie score to accompany the latest instalment in Kenneth Branagh's film series based on Agatha Christie's Poirot. In the soundtrack for the new film, A Haunting in Venice, Guðnadóttir incorporates plainchant-like themes and darkly jarring melodies. She brings us into the world of screen music and different ways in which she has worked with directors to bring these stories to life. Melbourne-based new music outfit Rubiks Collective join forces with choreographer and dancer Gerard van Dyck, visual artist Sal Cooper and composer Kate Neal for the premiere of A Book of Hours. We speak to co-Artistic Directors of Rubiks Collective Kaylie Melville and Tamara Kohler about the expanded forms of music they commission, as well as brushing their teeth; and Kate Neal looks at time through the music of Scarlatti, Rameau and Couperin. 

for the conductor, the rehearsal is the gig... Umberto Clerici’s CV lists principal cellist, chamber musician, educator, soloist and now conductor, as the newly appointed Chief Conductor of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra It’s an unusual trajectory from orchestra to podium, a post usually inhabited by soloists, not former orchestral musicians. He says the physicality of the cello lends itself to conducting as well as playing at the bottom of the orchestra.  He also credits COVID to his break with the baton and tells us how he needs to balance being a ‘traffic controller with inspirer’.

We spend the hour with two of Australia's award-winning woodwind musicians. ABC Classic’s Young Performer of the Year Eliza Shephard, plays repertoire that's not for the faint-hearted. A talented flautist, she calls on singing, acting and an extraordinary technique to perform extremely ambitious music which ranges from Cage and Takemitsu to Hindson and Vine. Eliza plays live on The Music Show with percussionist Alexander Meagher and discusses her uncompromising concert programming and the enigmatic glissando head joint. Clarinets were once a mainstay of jazz but less so these days. Phillippa Murphy-Haste received a gong this week for her clarinet work and a nice swag of money to match, taking out the Freedman Jazz Fellowship. Equally ambitious in playing and programming as her colleague above, Phillippa writes for and performs in a multitude of bands and this week heads to Sweden to complete her large work-in-progress Kairos, as part of her Freedman prize.

The Cat Empire strikes back with a new line-up and sound. In 2021, The Cat Empire announced that they were disbanding after more than 20 years and played their final show with the original line up at Bluesfest in 2022. Fast forward a year and The Cat Empire's new crew has released Where the Angels Fall which takes us to a re-energised sound world where Cuba meets Mexico via Mauritius and the Seychelles.  London-based Australian pianist Rob Hao drops in to chat about his project Schubert Overwritten which he is presenting in Melbourne and Sydney. Schubert is known for his lasting influence on the music that came after him, but also for his incomplete music - both of which come into question when new composers attempt to write endings to those works. 

Kurt Elling is probably best known as a purveyor of vocalese, having inherited the mantle from Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross. But Elling is scratching a whole new itch with his SuperBlue project. Electro- funk meets hip-hop beats. Is this jazz?  Find out when Mr Elling is in the house paying his respects to jazz greats that came before. Laura Murphy is the composer and lyricist for a new musical The Dismissal. It takes audiences back to that fateful day in November 1975 and a constitutional crisis that overshadowed the Whitlam years. This world premiere is seen through the eyes of that famous satirical character in these events, Norman Gunston.

An hour in the company of music writer James Gavin whose biographies include George Michael, Chet Baker and Peggy Lee. Gavin discusses ‘ravaged’ voices;  singers whose voices became utterly wrecked in old age like Billie Holiday and Alessandro Moreschi. Or in the case of Marianne Faithful where age wearied the voice in a new and haunting way. We hear high voices that never dropped like Jimmy Scott and Peter Pears and Joan Baez whose technique only improved with age. And not forgetting the drama that became the hallmark of Johnny Cash’s late singing.

Friends of the show Fanny Lumsden and Georgia Mooney join Andrew to play songs from their new albums live in The Music Show studio.  One quarter of All Our Exes Live in Texas, Georgia Mooney, has released her long-awaited debut solo album called Full of Moon. Made in the times of travel restrictions with musicians in London, Brighton, Bonn, Los Angeles, New York and Sydney, the album is a collage of lush musical landscapes and melodies with a certain nostalgic touch.  We catch up with Australian country singer-songwriter Fanny Lumsden, who was previously on the show with her album Fallow. Hey Dawn is Fanny's fourth studio album, threaded together by her memories of growing up in the Snowy Mountains. Fanny chats to Andrew about the new world of Hey Dawn, and the characters and muses that have inspired the songs on the album. 

Principal Horn of the Berlin Philharmonic, Stefan Dohr visits the studio to talk about working within that orchestra, Strauss’s second horn concerto, and Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings. Composer and dramaturg Meta Cohen says they approach their music like a dramaturg and their theatre like a musician. It’s a creative combination that’s led to their choral and vocal writing being a finalist in the 2023 Art Music Awards, as well as being the first non-male composer to be performed in a UK Orthodox Synagogue. They join Andy to talk about all that plus their ABC-commissioned song cycle a love is a love is a love. And pioneering electronic composer Beverly Glenn Copeland on his recently rediscovered classic album Keyboard Fantasies and his new album The Ones Ahead.

Irish singer-songwriter Hozier’s third studio album Unreal Unearth takes Dante’s Divine Comedy and its circles of hell as its inspiration. Drawing from blues, soul and Celtic traditional music, he’s known for taking his time releasing new music and this is no exception. He joins Andy to talk about singing in the Irish language, finding a limit to his capacity for solitude, and finding new heights to his exceptional voice. Franz Liszt certainly kept himself busy, as we learn from pianists Michael Kieran Harvey and Paavali Jumppanen. A child prodigy paraded around by his father, he came to create the recital format as we know it today. After whipping up what has been termed Lisztomania, Liszt took a step back from the spotlight at the age of 38, and instead committed himself to conducting, composing, teaching and womanising.  Michael Kieran Harvey contemplates what Liszt might be doing if he were alive today through a program that includes pieces by Liszt, Harvey's own compositions and music that has come in between. He will be performing these programs along Jumppanen, Timothy Young, and pianists from the Australian National Academy of Music.  Franz Liszt certainly kept himself busy, as we learn from pianists Michael Kieran Harvey and Paavali Jumppanen. A child prodigy paraded around by his father, he came to create the recital format that resulted in concert halls packed to the rafters, and what has now been termed Lisztomania. After taking a step back from the spotlight at the age of 38, he took on a variety of different roles - conducting, composing, teaching and womanising.  In a two-concert series, Michael Kieran Harvey contemplates what Liszt might be doing if he were alive today through a program that includes pieces by Liszt, Harvey's own compositions and music that has come in between. He will be performing these programs along Jumppanen, Timothy Young, and pianists from the Australian National Academy of Music.

As ABC Science Week asks Australia what the nation’s favourite animal sound is, The Music Show looks at the unique musical relationship between humans and birds. From Olivier Messiaen’s trio of birds written when he was in a Polish concentration camp, to English folkie Sam Lee, Muruwari and Filipino rapper DOBBY, and zoomusicologist (dream job) and violinist Hollis Taylor’s duets with birds, and David Lumsdaine’s composition-by-dawn-chorus.

Karen O'Connor is a long-time friend of Joan Baez, and one of the directors for the new documentary Joan Baez I am a Noise, which tells the story of the iconic American singer, songwriter and activist. It follows her in the lead up to her last tour. With a career that has spanned over 60 years, Joan has accumulated a lifetime of joy and heartbreak, and a trove of diaries, tape letters and paintings that have captured her own private moments that have run parallel, and at times intersected with major historical events.  Karen talks about the unique journey that unfolds throughout the film as Joan candidly reflects on her career. As a reflection of his Butchulla, Garrwa, South-Sea Islander and Tongan backgrounds, Fred Leone's music is captivating cocktail of Language, collaboration and storytelling. He speaks to Andrew about his own musical upbringing and how he works with other musicians including trials (A.B. Original), Birdz and Samuel Pankhurst. And we remember the legendary musicians - Robbie Robertson of The Band, and Sugar Man Rodriguez.

Kalkadunga composer and musician, William Barton will be awarded the Richard Gill Award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music at the 2023 Art Music Awards. He’s back in The Music Show studio to talk about his Distinguished Service, and his working relationship with the late Richard Gill. And the Stiff Gins are 24 years into what they hope is a lifelong partnership. Yuwaalaraay woman Nardi Simpson and Yorta Yorta and Wiradjuri woman Kaleena Briggs look back at their almost quarter century and the changing landscape of music and language with live performance in The Music Show studio.

Originally from Melbourne, Ziggy and Miles Johnston are the next generation of brother/guitar duos. They are currently based in New York and studying together at The Juilliard School, and have returned to Australia on tour for their new album Sidekick.   Australian violist Tahlia Petrosian is a member of the oldest Symphony orchestra in the world, the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig. Named after their original concert hall, the Gewandhaus started in 1743 and has had three homes since, the most recent hall built after the second Gewandhaus was damaged in the second World War. They're known for the warm, dark colours they can conjure under the batons of Kapellmeisters (music directors/chief conductors) including Felix Mendelssohn, Herbert Blomstedt, and currently Andris Nelsons. An octet of Gewandhaus musicians, including Tahlia, are currently in the country to collaborate with emerging Australian musicians from the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) and tour a program of Schubert's chamber music.

György Ligeti (1923 – 2006), the avant-garde Hungarian composer, celebrates his 100th anniversary this year. He was one of the most unique composers of the 1950s and 60s, and then kept pushing his musical language so that in the 1990s he was still one of the most radical composers working. His music education was interrupted by the Holocaust: he was Jewish and he was sent to a forced labour brigade whilst his brother and parents were sent to Mathausen-Gusen and Auschwitz. His mother was the only family member to survive. Despite the darkness he experienced, his music became more complex and beautiful, developing a sound he called “micropolyphony” – a precise series of musical lines that change slowly,  blurring together like clouds moving across the sky. We hear from Dr Amy Bauer, Professor in the Music Department at the University of California Irvine. Her writing on Ligeti includes the monograph Ligeti’s Laments and co-editing Ligeti’s Cultural Identities. And from The Music Show archives, Ligeti’s late biographer Richard Toop, and conductors Clark Rundell and Elgar Howarth. 

Opera is full of mad scenes, particularly those written in the 19th century in Italy, but there's a trend - none of the men ever go mad, only the women. In fact, the preoccupation with "mad women" in opera and throughout a range of art forms during this era is telling of how 19th-century society viewed mental health and the role of women - mostly written by men.  By exploring these operas and portrayal of women, coloratura soprano Jessica Pratt has become quite fond of characters like Amina from Bellini's La sonnambula and the perhaps more recognisable, Lucia from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, a character that Jessica has played over 100 times. She has distilled five operas from Italy's Bel Canto composers into a concert program of "Mad Scenes," that not only has challenging vocal acrobatics, but also unpacks how and why these characters go mad, which, when you hear their stories, will make a lot of sense. Shellie Morris is a singer and songwriter working with remote communities to preserve some of the worlds oldest languages through music. Most recently, she has been working with the Groote Eylandt Language Centre to write songs in their language, Anindilyakwa. Shellie speaks about the collaborative process of writing an album of songs with the translators at the Language Centre and being able to ordering a strong coffee on the island. And we remember two distinctive voices of of our time, Tony Bennett who has died at the age of 96, and Sinéad O'Connor, at the age of 56. 

In 1993, Mike Nock recorded one of his most iconic solo albums, Touch in the Eugene Goosens Hall at the ABC studios in Ultimo, Sydney. 30 years on from his last solo album, Mike has returned to same hall for his newest release, Hearing. Through its 13 tracks, this album showcases Mike's musical artistry as both a pianist and composer, featuring a range of his own compositions, improvisations and some tunes from some other of his favourite musicians including Bryce Rohde and Jonathan Zwartz.  Sat where he's most at home, in front of the piano, Mike chats to Andrew Ford about the moods and colours that he is still able to evoke from the piano keys. In between some spontaneous improvisations throughout the interview, Mike reflects on the making of Hearing, the various emotional threads that tie the tracks together and tributes to friends, family and collaborators old and new. 

Singing forbidden fruit with Benjamin Appl, and live music from Rockhampton duo Busby Marou. Rockhampton duo Busby Marou have been making music together for sixteen years. They say they’re better live but their fifth studio album, Blood Red, doesn’t sound too bad either. Combining Tom Busby’s singer-songwriter sensibilities and Jeremy Marou’s guitar chops and Torres Strait islander musical culture, their sound has a breezy optimism that they’ve worked hard to achieve, as they demonstrate live in The Music Show studio. German-British baritone Benjamin Appl reinvents the German Romantic Liederabend – “evening of song” – for a new era with his Australian recital program entitled Nocturne. His latest album, Forbidden Fruit, contains another swathe of songs, and Benjamin joins Andy to talk about both, as well as his time as the last student of the legendary baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Plus new music from Kate Pass's Kohesia Ensemble where Persian instrumentalists teaming up with jazz artists for Sand, Sea and Sky. 

Australian pianist, Aura Go plays Chopin - both the character, and all 24 of his Preludes - in the stage production of Paul Kildea's book Chopin's Piano. Combining live musical performances with theatre, the production brings to life the story of the piano made by the local Majorcan craftsman, Juan Bauza in Palma. Threaded together by Chopin's 24 Preludes, the story follows the piano from its time with Chopin during that historic winter in Majorca, to its new life in Paris with Wanda Landowska, and through the hands of Nazis during World War II.  Leaning into a bit of a method-acting scenario, Aura joins us on one of the ABC's most quirky pianos in the Melbourne live music studio to play some of the Preludes that Chopin wrote on Bauza's eccentric piano. We speak to Aura about her take on Chopin as the pianists' composer and her acting debut, and contemplate the music of Chopin with some guests from The Music Show's archive, featuring interviews with Paul Kildea in 2018, Ruth Slenczynska in 2020, Roger Woodward in 2010, and Susan Tomes in 2021.  Chopin's Piano is now on tour around Australia.

Fifty years after her debut recording Marcia Hines reflects on a life and career full of stories, and Evelyn Ida Morris finds their voice through improvisation on the piano.  Marcia Hines marks fifty years since her debut recording this year, but her life in music started long before that. Raised with gospel in Boston, she was at Woodstock when she was 16 and then shortly after on her way to Australia to star in the local production of Hair. And then she stayed. After Hair came touring in a jazz band with B.B. King, then Jesus Christ Superstar, before being crowned Queen of Pop. A huge career across pop, jazz, disco and more followed and is still going with Marcia on tour across her adopted Australia now. Evelyn Ida Morris’ most recent release is a record of a single long improvisation on solo piano, which they performed in response to the artwork of Elizabeth Newman. Titled Extended Time, the music is inspired not only by the paintings themselves but by the people looking at them in the gallery, an intimate portrait of experiencing art. It’s a new point in the journey for Morris, who started as a drummer in punk bands before recording looping synth pop under the moniker Pikelet for many years before settling into their own identity with their 2018 self-titled album on Milk! Records.

Bach is indestructible. Jazz singer Michelle Nicolle is the latest in a line of musicians to take the music of J.S. Bach and do things to it. Her jazz ensemble pops by The Music Show studio to play live selections from her new album The Bach Project, in which her acrobatic vocals draw closer and further from Bach’s original music. As an improviser himself, Bach’s music is fertile ground for reinterpretation, and we’ll hear from the late Jacques Loussier, the Brodsky Quartet’s Paul Cassidy, composer Brett Dean and the Will Gregory Moog Ensemble, amongst others, on how Bach has been transformed.

In 2019, Freya Josephine Hollick travelled to the famed Rancho de la Luna studio in Joshua Tree to record her most recent album titled The Real World. Growing up in regional Victoria, her music education mainly stemmed from Black Swan Record Store in the heart Ballarat, wihch eventually sparked her passion for music by the likes of Gram Parsons, Townes Van Zandt, and other giants of the Cosmic and Outlaw Country scene. Ahead of her appearance at the Adelaide Guitar Festival, Freya joins Andrew to talk about her evolving sound and the stories and musicians she encountered in Joshua Tree.  Longtime Music Show mate, Matt Davis, stops by with some musicians he's met while on the road filming his new documentary Changing Tides. Following Dharug artist and surfer Billy Bain on a trip up the coast of NSW, Matt talks to us about First Nations communities he met who live on the coast and their connections with the land and the ocean, and musicians from these nations who use their songs to explore their identities as saltwater people.  And producer Ce speaks to Acholi musician and singer, Otim Alpha who started his career in traditional wedding music, but has ended up on the dancefloor. Dubbed "Acholitronix," Otim's music combines the tunes and instruments of traditional wedding songs with electronic beats that still capture the soul of the rhythmic grooves at the heart of Acholi traditonal music. He talks to The Music Show before landing in Adelaide for the Illuminate Festival. 

This is the story a song written by Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly around a campfire in 1988. What started off as a casually recorded folk number has become what Carmody calls “a kind of cultural love song”: a foundational entry in the Australian songbook. This year’s NAIDOC Week theme is “For Our Elders”, so RN’s Rudi Bremer went to speak with Kev Carmody at his studio on Kambuwal Country to gather his recollections of From Little Things Big Things Grow as it started, the story of the Gurindji Walk Off that inspired it, and the many different iterations he’s performed and heard in the last thirty years. Wik and South Sea Islander rapper Ziggy Ramo, Electric Fields vocalist Zaachariaha Fielding from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands and Adelaide producer Michael Ross, and Zillmere State School Year 7 Class of 2003 student Tonii-Lee Betts join Craig Tilmouth to talk about their interpretations of the song that Carmody says “belongs to everyone now”.   From Little Things Big Things Grow, as performed by: Kev Carmody, Paul Kelly and the Tiddas from the 1993 album Bloodlines Paul Kelly & the Messengers from the 1991 album Comedy Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly live at the national memorial service for Gough Whitlam, 2014 The Waifs, from the 2020 album Cannot Buy My Soul: The Songs of Kev Carmody Electric Fields from the 2020 album Cannot Buy My Soul: The Songs of Kev Carmody Ziggy Ramo, from the 2021 single From Little Things Zillmere State School Year 7 Class of 2003 Paul Kelly & Jess Hitchcock live in 2019 on the album People You also heard Kev Carmody’s song Thou Shalt Not Steal from the 1988 album Pillars of Society, and the opening of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (‘Choral’), performed by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Wilhelm Furtwängler.

Robbie speaks to Electric Fields -  Zaachariaha Fielding and Michael Ross about the perspectives that have been infused into the music through collaborative songwriting and Zaachariaha's upbringing in Mimili (APY Lands). After noticing their undeniable creative spark back in 2015, they have been making music together that hark back to the days watching Rage on the weekends, while adding their own individual sounds and stories to the mix. Electric Fields made their orchestral debut last year with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Hamer Hall, where the show ended with the audience dancing in the aisles of the concert hall. Following the success of that show, they're returning to the stage with the MSO again for NAIDOC Week this year. Bouncing off the her explorations in Blak Mass, Naretha Williams' new release Into Dusk We Fall shifts the focus from the grand organ to soft synthesisers and the voice. Written and produced with her husband, Cyrus Williams, this album was made throughout intensive lockdowns, with access to MESS restricted and both Naretha and Cyrus stuck in different timezones. She talks us through their remote collaborative process and how the restrictions helped her hone the music on the album.  And an excerpt of Wash My Soul in the River's Flow, a cinematic portrait of Archie Roach, Ruby Hunter and their relationship and collaboration captured in the run-up to their iconic performance with Paul Grabowsky and the Australian Art Orchestra in 2004.

ANOHNI & the Johnsons return with My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, a kind of reunion-rebirth for the band after frontwoman Anohni Hegarty devoted over a decade to her solo work. Famed for her soulful voice that bridges an extraordinary range of intimacy and power, My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross is an album that takes ANOHNI’s lifelong preoccupations with the self and the natural world into a new space with a new vocabulary. Robbie talks to her about the album, her friendship with the late Lou Reed who inspires a new song, and Marsha P Johnson, who inspired her band name and graces the cover of the new album. And a previous Freedman Jazz Fellow, Novak Manojlovic, brings his band HEKKA into studio to give us a sneaky preview of their new album everywhere i go my body goes with me, cementing their ill-at-ease relationship with traditional jazz as they move towards their own sound.

Arushi Jain is adamant that she’s not a “classical Indian musician.” Leaning on her roots in Hindustani musical tradition, she weaves together ethereal soundscapes that feature melodies and moods based on traditional Indian ragas swirling around an electronically generated soundscapes. Previously releasing music under the monikers Modular Princess and ose | ओस, she draws on her studies in computer sciences at Stanford, and gravitates towards the electronic DIY, working mostly with modular synthesisers when she’s not programming her own instruments. We spoke to trumpeter Tom Avgenicos last year when he won the Freedman Jazz Fellowship, and now the project idea that he won it with has become a reality. Tom and members of his band Delay 45 - Rohan Kumarage on keys and Dave Quinn on bass - are live in The Music Show studio to offer us a peek behind the curtain of Ghosts between Streams. And we listen to the final single of Afar woman, Yanna Momina, who died this week at the age of 76. Known for her powerful vocal and thrilling vibrato, Momina made a name for herself as both a singer and a songwriter - defying the expectations of women within the Afar community. 

Writer Dr. Leah Broad's book Quartet charts the transition from the Victorian era to mid-20th century modernism through the lives and works of four significant female composers: Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell and Doreen Carwithen.

Pop music is an art, it’s a science, it’s an industrial complex. Two experts, musicologist Jadey O’Regan and psychologist Tim Byron, have joined forces to write the book on Hooks in Popular Music and they're going to tell us about the mechanics behind the music that gets in our head, from Beethoven to Britney. And producer Ce tells the story of Ethel Smyth, the Suffragette composer, and the music she wrote for her beloved Emmeline Pankhurst.

The Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho died over the weekend at the age of 70. Eschewing hardcore serialism and hardcore spectralism, her music found a way of describing colour and light with the orchestra and on the opera stage. Jack Symonds is the artistic director of Sydney Chamber Opera and an advocate for Saariaho’s music. Ahead of his performance of her choral work Tag de Jahrs with The Song Company Jack remembers Saariaho and her music. Melbourne-based Speak Percussion are using music to invite audiences into the Melbourne Recital Centre and listen to the architecture. Producer Kez dropped by a rehearsal of Thomas Meadowcroft’s March Static in the foyer spaces of the recital centre to have a chat to some members of the 80-person-strong ensemble, and to their AD and assistant AD Eugene Ughetti and Kaylie Melville about the relationships between music, space and movement, and what it’s like to be a part of a community created through music.

Internationally renowned composer Max Richter is in the studio for his Music Show debut. On tour in Australia to perform at VIVID in Sydney and Dark Mofo in Hobart, Max speaks to Robbie about his "protest music" and how he the moon remains a generous source of inspiration. Perhaps best known for his extensive project SLEEP, Max also talks us through some of the thoughts behind the music to doze off to.  And we are joined in the live music studio by musicians from two Melbourne groups - Firetail, an electro-jazz fusion outfit, and Gamelan DanAnda, a Balinese gamelan group. They've been brought together by The Boîte to join forces and ask the question "Does Balinese gamelan meeting electro-jazz fusion sound like Australia?" 

Pianist Leigh Harrold returns to the stage of Tempo Queer - a series of concerts run by Coady Green at Brunswick's Tempo Rubato. With oboist Dafydd Camp, Leigh presents "In Praise of the Vulnerable Man," a program of music by queer male composers.  And clarinettist from the Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra, Nicole van Bruggen gives us some insight into what it might have been like to be a female composer and pianist in mid-19th Century Paris through the eyes of Louise Farrenc.  The Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra are playing Farrenc's Nonet on their current tour.  Click here to vote for your favourite musical instruments for Classic 100. 

Director Lisa Cortés’s new documentary Little Richard: I Am Everything traces the conflicts and contradictions of one of the pioneers of Rock n’ Roll. Lisa talks about Richard’s battles with his queerness and his religiosity with a particular gentleness, as well as revealing what made him one of the era’s greatest performers. And Joy Oladokun is another American artist whose music balances her queerness and her faith. Raised in a charismatic church community in Arizona, she was inspired to become a musician after watching Tracy Chapman play the guitar. Joy picked up the guitar herself, and now four studio albums later she talks to Robbie about the latest, which is called Proof of Life.  

Shirley Collins was a cornerstone of the English folk revival, releasing twenty something albums, travelling, and cataloguing traditional tunes with Alan Lomax between the 1950s and the 1970s. Then, after a tide of personal misfortune, she lost her voice. She sustained herself working clerical jobs until her pension came through, at which point she moved back to her native Sussex and reconnected with music. After a 38 year gap between albums, 2016’s Lodestar cemented her place as one of the genre’s most significant voices. Now her third – and possibly final – album in her era as an “octogenarian folk singer”, Archangel Hill, is released, featuring traditional songs as well as a handful of originals.

After arriving late to the music scene via a pub in Nottingham, Yazmin Lacey brings a fresh outlook to the world of British soul. After finding her voice through an open-mic-night, Yazmin has taken the little moments from her life that she captured as short voice notes to realise her debut album, aptly named Voice Notes.  East of West brings a taste of the Balkans and the Mediterranean to the Music Show's live music studio. The trio (Goran Gajić, Malindi Morris and Philip Griffin) transport us to the other side of the world with their intertwining melodies and complex yet catchy rhythms that are emblematic of the music from Southeastern Europe.  And we remember the late Tina Turner and the special space that she was able to carve out in the hearts of many Australians, whether it's singing along to The Best in the NRL finals, or dancing along to Nutbush City Limits at an aunt's wedding. Tina Turner died this week at the age of 83.

Behind Pinchgut Opera's production of Legrenzi's neglected military epic Giustino, and Polish pianist composer Hania Rani pulls apart the piano. 

Ali McGregor talks about falling into opera and cabaret (and a mixture of both!) And we take a trip into the Pear Garden with Li Fuhua, Li Mingliang and Lulu Liu as we chat about Chinese Opera. 

Madison McFerrin on her debut album  I Hope You Can Forgive Me. Released almost 7 years after her first EP Finding Foundations Volume 1, Madison chats to Robbie about her musical journey, from acapella to self-producing her own tunes.  And Victoria Falconer talks about being the music director for the unique musical Once, and musical theatre across the UK, the US and Australia. 

Will Gregory and Hazel Mills open up the world of the synthesiser, and conductor Karina Canellakis on Bartok, broadcast orchestras and the future of classical music in the age of streaming.

Australian artists talk about how they use music to tell stories.  David Arden is a Kokatha/Gunditjmara musician who has been writing and performing songs that tell stories of his family and spark conversation in the wider community. He tells Robbie about his career as a musician and his new album,  MEERTA: The Ballad of James Arden, which tells the story of his Great-Grandfather, James.  And Andrée Greenwell drops by the Music Show studio ahead of the premiere of her new opera Three Marys at the Sydney Opera House.

Two of Australia’s best songwriters share their newest offerings. 

Lots of live music in The Music Show studio, from Japanese festival music, to Buddhist punk. Musician and composer Shogo Yoshii joins us in the studio while he is in Australia to perform with Taikoz and Buddhadatta on Japanese punk and Buddhist mantras.  And Happy Birthday Willie Nelson! Willie turns 90 this week. 

Why is the string quartet one of the most consistent, persistent, and beautiful ensembles in classical music?  And British composer Daniel Kidane on poetry, scale and the array of cultures that ground his music. 

We're joined by local Melbourne Minimal Wave legend, Karen Marks who is about to have her debut performance at the Melbourne Town Hall. Lisa Illean drops by for a chat ahead of the premiere of a new work at the Melbourne Recital Centre.  And Hau Latukefu on his new show on Radio Australia, In the Fale.

The Brodsky Quartet return to Australia with Britten, Schubert, Bach... and Ford. And a Country-flavoured celebration of The Rolling Stones in the tribute album Stoned Cold Country.

Tracing the life and music of Margaret Sutherland with author of Inner Song, Jillian Graham

From heavy metal to jazz pipe organs, find out more about how celebrated musician Kit Downes makes up musical worlds on the spot, and find out about how Heavy Metal has become a driving force for resistance and change in the Muslim world. 

How do you do something new with very old film? Silent film composer Phillip Johnston explains. 

Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto (1952 - 2023) remembered; and a little bit of rebetika in our lives from Greek/Aussie band Apodimi Compania

A lush soundscape for the National Museum of Australia with composer and collaborator Genevieve Lacey, plus countertenor James Bowman (1941-2023) from the Music Show archives. 

Owain Park is a composer, conductor, singer, and director of the vocal group The Gesualdo Six. Taking their name from the 16th century composer and Italian nobleman, Carlo Gesualdo, the G6 (as Owain has given us full permission to call them) are leading performers of music from the Renaissance to the Baroque and keen commissioners of new music from living composers today. Owain discusses the interesting character of their namesake, as well as how they sing in acoustically varied locations.  Embarking on a national tour, Jen Cloher drops by for a chat with their old friend Robbie to talk about their newest release I am the River, the River is Me. Speaking about their deeply personal album that explores language and culture, Jen talks to us about their authentic approach to navigating the landscape of identity and politics in their songwriting.  And we remember the life and music of "The Honky Tonk Nun," Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. Guèbrou died this week in Jerusalem at the age of 99.

Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Doreen Carwithen and Dorothy Howell are the four protagonists of Leah Broad’s musical biography.

Getting to know the cornetto (the instrument, not the ice cream), PNG singer songwriter Danielle, and Matt Davis from Foreign Correspondent shares his chat with singer, activist and ex-battlefield nurse Sahra Halgan in Hargeisa.

Oud virtuoso and Music Show regular Joseph Tawadros stops by to perform live and about his collaborative album with William Barton, his adventures performing at Davos and in the UK, and returning to The Four Seasons with Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. On her debut tour of Australia, Irish singer-songwriter, Niamh Regan drops by the studio to play a couple of songs and chat to Robbie about growing up with the Irish musical tradition and how she draws on a range of influences to weave new and old stories through her music. 

Mo'Ju's album Oro, Plata, Mata explores their Filipino heritage and The Three Seas explore dub and electronica alongside Bengali folk in their cross-cultural ensemble. 

Live from WOMADelaide, music from Macedonia, Tibet, and Far North Queensland

Two banjo virtuosos, a six person vocal group from Southern France and a Canadian fusion ensemble join us on stage.

Matthias Schack-Arnott and Cédric Tiberghien on the philosophies and sounds of John Cage; Wayne Shorter remembered with an interview from The Music Show archives.

David Harrington on five decades revolutionising the string quartet, artist Christian Thompson reflects on his sound art, and the partnership between John Cage and Merce Cunningham. 

WOMADelaide headliner,  Vieux Farka Touré joins Robbie in the studio to talk about finding space for tradition, his collaboration with Khruangbin, and honouring the memory of his father.  Rainbow Chan takes us through her practices as a musician and visual artist and the processes and explorations that emerge from her various artistic projects. She joins us ahead of her Chunyin performance coming up at Phoenix Central Park.  Producer C shares another great queer love story from 20th century music. 

Battles, fantasias and dances with early music stalwart Jordi Savall, and improvising into a wall of sound with Party Dozen live in studio. 

You just can't get us out of your head. 

American composer Nico Muhly at MONA FOMA, and Throat Pleats pushing the boundaries of music

A story of music, dance and culture seeding and flourishing in seemingly disparate lands.

Celebrating one of the world's most prolific melody makers, composer Burt Bacharach who has died at the age of 94. Plus Andrew Bird's Inside Problems, and Freyja Garbett's surfing jazz.

A father and son find solace in music in a time of exile, and a Cameroonian singer songwriter's anti-colonial dance show.

The future of live music in Australia and New York based composer and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis. 

A violinist championing diverse composers, and a singer songwriter on his critically-acclaimed album twenty years on.

Kutcha Edwards and Bumpy on connection to Country, community and new music. 

A musical call to action to protect Country and water from a rapper, composer and songwriter.

Peter Gabriel on the genesis of world music festival WOMAD, and Monique Clare on writing songs on the cello for her debut album.

How a city has shaped, and been shaped by, jazz.

The music in an actor's voice. And a former Sapphire reflects on a life enriched by music.

Just who are The Folk in folk music?

South London wordsmith Kae Tempest on The Line is a Curve and violinist Jack Liebeck on the Australian Festival of Chamber Music

What makes a song suitable to become a jazz standard?

After a debut and a break-up album, Marlon Williams is back with his third solo offering My Boy, and the uncategorisable Zither marks Isobel D'Cruz-Barnes' first solo release as Hantu.

An hour with the late works of the late Elliott Carter and musicologist John Link. 

Montaigne on making it! and Kristin Berardi on life between Switzerland and Australia. 

The dark art of writing music for kids, and science meets music in Mary Finsterer's latest opera.

Self reflection in songwriting with Kerryn Fields, and the intellectual and emotional greatness of Brahms with Martin Bresnick. 

Author James Wierzbicki on America in the 1960s, a decade defined by social and musical upheaval

An epic solo album from Magic Dirt's frontwoman, Michael Sheen on musical rivals Mozart and Salieri, and a new vocal consort previews their concert live in the studio.

Courtney Barnett and Hachiku on 10 years of artist-run indie label Milk!, and Elliott Gyger and longtime collaborator Jenny Duck-Chong on their latest (scientific) musical endeavour.

Camp Cope's Georgia Maq on her new EP Live from the Sydney Opera House, Gyan remembers Christine McVie, and Alastair McKean on the madness and marginalia of being a music librarian. 

Aristea Mellos and Stephanie McCallum on a new book of piano Preludes, and Tim Rutherford-Johnson on the music of Liza Lim

One of Australia's most versatile violinists performs live, and we learn about the dark art of opera surtitling. 

Minnie Hill goes from strength to strength with There Is Light, a follow up to 2020's The Remarkable Dave Brubeck. And Malyangapa Barkindji matriarch BARKAA on political rap.

The Cat Empire frontman on his solo musical identity.

A new electric violin concerto from American composer Samuel Adams, and new insights into French art song from Emily Kilpatrick.

Two pianists, four hands and a world premiere.

The remarkable story of violinist Alma Moodie in the 1920s & 30s, and soprano and composer Jane Sheldon.

A saxophone that was all the rage in the 1920s is being championed by composer and performer Nick Russoniello, and Melbourne-based vocalist Merinda Dias-Jayasinha lets us into her creative process. 

Singing the news, and an exhibition of 1990s alternative rock.

The Beatles' seventh album has been remastered and includes alternate takes and candid studio moments.

Two writers reveal the folk music and mysticism behind English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams on the 150th anniversary of his birth.

Singer-songwriter and cellist Monique Clare, and Peter Phillips, director of the renowned vocal ensemble The Tallis Scholars.

Riley Lee on shakuhachi and Hildegard, and singer-songwriter Alana Jagt.

Viola virtuoso Roger Benedict talks about collaborating with pianist Simon Tedeschi and a special live performance from the old-time country duo from the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia.

Songwriter, singer, saxophonist and proud Guguyelandji and Woppaburra woman Marlene Cummins performs live and talks to Andy about her Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival show. 

Two Australian composers on their latest projects: Peter Knight goes solo with Shadow Phase and Anne Boyd finds a flawed character as inspiration in her new opera Olive Pink. 

Enigmatic singer songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Alex G headed into a studio for album number nine, and Sonya Holowell and Elizabeth Sheppard reveal their musical reactions to the Uluru Statement.

Makaya McCraven on fusing the past and future of jazz, and Kristian Winther on building an orchestra from the ground up. 

June Jones on writing, performing and producing her third album Pop Music For Normal Women, and Sydney Chamber Opera’s Jack Symonds and composer Luke Styles on framing Benjamin Britten’s five canticles for the stage

Tracing the journey of 18th and 19th century Scottish music in Australia.

Saturday 17 September: Pianist Olli Mustonen returns to Australia to play with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Andrew Tuttle reflects on interpreting his electronic folk for live performance. 

Sunday 11 September: After a debut and a breakup album, Marlon Williams is back with My Boy, and the uncategorisable Zither marks Isobel D'Cruz-Barnes' first solo release as Hantu.

Saturday 10 September: Composing, dancing and performing with Eric Avery, rapping and singing with Elsy Wameyo and big visions with Freedman Jazz Fellow Tom Avgenicos.

Sunday 4 September: Nigel Butterley is posthumously awarded the Richard Gill Award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music at the Art Music Awards

Saturday 3 September: Julian Belbachir and Nora Brown offer fresh interpretations of old musical traditions.

Sunday 28 August: Hitting the high notes with Venezuelan soprano Samuel Mariño, and a lifetime of writing songs with Irish musician Gilbert O'Sullivan.

Saturday 27 August: Eurovision-minted indie artist Montaigne is back on stage and on a new album, and tenor Robert Macfarlane is mixing Baroque and physical theatre… again.

Sunday 21 August: violinist Sarah Curro and her violin maker husband Paul Davies put the timber in timbre, Mark Simeon Ferguson's new album is inspired by the Ikara-Flinders mountains, and Matt Davis tells us how music is helping the resistance in Myanmar. 

Saturday 20 August: Pianist Yeol Eum Son on repertoire and recitals, and The Teskey Brothers' guitarist on going solo.

Sunday 14 August: Remembering two great Australian voicesJudith Durham and Olivia Newton-John. And Tabatha McFadyen is our guide to Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire.

Saturday 13 August: Documentary maker Brett Morgen on his new David Bowie film Moonage Daydream and violinist Ray Chen on his discipline and his instrument.

Sunday 7 August: We celebrate the golden age of pop music recording with interviews from artists on the Motown Records label including the Temptations, the Four Tops, the Supremes, the Miracles and Stevie Wonder.

Vale Archie Roach, the Gunditjmara (Kirrae Whurrong/Djab Wurrung) singer and songwriter, who has died at the age of 66.

Sunday 31 July: Life as a punk in 1970s and 80s Australia, and Liz Stringer's personal songwriting revolution.

Kristin Berardi on jazz standards and Joni Mitchell; Jack Liebeck on the Australian Festival of Chamber Music

Sunday 24 July: 300-year-old Yiddish songs get reworked by family trio The Bashevis Singers, and virtuoso soloist Hilary Hahn on expanding the repertoire and audiences.

Saturday 23 July: George Michael biographer James Gavin joins Andrew Ford for a deep dive into the music and troubled life of the legendary singer, songwriter and pop superstar; plus we meet 23-year-old cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason.

Sunday 17 July: A sneak peek at the Sydney Opera House's new acoustics, and Sydney Symphony Orchestra's new Chief Conductor Simone Young takes to the podium.

Saturday 16 July: Isle of Wight duo Wet Leg join Andrew Ford to reflect on their meteoric rise and play a couple of songs live in the studio, plus we meet celebrated British tenor Allan Clayton.

Sunday 10 July: marking NAIDOC Week 2022 with established First Nations artists who have led political and personal music making across the years.

Saturday 9 July: NAIDOC Female Elder of the Year Dr Lois Peeler reflects on a life enriched by music - from being in the Sapphires, to the importance of the arts at Worawa Aboriginal College. And we hear about the powerful collaboration between Kamilaroi Elder Bob Weatherall and Brisbane band Halfway.

Sunday 3 July: celebrating NAIDOC Week with Noongar conductor Aaron Wyatt and Yorta Yorta hip hop artist Neil Morris aka DRMNGNOW

Saturday 2 July: A celebration of radio, sound & music as the national broadcaster turns 90.

Sunday 26 June: the late works of Elliott Carter, the composer who worked until he was 103

Saturday 25 June: Jenny Duck-Chong on putting words to music from Purcell to Kate Bush, Alon Ilsar on inventing a new instrument, and Ben Pask on keeping George Harrison’s records

Sunday 19 June: A survey of the state of music education and musical culture with Anna Goldsworthy, and Lakota Vella on her pioneering guitar hero Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Saturday 18 June: Perfume Genius stretches the definition of art pop in new album Ugly Season, and Major Zulu’s journey to Australia from Zambia via London, Paris, gospel, soul, jazz and rock and roll.

Sunday 12 June: A history of jazz, and Jazz Fest, in New Orleans.

Saturday 11 June: new music from singer-songwriter-siren Sharon Van Etten, Noongar bangers from Maatakitj, and a new symphony in 8 days with Dean Stevenson

Sunday 5 June 2022: The avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson at 75

Saturday 4 June: Composer and multi-instrumentalist Rhyan Clapham's call to action to protect water, and celebrate culture and Country.

Sunday 29 May: Jono Ma on Vangelis and the age of analogue, and marking Xenakis’ 100th anniversary with the musicians who love to play his work.

Saturday 28 May: ACO's principal violinist Satu Vänskä on curating an underground program, and Japanese percussionist and composer Midori Takada reflects on Through The Looking Glass forty years on.

Sunday 22 May: Leyla McCalla’s tapestry of Haitian history and music; film composer Danny Elfman on working within the Marvel machine

Saturday 21 May: The music in an actor's voice, and the art of making electronic dance music.

Sunday 15 May: We hear from three composer/musicians partnerships involved in the ANAM Set about how the pieces were tailored to the musicians and their instruments.

Saturday 14 May: The Music Show broadcasts live from the Australian National Academy of Music - hearing from the Set Festival's curator and chief matchmaker, as well as composers Deborah Cheetham and Lilijana Matičevska.

The Music Show is broadcasting live from the Australian National Academy of Music on Saturday 14 May 2022.

Sunday 8 May: Simon Tedeschi on the piano, Prokofiev, and his intensely personal Fugitive. Foreign Correspondent’s Matt Davis on music and change in Hawai’i.

Saturday 7 May: live music from the King Curly trio, and diving into Aphir's electronic choral project.

Sunday 1 May: singer and composer Sunny Kim tackles motherhood and migration in her newest work, and an unlikely collaboration between Philip Glass and Leonard Cohen hits the operatic stage

Saturday 30 April: Horomona Horo takes us through the revival of taonga pūoro, Māori traditional instruments, and how they are grounded in Māori cultural practice today.

Sunday 24 April: Vale Harrison Birtwistle (1934-2022).

Saturday 23 April: Bassist Jonathan Zwartz on musical innovator Charles Mingus, and an audiologist on Beethoven's hearing loss and his Symphony No 9.

Sunday 17 April: Who are The Folk in folk music? With Ross Cole.

Saturday 16 April: Tasmania's Van Diemen's Band explore the porous musical and cultural borders of the European baroque, and Malyangapa, Barkindji woman BARKAA talks about finding strength in rapping and community.

Sunday 10 April: An exploration of the great 20th century jazz canon with music writer James Gavin.

Saturday 9 April: English wordsmith Kae Tempest on their new album The Line is a Curve and young Gubbi Gubbi singer Layla Barnett on singing with Archie Roach.

Sunday 3 April: The wunderkind pianist who became one of the great interpreters of the Romantic repertoire is still performing at 97.

Saturday 2 April: Jude Perl on their musical comedy awakening, and Chloe Lankshear on Monteverdi and the legacy of Taryn Fiebig

Sunday 27 March: The art of curating an accessible and multi-generational jazz festival, and The New Statesman's Tom Gatti on writers' favourite albums.

Saturday 26 March: Benjamin Northey on Korngold's underplayed Symphony in F-Sharp, sound artist Mara Schwerdtfeger on improvisation and sonic spaces.

Sunday 20 March: Wattleseed Ensemble's Katie Yap drops by to talk about the difference between a baroque viola and a modern one, plus an archive interview with jazz vocalist Barbara Morrison who played with Dizzy Gillespie, Ron Carter and the Count Basie Orchestra.

Saturday 19 March: Norwegian singer, songwriter and novelist on the selflessness of singing. And Chilean tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana talks about her Blue Note album 12 Stars.

Sunday 12 March: rejuvenating Eastern European folk with Balkan Ethno Orchestra, the songs of the Americas with Gaby Moreno, and the songlines belonging to the Yorta Yorta and Barkindji rivers with Dhungala Baarka.

Saturday 12 March: Ethiopian groove with Chikchika, Kreol soul with Grace Barbé & Qawwalis with Farhan Shah and Sufi-Oz.

Sunday 6 March: Peter Gabriel on the genesis of music festival WOMAD, plus highlights from The Music Show's live broadcasts from there.

Saturday 5 March: Chi-Chi Nwanoku on Britain’s Chineke! Orchestra; and Inni-K’s new interpretation of the sean-nós tradition.

Sunday 27 February: Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard on love, frustration and the music of Yoko Ono, and WA composer Olivia Davies on pendulum waves and analogue synthesis.

Saturday 26 February: Vale Nigel Butterley (1935-2022)

Sunday 20 February: Fretwork’s Richard Boothby on 17th century composer Matthew Locke and Kym Pitman’s new album Stones Mumma Kissed.

Saturday 19 February: Jaime Martín on his new gig at the MSO and why his previous life as an orchestral player sets him up well, and composer Jamie Perera on how he turns reams of climate and sociological data into musical soundscapes.

A neglected Australian composer gets pianist Tonya Lemoh’s attention and we celebrate John Adams’ 75th birthday in sound and colour.

Saturday 12 February: A versatile singer on switching characters and musical styles, an unheard interview with American composer George Crumb who died this week, and Simon Rickard brings a musette (baroque bagpipe) into the studio.

Remembering English folk singer Norma Waterson, looking to the future with Deutsche Grammophon President Clemens Trautmann, and a spacious electroacoustic album from drummer Maria Moles.

Saturday 5 February: Split Enz's back catalogue gets a makeover from Tim Finn and Eddie Rayner, and Melbourne songwriter Grace Cummings on her second album Storm Queen.

Sunday 30 January: doing the Argentinian tango with accordionist James Crabb and uncovering pioneering female screen composers with Felicity Wilcox.

Saturday 29 January: Elvis Costello and The Imposters' blistering new album, and answering 'the call' to conduct Girl From The North Country with a few hours' notice.

Sunday 23 January: Kate Fagan listens closely to one of the best albums of 1971, and Nai Palm from Melbourne’s Hiatus Kaiyote shares the band's creative process.

Saturday 22 January: Ziggy Ramo's powerful reworking of Little Things and 50 years of love for Carole King's Tapestry.

Sunday 16 January: Jazz singer and cabaret artiste Mama Alto talks about community, connection and voice. And NYC composer Caroline Shaw on working with soprano Dawn Upshaw, pianist Gilbert Kalish and Sō Percussion.

Saturday 15 January: Fela Kuti's son and grandson continue the family legacy of writing political songs you can dance to. And a singer songwriter who's inspired by Randy Newman and Emily Dickinson.

Sunday 9 January: Traditional songs brought into the 21st Century by Northern Ireland's TRÚ and Buryat band Namgar.

Saturday 8 January: Perth electropop band Alter Boy blend sound, movement and activism to create music that is accessible to Deaf and hearing audiences alike. And why concert pianist Mahani Teave returned to Rapa Nui to open a music school.

Sunday 2 January: Uncle Bunna Lawrie shows us the coastline and whales of Mirning Country, we hear the sea shanties of the 19th Century and find out why they are still sung in pubs today.

Saturday 1 January: k.d. lang looks back on her career and Charlie Parr talks about his album of poetry and Piedmont blues.

Sunday 26 December: Folk singer and environmentalist Sam Lee's musical affinity for the nightingale, and Helen Svoboda pushes the boundaries of the double bass with experimental techniques, vocals and overdubs.

Saturday 25 December: Víkingur Ólafsson rethinks Mozart, and country star Warren H. Williams and music manager Laurie May on the importance of Aboriginal-owned label CAAMA.

Sunday 19 December: Percussionist and educator Greg Sheehan on what numbers and symbols can teach us about rhythm. And Alina Pash is a Ukrainian musician blending traditional beats with electronic music, hip-hop and pop.

Saturday 18 December: Rita Moreno’s big 90th birthday, and remembering Frederic Rzewski, Louis Andriessen, and Mikis Theodorakis

Sunday 12 December: the international treasure hunt for lost ‘60s Vietnamese rock and roll records, and are two fortepianos better than one?

Saturday 11 December: Pat Jaffe and Callum Mintzis's A Sanctuary of Quietude explores stillness, and one of Australia's finest on a lifetime of teaching and playing violin.

Sunday 5 December: A collection of essays from writers like Deborah Levy, George Saunders, Ben Okri and David Mitchell on personally significant LPs, and how composer Georgia Scott uses music to break down stigmas around disability.

Saturday 4 December: Remembering a giant of music theatre and learning how a Braille music score works

Sunday 28 November: Ellie Lamb on their Melbourne International Jazz Festival commission Between Worlds, and Composer Liza Lim on writing operas

Saturday 27 November: Strange Tenants' Bruce Hearn on the politics and music in the Australian ska scene, and Joseph Nolan talks choral music at St George's Cathedral ahead of carol season.

Sunday 21 November: storied Australian singer Jeannie Lewis on her life in music, and electroacoustic composer Fiona Hill on writing for dancers.

Saturday 20 November: How Terence Blanchard's roots as a jazz trumpeter come through in his Metropolitan Opera debut Fire Shut Up In My Bones. And The Waifs' Vikki Thorn on going solo and exploring what 'home' means.

Sunday 14 December: We hear from a composer and arranger who's hitting his stride, and a stalwart of Canberra's underground music scene.

Saturday 13 November: Sudanese-Australian song woman Ajak Kwai and MONA’s composer in residence, Dean Stevenson

Sunday 7 November: Liyah Knight’s dreamy EP Travellers Guide, and the Adelaide Chamber Singers legacy and future.

Saturday 6 November: Australian rock legend Tex Perkins on his creativity and longevity, percussive soundscapes from the icy continent, and a postcard from a Summer of concerts in Europe.

Sunday 31 October: The surprising ubiquity of an ancient chant in spooky soundtracks, and a significant Australian composer has a significant birthday.

Saturday 30 October: Toby Martin’s folk album I Felt the Valley Lifting and the pop music of Shakespeare’s plays

Sunday 24 October: Billy Bragg returns to the show for his covid album and a collaboration with his son.

Saturday 23 October: Screen composer Caitlin Yeo on creating her soundtrack to SBS gold rush mystery New Gold Mountain, and James Mangohig on his ARIA-nominated debut album, the role of a producer and how to throw a street party.

Sunday 17 October: the story of a uniquely American art form and where it came from.

Saturday 16 October: Paddy Moloney on taking traditional Irish music to all sorts of new places, and Gil Scott-Heron's collaborator on jazz, politics and his Fender Rhodes piano.

Sunday 10 October: We celebrate the golden age of pop music recording with interviews from artists on the Motown Records label including the Temptations, the Four Tops, the Supremes, the Miracles and Stevie Wonder.

Saturday 9 October: Exploring George Martin’s Air Studios Montserrat with documentary makers Gracie Otto and Cody Greenwood, and retro sci fi meets experimental jazz with Reuben Lewis & I Hold the Lion’s Paw

Sunday 3 October 2021: a beginner’s guide to Indian classical music.

Saturday 2 October: Mindy Meng Wang's exploratory approach to the ancient Chinese guzheng, and two film loving musicians write a suite of songs based on Hellraiser III, Bring It On Again and Silence of the Lambs.

Sunday 26 September 2021: A portrait of the legendary trumpeter on the 30th anniversary of his death courtesy of bandmates Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, Gunther Schuller and many more.

Saturday 25 September: Víkingur Ólafsson rethinks Mozart, Lady Blackbird finds her sound, & Diana McVeagh introduces us to Finzi

Sunday 19 September: how the piano became the centre of our musical universe with Susan Tomes

Saturday 18 September: Perth eletropop band Alter Boy blend sound, movement and activism to create music that is accessible to Deaf and hearing audiences alike. And Helen Svoboda pushes the boundaries of the double bass with experimental techniques, vocals and overdubs.

Sunday 12 September: Sean Shibe tackles the musical borderlands of Spain and France, and Punjabi and Australian influences blend beautifully on Parvyn's debut album.

Saturday 11 September 2021: Remembering the 9/11 attacks through musical memorials; shamisen player Noriko Tadano performs live

Sunday 5 September 2021: An unearthed concert of an Americana musician at the height of her powers. And 'Kalyakoorl, ngalak warangka (Forever, we sing)'—a Noongar language songbook from Gina Williams and Guy Ghouse.

Saturday 4 September: Greek composer and politician Mikis Theodorakis remembered, Brisbane festival goes local with 190 suburban gigs, and Diane Warren on her songwriting career.

Sunday 29 August 2021: Two books about two very different composers—from Elizabethan England to the birth of New York City.

Saturday 28 August 2021: An oral history of the New Romantics, from Eurythmics to Soft Cell, Adam Ant to The Human League.

22 August 2021: Versatility is the key to Jess Hitchcock's success, plus the complicated legacy of one of the great twentieth century conductors.

Saturday 21 August: Irish muso Conor O’Brien aka Villagers, preparing the piano for Tabula Rasa, and R Murray Schafer remembered

Sunday 15 August: How does classical music reckon with the horrors of WWII and the Holocaust?

Saturday 14 August 2021: From Isaac Hayes to Marvin Gaye—the legacy of Blaxploitation film soundtracks, and Charlie Parr's new album of poetry and Piedmont blues.

Sunday 8 August 2021: Uncategorisable music from Melbourne’s Hiatus Kaiyote and British composer Param Vir

Saturday 7 August: Vika & Linda's new album The Wait - after 19 years of waiting - plus The Who's Who's Next and Victorian Opera's Tommy

Sunday 1 August: Is Richard Meale and David Malouf's Voss the great Australian opera?

Saturday 31 July: Strength in vulnerability with a Wergaia and Wemba Wemba singer songwriter. And a versatile Australian composer at 80.

Sunday 25 July 2021: Two sets of Melbourne artists tell Andrew about finding community and connection in music during lockdown

Saturday 24 July 2021: Traditional songs brought into the 21st Century by Northern Ireland's TRÚ and Buryat band Namgar.

Sunday 18 July 2021: Yiddish poetry given an electronic soundtrack and the late Mary Wilson on being a Supreme.

Saturday 17 July: Hope in an Empty City - a new album from Joseph Tawadros, and First Nations opera singer Marcus Corowa on singing for his community

Sunday 11 July 2021: Composer Louis Andriessen remembered by Lyndon Terracini and Damien Ricketson, plus Katia Beaugeais on composing for sax.

Saturday 10 July 2021: Reggae superstars UB40 keep it fresh after four decades, an emerging songwriter on how music can heal Country, and 50 years since the world lost Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong.

Sunday 4 July: Uncle Bunna Lawrie shows us the coastline and whales of Mirning Country, we hear the sea shanties of the 19th Century and find out why they are still sung in pubs today.

Saturday 3 July: Remembering Frederic Rzewski and Louis Andriessen, Richard Piper on Bartók, and Wiradjuri and Gadigal singer Akala Newman

Sunday 27 June: How Nelson Riddle transformed the sound of Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. And remembering the pioneering slide guitarist and blues singer Ellen McIlwaine (1945 - 2021).

Saturday 26 June: Joan Armatrading’s one woman band and one of the world’s most famous operas revealed.

Sunday 20 June: Kate Fagan listens closely to one of the best albums of 1971, and the Scattered People band who performed for asylum seekers in detention.

Saturday 19 June: The Art of Protest charts the history of the protest song and composer Samuel Barber’s musical life beyond his Adagio

Sunday 13 June: Celebrating women composers across centuries, and the veteran singer songwriter on her protest hit 'The Universal Soldier'.

Saturday 12 June: Ziggy Ramo's powerful reworking of Little Things and pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk

Sunday 6 June 2021: Joan Baez revisited, and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra's professionals side-by-side with amateur players.

Saturday 5 June 2021: Mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile on his new album Laysongs, ABC Illawarra's Nick Rheinberger responds to bushfires through music.

Sunday 30 May: country star Warren H. Williams and music manager Laurie May on the importance of Aboriginal-owned label CAAMA. Plus Chris Latham's most ambitious work to date, with a focus on the plight of Vietnamese Boat People.

Saturday 29 May 2021: k.d. lang looks back on her career and Jack Buckskin talks about Adelaide Symphony Orchestra's new Acknowledgement of Country