Irish trad-punk for the 21st century with the Mary Wallopers, and music for dark times with Deborah Cheetham-Fraillon
The Mary Wallopers are in Australia, far from their hometown of Dundalk in Ireland's County Louth. They're a raucous, political band with a folk/punk inheritance from bands like The Dubliners and the Pogues. Charles Hendy, who formed the band alongside his brother Andrew, is Andy's guest.We welcome Yorta Yorta/Yuin composer and soprano Deborah Cheetham Fraillon back to the music show to discuss the release of Eumeralla, A War Requiem for Peace on ABC Classic. This powerful requiem, sung in Gunditjmara dialects by Indigenous and non-Indigenous choirs and soloists, commemorates the brutal Eumeralla War of the late 19th century fought between Gunditjmara people and colonists in South Western Victoria. Deborah is also singing in Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time with Sydney Philharmonia Choirs at The Sydney Opera House on Saturday September 13.
--------
53:57
--------
53:57
Bold performances in music new and old: Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Havlat
Carolyn Sampson is an English soprano who began her career in early music (Bach and before), working with some of the world's best-known specialists in historically informed performance. These days, she is just as likely to be heard singing Mahler. She talks about her developing career in a conversation recorded at this year's Australian Festival of Chamber Music. Also from the Festival, the fearless Australian-born, London-based pianist Joseph Havlat. He enjoys the challenge of new music and the more virtuosic the better. But he is also a composer, his music defying categorisation, veering between the deeply serious and hilariously funny - sometimes in the same piece. He talks to Andrew Ford about his playing and composing, and how they intersect.
--------
54:03
--------
54:03
Music teachers on screen, and how to score a film
Was your music teacher anything like the ones in the movies? Three academics - Hugh Gundlach and Rhiannon Simpson from Melbourne University and Katrina Rivera from ANU - join Andy to interrogate cinematic depictions of music teachers. From the dictators (Whiplash) to the heroes (Mr Holland's Opus) and the chaos engines in between (School of Rock), what do our fictional music teachers tell us about music education in the real world? And Freya Berkhout is an Australian film composer who made a leap of faith by moving to Hollywood two years ago, and she hasn’t looked back. Freya joins Andrew Ford to talk about surviving in the film industry 'machine', her approach to scoring comedy and horror, and the prevalent use of her voice in her soundtracks. Freya scored the documentary Surviving Malka Leifer, which just premiered at Melbourne International Film Festival.Surviving Malka Leifer is screening in the Jewish International Film Festival on September 18th (Sydney), and September 21st (Melbourne), and will be available to stream on Stan from October 5th.
--------
54:04
--------
54:04
80 years since the end of WWII: the Music of Remembrance with Jeremy Eichler
Four pieces of music written in the years after World War II – Strauss’s Metamorphosen, Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, Britten’s War Requiem, and Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony, ‘Babi Yar’ – paint a complicated picture of how European composers memorialised war in Jeremy Eichler’s new book Time’s Echo. Jeremy joins Andy on the show to trace the connections and conflicts in the ways that a German, a Jewish Austrian in exile, an Englishman, and a Russian looked back at the war(s) and the Holocaust.This program was first broadcast in April 2024.
--------
54:07
--------
54:07
A musical portrait of Guinea-Bissau, and pianist Ana-Maria Vera on surviving as a child prodigy
As a child prodigy, pianist Ana-Maria Vera made her concerto debut when she was nine, going on to record and perform with some of the world’s great orchestras (Philadelphia, Cleveland, London Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony). In a conversation recorded at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, Ana-Maria tells Andrew Ford about spending her formative years on the stage, her significant musical relationships with violinist Ivry Gitlis and teacher Leon Fleisher, and how her organisation Bolivia Clásica brings concerts, festivals and workshops to places like the mountains of La Paz and the Uyuni salt desert. Guinea-Bissau is a small country with rich musical traditions. New documentary film Nteregu surveys the music of the country from pre-colonial and colonial times to present. Instruments like the kora, balafon (gourd resonated xylophone) and Tina (floating gourd percussion played by women) are featured, as well as the griots and musicians who pass on this music to the next generations. The film also looks to a hopeful future where the music is recognised for its cultural heritage and reaches far beyond West Africa. Andrew speaks to Manuel Loureiro, one of the film’s directors.
New Zealand