The Music Show – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Composer Larry Sitsky is a charming sort of thorn in the side of the Australian music scene, and he’s about to turn 90. In this conversation recorded at the 2024 Canberra International Music Festival, he doesn’t hold back. 

New York based trumpeter Chloe Rowlands divides her time between playing with art brass quartet the Westerlies, and with groups like Fleet Foxes and the 8-Bit Big Band. She’s visiting both edges of Australia when she collaborates with the WA Youth Jazz Orchestra and the Sydney Conservatorium’s Equity in Jazz Program. 

Larry Sitsky’s The Compleat Busoni is published by ANU Press.

Chloe Rowlands performs a free concert at Sydney Conservatorium of Music on Thursday 5 September, 6.30-8.30pm. 

Chloe performs two shows in Perth with WA Youth Jazz Orchestra, in the Progressions 2024 Showcase and at The Ellington Jazz Club. 

Music heard in the show:

Title: When All of This is OverComposer: Chloe RowlandsArtist: The WesterliesAlbum: Songbook Vol. 2Label: The Westerlies Music

Title: Piano Concerto No. 1 – The Twenty-Two Paths of the Tarot; vi. The LoversComposer: Larry SitskyArtist: Roger Woodward, David Porcelijn, Adelaide Symphony OrchestraAlbum: A Concerto CollectionLabel: ABC Classics 481 1322

Title: Sonatina Seconda Composer: Ferruccio BusoniArtist: Marc-André Hamelin (piano)Album: Busoni Late Piano MusicLabel: Hyperion CDA67951

Title: Violin Concerto No. 3 ‘I Ching’ – The Eight Kua (Trigrams); i. WaterComposer: Larry SitskyArtist: Jan Sedivka, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Christopher Lyndon-GeeAlbum: Australian ConcertosLabel: Australian Music Unit AMU4

Title: Arch (Fantasia No. 4)Composer: Larry SitskyArtist: Larry Sitsky (piano)Album: Contemporary Australian PianoLabel: Move M3066

Title: Blue and Red HorsesComposer: Adriene LenkerArtist: The WesterliesAlbum: Songbook Vol. 1Label: The Westerlies Music

Title: Tifa’s ThemeComposer: Nobuo UematsuArtist: The 8-Bit Big Band, Chloe Rowlands (flugelhorn)Album: Album 4 – Game ChangerLabel: 8-Bit 

Title: LaurieComposer: Chloe RowlandsArtist: The WesterliesAlbum: Wherein Lies the GoodLabel: The Westerlies Music

Technical production by Emrys Cronin, Isabella Tropiano, and John Jacobs

The Music Show is made on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country

Romano Crevici has been playing violins made by Harry Vatiliotis for decades. Now drawing to the end of their respective careers, Harry has made one final instrument, which will be Romano's last violin too. The process, challenged by sore joints, thin skin, and Harry's caring responsibilities to the love of his life Maria, have been captured in a moving film called The Last Violin by Carla Thackrah. Romano and Carla are in the studio with the titular violin.

Andrew Robertson's The Journeyman Suite is music about making music—documenting the realities and career arc of a jobbing musician. Big band music presents big possibilities for colour and texture and the composer tells Andrew Ford about writing for this intergenerational band, and why he added a string quartet.

The Last Violin is being screened on SBS on Sunday 15 September and will be available on SBS On Demand after that.

You can contact Romano Crivici here if you own an instrument made by Harry Vatiliotis. 

AR Big Band's The Journeyman Suite is out now on ABC Jazz.

 Romano Crivici and Carla Thackrah with the last violin.

Music in this program:

Title: String Quartet No. 4 ‘Undercurrents’Artist: Elektra String QuartetComposer: Romano CriviciAlbum: Ebb & FlowLabel: ABC Classics ABCL0015D

Title: Let it Go Artist: Allie OsborneComposer: Romano CriviciAlbum: The Vatiliotis Collection: music from The Last ViolinLabel: No-Self Records

Title: Ecstasy of CloudsArtist: Elektra String QuartetComposer: Romano CriviciAlbum: Flat EarthLabel: ABC Classics 4657042

Titles: Blow; Torment; The one less travelled by...; The BalladierArtist: AR Big Band & String QuartetComposer: Andrew RobertsonAlbum: The Journeyman Suite Label: ABC Jazz ABCJ0031D

Title: Symphony for Big Band; 3rd Movement Artist: AR Big BandComposer: Andrew RobertsonAlbum: The Journeyman Suite Label: ABC Jazz ABCJ0031D

Technical production by Emrys Cronin, Isabella Tropiano, and John Jacobs

The Music Show is made on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country

In 1961, the first elected leader of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was assassinated just months after the country’s newfound independence. Unbeknownst to themselves, US jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Dizzie Gillespie, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln played an unlikely role in his death. Belgian director Johan Grimonprez joins us on The Music Show to explain the bizarre link between jazz and the CIA involvement in this Congolese coup, detailed in his new documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, playing as part of Melbourne International Film Festival. 

Sinking Cities is a new work from jazz saxophonist, composer and arranger Rafael Karlen. It laments the 2019 flooding of 12,000-year old Türkish city Hasankeyf (one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world) to make way for a controversial dam. Karlen, who has never been to Türkiye, explains to Andrew Ford why this issue inspired him to write a large-scale piece of music for string orchestra, choir and saxophone.

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, directed by Johan Grimonprez is showing as part of Melbourne International Film Festival on 12 + 24 August, and New Zealand International Film Festival on 15 + 17 August.

Rafael Karlen's album Sinking Cities is out now on ABC Classic.

Technical production by Ann-Marie Debettencor

The Music Show is produced on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country

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.