The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face was made famous by the version Roberta Flack recorded for her 1969 album First Take, which was then used in Clint Eastwood's 1971 film Play Misty for Me. But it started life as a relatively simple folksong British folk singer Ewan MacColl wrote for and delivered to American folk singer Peggy Seeger down a phone line at the start of the 1960s. From folksong to torch song to torture device (sorry, Barbra Streisand), it's a song that has robustly weathered many interpretations. Poet and folk artist Kate Fagan and soprano Rachel Mink of Luminescence Chamber Singers are our critics in the first episode of a new series of Cover Story.
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From Mao's Last Dancer to Master and Commander: Christopher Gordon on his film music and beyond, and The Apartments' Peter Milton Walsh
Composer Christopher Gordon is being handed the Distinguished Services to the Australian Screen award at this year's Screen Music Awards. Responsible for big scores to films like Mao’s Last Dancer, Ladies In Black, and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Christopher has also written for television, ballet and the concert hall. He tells Andrew about catching his first big break (a score for miniseries Moby Dick) and how he’s kept up such a varied composing and conducting career.Forming in Brisbane in 1978, The Apartments have been releasing music on-and-off for over 40 years, with singer songwriter Peter Milton Walsh the only constant member. The latest album spends a lot of time looking back, balancing joys and sorrows, and arrives like a declaration: That's What the Music is For.
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Cover Story: The Times They Are A-Changin'
Ahead of new episodes of Cover Story (dropping very soon!) we bring you one of our favourites from season one.Singer and rapper Ziggy Ramo and musician and broadcaster Alice Keath look at Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ – a political anthem just vague enough to apply to the US civil rights movement, the Velvet Revolution, Perestroika, and in some cases seemingly nothing at all.
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Inside a showtunes sing-along bar, and composer Fritz Hart's unsung career
When was the last time you gathered around a piano to belt out showtunes with friends or strangers? Marie's Crisis Cafe is a beloved New York City sing-along piano bar that's been bringing musical theatre lovers together for decades. The bar is popping up in Melbourne and Sydney and we'll meet resident pianists Kenney Green-Tilford and Adam Michael Tilford who'll perform a couple of showtunes live.Fritz Hart (1874 - 1949) was an English composer, conductor and teacher (and critic, poet, novelist and painter), a friend of Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was active in Melbourne (and Hawaii) in the first part of the 20th century. He composed a great deal of music, including no fewer than nineteen operas, but is these days better known for his teaching work, his students including Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Margaret Sutherland, Linda Phillips and Esther Rofe. Hart's biographers, Peter Tregear and Anne-Marie Forbes, join Andy to discuss this flamboyant, not to say rakish, figure in Australian music.
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Shellie Morris sings for our little ones and Tim Brady composes for 100 electric guitars
Wardaman and Yanyuwa woman Dr Shellie Morris AO grew up speaking English in her adopted family, but has since gone on to learn over 20 First Nations languages. Her new album Singing For Our Little Ones is in Warumungu, and it's a collaboration with Elders in Tennant Creek as well as the local recording studio and a whole bunch of musicians. Shellie's cultural advocacy and leadership recently earned her a Red Ochre Award for Lifetime Achievement, and she's back on The Music Show to talk about why music is the perfect tool to preserve languages.Many bands include 2 or 3 guitars, but Tim Brady's latest project has one hundred of them. The Canadian composer and guitarist recently premiered 100 Guitars at Brisbane Festival, where local ensemble Topology was bolstered by 100 guitarists—a mix of professionals, casual players and complete newbies. Tim talks to Andrew Ford about the pulling off such an ambitious performance, the changing role of electric guitar in new classical music, and doing something a lot of composers are daunted by: writing for a string quartet.
Italia