The Music Show ABC listen

Errollyn Wallen’s memoir Becoming a Composer is a look into the mind of the composer as well as the life of one. Born in Belize but now based in the far-flung north of Scotland, where she sometimes inhabits a lighthouse, she works at a brisk pace, composing prolifically for orchestra, chamber ensemble, choir, and over twenty operas.

Her major public commissions have included music for The Last Night of the Proms, the Paralympic Opening Ceremony, and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and she joins us from her home in the Orkney Islands to talk about Becoming a Composer, and becoming a composer.

Music heard in the show:

Title: Horseplay i. Dark and mysterious
Artist: The Continuum Ensemble/Philip Headlam
Composer: Errollyn Wallen
Album: The Girl In My Alphabet
Label: Avie AV0006

Title: Dervish
Artist: Matthew Sharp (cello), Dominic Harlan (piano)
Composer: Errollyn Wallen
Album: The Girl In My Alphabet
Label: Avie AV0006

Title: Sojourner Truth
Artist: Madeleine Mitchell (violin), Errollyn Wallen (piano)
Composer: Errollyn Wallen
Album: Violin Conversations
Label: Naxos 8574560

Title: Cello Concerto
Artist: Matthew Sharp (cello), Ensemble X, Nicholas Kok
Composer: Errollyn Wallen
Album: Photography
Label: NMC NMCD221

Title: Boom Boom
Artist: Palaver Strings, Nicholas Phan
Composer: Errollyn Wallen
Album: A Change is Gonna Come
Label: Azica Records 71365

The Music Show is made on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country

Technical Production by Simon Branthwaite and Tegan Nicholls

Playwright, screenwriter, and actress Kate Mulvany has been commissioned with the task of writing the lost prologue for the first true English opera, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. She joins Andy on The Music Show to chat about getting into the head of the queen of Carthage, and what it was like writing for opera for the first time. 

Independent hip-hop label Elefant Traks has had a huge cultural impact on the Australian music industry, and in 2024 after 26 years they are wrapping up operations. Back in 2018 we chatted to Tim Levinson and L-Fresh the Lion for Elefant Traks 20th birthday, and we're bringing it back for this week's show as the label begins preparations for their farewell concerts.

Plus, a new release of an old tune by Louis Armstrong, recorded live at the BBC. 

Technical production by Tegan Nichols and Simon Branthwaite
This episode of the music show was produced on Gadigal Land and Gundungurra Country.




Performance dates:

Dido and Aeneas by Pinchgut Opera:

30 May, City Recital Hall, Sydney, 7pm
1 June, City Recital Hall, Sydney, 2pm
2 June, City Recital Hall, Sydney, 5pm
3 Jun, City Recital Hall, Sydney, 7pm

Elefant Traks:

26 May, Elefant Traks 25th Anniversary – The Finale, Sydney Opera House, 7:30pm
8 June, Elefant Traks: 25 The Finale, Open Season at the Tivoli Brisbane, 7pm
15 June, Elefant Traks 25th Anniversary – The Finale, Melbourne Recital Centre, 3pm and 7:30pm

Omar Musa is an author, artist, poet, and woodcutter making music and art from Borneo to Brooklyn. He is back in Australia to talk about his latest album The Fullness. His third album touches on the environment, culture, religious identity, and mortality. He creates poetry from a spoken-word background, melding hip-hop, jazz, and electronic sounds with earnest lyricism. 

Gillian Dooley joins us on The Music Show to talk about her latest book She Played and Sang, which explores the music of Jane Austen. From Haydn piano sonatas to Scottish folk songs, Gillian gives us a sense of what not only Elizabeth Bennett and the Dashwoods were playing in their parlour, but also Jane Austen herself. 

Also new music from Leila and Sean Shibe

Performance Dates -- Omar Musa

4 May – 2 June All My Memories Are Mistranslations, Humble House Gallery Canberra, 
2 August ACO Up Close: Omar Musa and Mariel Roberts, ACO Pier 2-3 - The Nielson, 7pm

Gillian Dooley -- She Played and Sang: Jane Austen and Music, Manchester University Press

Australian tenor Stuart Skelton returns to The Music Show as he prepares to sing Mahler’s Song of the Earth (Das Lied von der Erde) with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Looking over his increasingly heroic career from oddball roles like the titular Peter Grimes to the pantheon of Wagner’s men, Stuart reflects on growing into his voice, and what he learned from the conducting and musical leadership of the late Andrew Davis.

Story of Another Soul is a “decolonial dreaming of new futures that seeks truth in the roots of improvisation”, from Meanjin/Brisbane based spoken word poet Huda Fadlelmawla and jazz trumpeter, composer and producer Reuben Lewis. They join Andy to talk about the process of improvisation in which words and music come together.

Stuart Skelton performs Mahler’s Song of the Earth with the Australian Chamber Orchestra until 26 May.

Story of Another Soul is out now via Life Before Man.

Title: These Stories
Composer: Reuben Lewis, Huda Fadlelmawla
Artist: Huda The Goddess & Reuben Lewis
Album: Story of Another Soul
Label: Life Before Man

Title: Das Lied von der Erde; i. Das Trinklied von Jammer der Erde
Composer: Gustav Mahler
Artist: Stuart Skelton, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle
Album: Das Lied von der Erde
Label: BR Klassik 900172

Title: “Now the Great Bear and Pleiades” from Peter Grimes
Composer: Benjamin Britten
Artist: Stuart Skelton, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner
Album: Peter Grimes
Label: Chandos CHSA5250

Title: “Take me away, and in the lowest deep there let me be” from The Dream of Gerontius
Composer: Edward Elgar
Artist: Stuart Skelton, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis
Album: The Dream of Gerontius
Label: Chandos CHSA5140

Title: When People Ask You, Break
Composer: Reuben Lewis, Huda Fadlelmawla
Artist: Huda The Goddess & Reuben Lewis
Album: Story of Another Soul
Label: Life Before Man

Title: Love So Deep
Composer: Omar Musa
Artist: Omar Musa
Album: The Fullness
Label: Monkeycat Music

The Music Show is produced on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country

Technical production by Ann-Marie Debettencor

Andrew is at the Canberra International Music Festival, where we get to catch up with an Australian who lives in the UK, a Belgian who tours the world, and another Belgian who lives in Australia.

Lotte Betts-Dean, Aussie mezzo-soprano now based in London, makes a trip home to perform a series of form-expanding vocal works from composers like Michael Finnissy, one of the masters of so-called "new complexity". 

Belgian jazz pianist Bram de Looze invites The Music Show into the Belgian Embassy where he's staying with the two resident llamas to talk about where improvisation and composition meet for him, and what he's taken from jazz idols like Hank Jones, Keith Jarrett and Thelonious Monk. 

And CIMF Artistic Director Roland Peelman looks back on his ten years leading the festival, the joys and tribulations of wearing multiple hats, and the particular way the city of Canberra has shaped the festival. 

Look out for Bram De Looze on ABC Jazz’s Jazztrack Live in June.

Music heard in the show:

Title: Spotting Gateways
Artist: Bram de Looze
Live in Canberra – courtesy of ABC Jazz

Title: Blessed Be I
Artist: Lotte Betts-Dean, Marsyas Trio
Composer: Michael Finnissy
Album: Alternative Readings
Label: Divine Art MEX77102

Title: Botany Bay
Artist: Lotte Betts-Dean, Marsyas Trio
Composer: Michael Finnissy
Album: Alternative Readings
Label: Divine Art MEX77102

Title: parallaxis forma
Artist: Lotte Betts Dean, Explore Ensemble
Composer: Catherine Lamb
Album: 3 Compositions for Voices and Ensemble
Label: Another Timbre at-215CD

Title: Bow
Artist: Bram De Looze
Composer: Bram De Looze
Album: Spotting Gateways
Label: Independent release

Title: Monk’s Mood
Artist: Bram De Looze, Joey Baron, Robin Verheyen
Composer: Thelonious Monk
Album: MiXMONK
Label: UCJ

Technical production by Simon Branthwaite
Recorded on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country, produced on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country.

Rainbow Chan returns to The Music Show to discuss her latest audio-visual project, The Bridal Lament. In an attempt to preserve her mother's mother tongue, Rainbow has spent the last five years researching and learning the Weitou language, an endangered Cantonese dialect, through learning traditional bridal laments. Rainbow talks to Andy about the defiant tradition of performing these laments in the face of arranged marriages, and her process of learning the language through song from the 'grannies' preserving it. 

You might think Broadway composer George Gershwin and pioneer of 12-tone music Arnold Schoenberg would have had little in common, but when Gershwin arrived in Beverly Hills in August 1936, he found Schoenberg (who had fled Nazi Germany in 1933), was his neighbour. Gershwin was in the last year of his life, but during that time the two composers played tennis together every week. They also admired each other’s music - and Schoenberg admired Gershwin’s business acumen. When Gershwin asked Schoenberg for lessons, the older man enquired how much Gershwin earned, suggesting he should the one taking lessons from Gershwin. When George Met Arnold is the title of a film/concert from pianist Simon Tedeschi and conductor/violist Roger Benedict with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and they’ll be in the music studio to talk about it.

Plus an exclusive live performance from Yirinda via our comrades at Awaye.

This week’s show was recorded on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country and produced on Gadigal Land.

Technical production by Simon Branthwaite.