Seraphim Trio have been making chamber music together for over twenty years. Pianist Anna Goldsworthy joins Andrew Ford to talk about her relationship with violinist Helen Ayres and cellist Tim Nankervis, as well as the women composers – famous and lesser known – they have recorded as part of their latest album Radiante. Written from the small shed on his allotment in Northern England, the lyrics on Richard Dawson’s album End of the Middle are filled with small observations and rich characters. He's a prolific and verbose songwriter, likening his habit of jamming too many syllables into the end of lines with "putting too many clothes in a suitcase". Rich's record is replete with his unusual guitar tunings and arresting singing voice. 

Aspirations of modernity, progress and innovation drove music through the 20th century. For French composer Maurice Ravel, inspiration from (and imitation of) his peers, of the voices and styles around him, made him a true original. He pulled from Spanish music, 18th century music, Viennese waltz and jazz, and yet within seconds it’s always possible to hear Ravel’s own, distinct, voice. To mark the 150th anniversary of Ravel’s birth, director-composer-lyricist-translator and friend of The Music Show Jeremy Sams is Andy’s guest, to explore not only where Ravel’s music came from, but where it led. 

Almost every description of South African singer, cellist and composer Abel Selaocoe starts with a phrase like “genre-defying”, but Abel refers to himself as genre defining. Wherever he tours, he brings with him a lifetime of musical influences ranging from his childhood in Sebokeng, a township outside Johannesburg, to adolescence at Soweto’s African Cultural Organisation of South Africa, to study at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. His classical cello chops, his Xhosa throat singing, his improvisational spirit and his storytelling combine in an open, blossoming sound on his latest album Hymns of Bantu. Bush Gothic are “unafraid of Australian songs”. From colonial-era folk songs to the Divinyls, their latest album What Pop People Folk This Popular is a showcase of what the band does best: dreamy, detailed, genre-bending music in conversation with Australian musical history. Jenny M Thomas and Dan Witton join Andrew Ford. 

Ellen Stekert has spent a lifetime in folk music. She got her first guitar at 13 (to assist with her rehab after contracting polio) and soon after high school she became enmeshed in the Greenwich Village folk scene, crossing paths with the likes of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Ellen released four albums of traditional songs in the 1950s and then focused her career on academia, teaching English, American and folklore studies. There’s been a resurgence of interest in Ellen’s life and music, thanks in large part to singer songwriter Ross Wylde. Ross has been helping Ellen to remaster her old recordings, leading to her first release in over 60 years: Go Around Songs Vol. 1. Both musicians are guests on The Music Show to talk about their deep love of folk music, their intergenerational friendship and how a Bob Dylan photograph for sale on eBay first brought them together. Check out Ellen Stekert's website for photos, music and archive, and Ross Wylde's music is available on Bandcamp. This program originally aired in May 2025.

Brisbane trad band Amaidí say they perform "doofy folk stuff": accordion, guitar, banjo and fiddle augmented by stomp box and electronics. Amaidí means nonsense in Gaelic but it's more than just silly stuff, with their new album Beyond Cape Capricorn reflecting the broad and often dark influences of Scottish and Irish music in the Australian folk tradition. That being said, there's plenty to dance to, as you'll hear when they join Andy to play some tunes live in the studio.  Well before he was Chair of the ABC, Kim Williams was a composition student of Italian arch-modernist Luciano Berio, whose centenary we celebrate in 2025. Kim joins Andy to demonstrate his encyclopedic knowledge of Berio's music, to recall his personal relationship with the composer, and to review the olive oil of Berio's hometown. 

What do an actress mired in scandal, a grieving political dissident, a previously enslaved African celebrity, and a court composer have in common? They’re all integral to the story of Messiah becoming a cornerstone of the musical repertoire. Heard now more often at Christmas, it was premiered at Easter in 1742 after three rapid weeks of writing by Handel, and it suggests, as author Charles King says, the staggering possibility that things might turn out all right. Charles joins Andy to reveal the characters in his book Every Valley, which in the American edition comes with the pleasing subtitle The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel’s Messiah. 

Tony Wellington returns to the show to race through the 1980s in a single episode. It's a decade of contradictions, where big hair, commercial pop hits, lip syncing and the music video meet rap, independent rock, and house music. From girls on film to video killing the radio star, from talking about a revolution to being touched for the very first time: how do you sum up the triumphs and tragedies? 

JJJJJerome Ellis styles their name with five Js because it’s the word they stutter on the most. The artist, writer, composer and multi-instrumentalist has released a new album Vesper Sparrow which layers spoken word, vocals, saxophone, hammered dulcimer, organ, electronics and more. JJJJJerome speaks to Andrew Ford about the musical opportunities that speech disfluency provides, and what we can learn from the spaces and clearings between words. And we get a chromatic harmonica masterclass from musician and composer Ariel Bart, who blends European jazz traditions with Middle Eastern music. She’s about to begin her debut Australian tour, teaming up with a local cellist and pianist.

Reed and Oak - composed and performed by DOBBY, words by Cate Kennedy. One of two winning poems from our Middle of the Air competition, run in collaboration with Red Room Poetry.

The Arbour - composed and performed by Leah Senior, words by Giles Watson. One of two winning poems from our Middle of the Air competition, run in collaboration with Red Room Poetry.

In August, ABC Radio National and Red Room Poetry put out the call for Australian poets to submit new poems to be set to music by two great local musicians, DOBBY and Leah Senior. Now, to mark the end of AusMusic Month, the two winning poems, and the songs that they have become, are premiered on The Music Show. Andy talks to DOBBY, Leah, and the two winning poets Cate Kennedy and Giles Watson, as well as David Stavanger and Nicole Smede of Red Room Poetry to celebrate the alchemy of song: how music and words combine to affect each other's meaning and make something completely new. Plus, to mark Jane Austen's 250th anniversary, a dive into Austen's relationship with music, with academic Gillian Dooley.  And we remember Guy Ghouse (1969-2025), the Western Australian musician who, with his collaborator and wife Gina Williams, brought Noongar language music and opera to the fore. 

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners are advised that this program contains the voices of people who have died.  As a post-war kid, Leo Sayer first heard rock & roll on Radio Luxembourg on a radio late at night. His career has taken some major swerves: he was an illustrator, a graphic designer (he worked on album covers for Bob Marley), then a blues harmonica player. Most famously though, he's a singer, songwriter, and showman. He sits down with Andrew Ford after a big run of shows to talk about performing at the age of 77, his enduring love of poetry, and how he's found new audiences through remixes and collaborations with up-and-comers. Yawulyu: Art and Song in Warlpiri Women’s Ceremony is a new book that examines the dances, songs and body designs of the Warlpiri community in the early 1980s in Willowra, Northern Territory. Andrew speaks to three of the book's co-authors, Helen Napurrurla Morton (a Warlpiri teacher and translator), Megan Morais (an ethnochoreologist and teacher), and Professor Myfany Turpin (musicologist and linguist), about the role of music in women's ceremonies, and how documenting it is helping to pass it along.

Lolita Emmanuel is a creative researcher. She’s a musician, a storyteller, and an academic (moments away from finishing her Doctor of Musical Arts) and she’s part of this year’s ABC Top Five Arts residency. That's early career researchers in the arts who’ve come to Radio National to make shows about their work.  Lolita is Assyrian and Armenian, and her creative practice, which forms the basis of her research, is engaged with the process of creative reassembly: building cultural resilience, strengthening cultural memory and empowering Assyrian artists and voices around the world. She joins Andy to talk about assembling fragments of a culture that has been ethnically cleansed, displaced, and dispersed. 

Most people would think of Paul Grabowsky as a jazz pianist. And they wouldn't be wrong, except he's much more than that. He's a composer of film scores, orchestra works and operas, a band leader (he founded the Australian Art Orchestra) and an inveterate collaborator. Just this year, he's released three albums: a recording of standards with singer Michelle Nicolle; a duo with guzheng player Mindy Meng Wang; and, with Peter Knight, a remarkable celebration of the manikay of Ngukurr songman Daniel Wilfred. In other words, it's time we had Paul back on the show. undead. is a new album of contemporary operatic arias by living composers - almost all of whom are Australian. “Opera's greatest stories are still being written, here and now”, say singer Jessica O'Donoghue and pianist Jack Symonds, performers on the record, and they would know, being a founding member and artistic director of Sydney Chamber Opera, which has platformed living composers throughout its decade in action. Jess and Jack perform some highlights from the album live in The Music Show studio.

Both Sides Now was written by Joni Mitchell in 1966, when she was just 21 years old. She wasn't the first artist to record it though - in true folk tradition, the covers began before her own version was released in 1969, and they haven't stopped since. Both Sides Now is our most covered Cover Story song so far, with over 1,700 versions in as many styles as you can think of. Including, of course, Joni's return to the song from the other side of her career in 2000 (cue Emma Thompson's single tear in Love Actually).  For the final episode of this series of Cover Story, we will be looking at 9 versions of Both Sides Now with guests jazz musician Alex Raupach and composer Alice Chance.

Senegalese kora master Seckou Keita's relationship with the West African string instrument is delicate, thoughtful, and expansive. Through developing his own tunings, and taking his music further than the traditions of Casamance, the region of southern Senegal he's from, he's connected his instrument with jazz, classical, and other African musical traditions. He's in Australia playing a series of concerts and drops into the Music Show studio to perform live. Rowena Wise and Didirri are both successful Australian indie artists in their own right. Their personal and creative partnership has led to a couple of singles, as well as a tender duo reinterpretation of their own solo works. They're on the road doing a series of gigs in churches and offer up a couple of beautiful live performances in the studio with Andy. Plus we hear new music from Paul Grabowsky and Mindy Meng Wang, and mark Sir Charles Mackerras' centenary. 

In 1983, the Manly Ferry was making its way to circular quay and James Reyne was laying down Reckless (Don't Be So...) with his band, Australian Crawl, for their EP Semantics.  Since then, the song has had a permanent place in lists of great Australian songs, in no small part due to some very different covers. Some by Australian music royalty (from Paul Kelly to John Farnham), and some from further afield (Laura Mvula singing about Aussie landmarks in her Birmingham accent). Andy's guests are University of Western Sydney musicologist John Encarnacao and ABC Classic's Vanessa Hughes.

Martin Hayes is one of the world's most celebrated fiddle players, and a very influential figure in Irish traditional music. He draws from the musical tradition of County Clare and interprets it within a wider contemporary context, and has collaborated with an impressive slate of artists from Paul Simon to Yo Yo Ma. A longtime friend of the Music Show, Martin Hayes speaks with Andy ahead of his 2026 Australian tour. Piotr Anderszewski is a famously exacting pianist from Poland who only performs pieces he feels he can contribute to in an original and personal way. He has performed with many of the world's great symphony orchestras, and is on tour in Australia throughout November performing repertoire of Brahms, Bach and Beethoven.  And for Aus Music Month, a new song from Stella Donelly's brand new album Love and Fortune.

Time After Time was a last minute addition to Cyndi Lauper's debut album She's So Unusual in 1983 - a final songwriting session between Lauper and Rob Hyman filling a gap on the tracklist.  Since then, it's been through the wringer with not one but two versions recorded for MacDonald's ads, turn-of-the-millennium EDM, and a turn by Miles Davis ("the most honoured I ever felt" - Cyndi Lauper; "he could have farted it and she'd still have loved it" - Andrew Ford).  Andy's guests are Iain Grandage and Michelle Nicolle. 

All kinds of music and all kinds of musicians in conversation with Andrew Ford.