Together Alone with Crowded House and talking About Ghosts with Mary Halvorson

Australia Broadcast Center

3 days ago

Brooklyn-based jazz guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson has released a new album About Ghosts. Featuring her long-time improvisatory band Amaryllis, this time she's also added two saxophonists into the mix. Mary speaks to Andrew Ford about what adding more horns allows her music to do, how an increased focus on composition has changed the way she improvises, and about some of her more surprising musical influences (people like Elliott Smith and Robert Wyatt).
Together Alone is not Crowded House's most famous album, but for Barnaby Smith, it's their best. Recorded in the wild reaches of Karekare Beach in Aotearoa New Zealand, its sound and stories emerge directly from that place. Barnaby, who is the writer of 33 1/3: Together Alone, travelled to Karekare to absorb the atmosphere that precipitated the album joins Andy to make the case for this album in the output of one of Australasia's most successful bands.
Title: Full of Neon
Artist: Mary Halvorson & Amaryllis
Composer: Mary Halvorson
Album: About Ghosts
Label: Nonesuch
Title: Together Alone, Kare Kare, Skin Feeling, Catherine Wheels
Artist: Crowded House
Composer: Neil Finn, Mark Hart, Nick Seymour, Paul Hester, Ngapo 'Bub' Wehi
Album: Together Alone
Label: Capitol
Title: Carved From, Eventidal, Full of Neon, About Ghosts
Artist: Mary Halvorson & Amaryllis
Composer: Mary Halvorson
Album: About Ghosts
Label: Nonesuch
Title: Tedesca dita la proficia
Artist: The Renaissance Players
Composer: Marco Facoli
Album: The Cat's Fiddlestick
Label: Cherrypie
The Music Show is produced on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country
Technical production by Simon Branthwaite