The Music Show

Liz Pelly, a writer and editor based in New York, discusses her book, 'Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify,' revealing how the platform has altered music consumption and artist earnings. She delves into the challenges indie artists face in a streaming-dominated world and critiques the passive listening habits fostered by these platforms. The conversation also honors jazz legends Sheila Jordan and Judy Bailey, celebrating their contributions to music and their lasting educational impact on future generations.

It's Poetry Month and our Middle of the Air competition (run in collaboration with Red Room Poetry) is in full swing. Two of our listeners who submit the winning poems will have their words turned into songs and recorded by rapper/composer DOBBY and singer songwriter Leah Senior. Both musicians are on The Music Show to talk about their different approaches to word setting, their favourite lyricists, and how poetry has influenced their songwriting.And The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's Jaime Martín returns to The Music Show off the back of some guest conducting the Sydney Symphony. Andy and Jaime pick up where they left off, talking about Spanish music, French Spanish music, and orchestral leadership. Details of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's 2026 Season are available now.Leah Senior plays The Tote in Collingwood on Saturday 23 August.DOBBY's Warrangu: River Story is touring throughout August:Wellington - 18 AugustBrewarrina - 19 AugustDubbo - 20 AugustLithgow - 21 AugustWarilla - 22 AugustHe also appears at the National Poetry Month Gala in Sydney on Thursday 28 August

Gregory Porter is becoming a harder and harder singer to pigeonhole. His voice is at home in gospel, blues, soul, and R&B, but the foundation of it all, he tells Andrew Ford, is jazz. Gregory and his band are returning to Australia soon and he joins The Music Show (from vacation in Mexico!) to talk about bringing strings and a choir into his music, maintaining optimism, and his tribute album to musical hero Nat King Cole.Andy finds a moment at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music to speak with British clarinettist Michael Collins. After reaching the finals of the inaugural BBC Young Musician at the age of 16 he's had a formidable career on the concert platform. He's staying in Australia a little longer as he prepares to premiere Graeme Koehne's double clarinet concerto with Omega Ensemble in Melbourne. 

Jerrah Patston is a singer and songwriter who’s part of Club Weld—a Parramatta-based studio for neurodiverse musicians run by the Arts & Cultural Exchange. Jerrah’s music contains observations about his everyday life - from local construction sites, events being cancelled due to weather, and the time he went to a Paul McCartney concert and didn't hear Mull of Kintyre. Jerrah’s just released his third full-length album Abandoned Cricket Games and we’ll meet him, as well as one of his Club Weld mentors and songwriting collaborators, Sam Worrad.Jon Rose and Hollis Taylor have been named as recipients of this year's Richard Gill Award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music, which will be conferred at the APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards in a couple of weeks. They join Andy to talk about their life together, bringing their violin skills to duets with pied butcherbirds and playing the fences of remote Australia like string instruments. 

Join Andrew Ford as he reminisces with the brilliant Dame Cleo Laine, an acclaimed jazz singer with a four-octave vocal range, who discusses her love for Shakespeare and the importance of music education. The conversation also covers Tom Lehrer, a mathematician-turned-satirist known for his cheeky songs that tackle political issues, reflecting on his controversial 1960 Australian tour. Together, they explore the evolution of jazz, artistic expression, and the enduring relevance of satire in music, all while highlighting the legacy these icons leave behind.

Lajamanu is one of the most remote places in Central Australia, and it’s where we meet Wanta Jampijinpa Pawu-Kurlpurlurnu, his father Jerry Jangala Patrick OAM, and the music producer Marc ‘Monkey’ Peckham. Crown & Country is a new album and film that’s come out of more than a decade of friendship and collaboration between Wanta, Jerry and Monkey. Blending Warlpiri Jukurrpa (Dreaming) songs, cultural stories, soundscapes from the desert, and electronic beats, it’s a compelling and immersive way of sharing Warlpiri culture with new audiences.Gordon Kerry is one of Australia's most frequently commissioned composers with works in every musical genre. From his home on a hill in north-east Victoria, he has recently completed a new work for clarinet, cello and piano and a Requiem for a cappella choir. He discusses both these pieces and the traditions to which they belong on today's show.

Nicole Smede is a proud Warrimay woman with Irish ancestry, whose bio includes poet, musician, singer and composer. She’s on The Music Show to talk about how all of these things have come to intersect in her work, and about the joy and strength she's found in writing across forms and languages. Nicole is a current participant of the Ngarra Burria First Peoples Composers Program, and is also the First Nations Artistic Director at Red Room Poetry. As part of this interview we announce an exciting partnership between ABC Radio National and Red Room Poetry. It's a poetry competition called Middle of the Air, where two lucky poets will have their winning poems set to music and recorded by DOBBY and Leah Senior. Entries open 1 August. Find more details here. You can register for a free lyric writing workshop with Leah Senior and DOBBY on 6 August here.And we remember Black Sabbath's enigmatic frontman Ozzy Osbourne, who died this week at the age of 76. Joel Silbersher is our guide - he’s a Melbourne-based guitarist and a songwriter, playing across a bunch of different bands since the 1980s including GOD, Hoss and with Tex Perkins. Joel explains, while not a great lyric writer, Ozzy was a "genius melodist", and Black Sabbath's influence on rock, metal and alternative music cannot be overstated.

Michael Atherton has had his fingers in so many musical pies it's hard to know how to sum him up. He is a composer, a music therapist, an educator, a writer of books and a multi-instrumentalist. Indeed, with the Renaissance Players, Sirocco, The Atherton Table Band and Southern Crossings, he has played so many instruments he must have lost count. Just turned 75, he can add memoirist to his list of achievements, and that was our cue to get him into the studio for a long chat and attempt to make sense of his varied career.Michael's memoir Never Miss A Beat is out now via Ashwood Publishing.

Brooklyn-based jazz guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson has released a new album About Ghosts. Featuring her long-time improvisatory band Amaryllis, this time she’s also added two saxophonists into the mix. Mary speaks to Andrew Ford about what adding more horns allows her music to do, how an increased focus on composition has changed the way she improvises, and about some of her more surprising musical influences (people like Elliott Smith and Robert Wyatt).Together Alone is not Crowded House's most famous album, but for Barnaby Smith, it's their best. Recorded in the wild reaches of Karekare Beach in Aotearoa New Zealand, its sound and stories emerge directly from that place. Barnaby, who is the writer of 33 1/3: Together Alone, travelled to Karekare to absorb the atmosphere that precipitated the album joins Andy to make the case for this album in the output of one of Australasia's most successful bands. 

Ben Lee is an influential Australian singer-songwriter known for hits like 'Catch My Disease' and 'Cigarettes Will Kill You.' He discusses the importance of pop music as a tool for emotional expression and societal change. Katie Yap, a Classical Freedman Fellow, shares insights from her project Multitudes, blending music and poetry with unique collaborators. They explore themes of collaboration, resilience in live performance, and the potential of music as a vehicle for activism in today's polarized world.