Edited by Anni Heino
ABC Books, March 2008
Talking to Kinky and Karlheinz is a book of interviews in which, as the subtitle has it, ‘170 musicians get vocal on The Music Show‘. Andrew Ford has presented this radio program – something of a ABC Saturday morning institution – since 1995, and the new book, edited by Anni Heino, brings together conversations with guests such as John Adams, Victoria de los Ángeles, Robyn Archer, Pierre Boulez, David Byrne, Harry Connick Jr, Bob Geldof, k.d.lang, Tom Lehrer, Yehudi Menuhin, Pete Seeger, Mavis Staples, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mitsuko Uchida.
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Reviews
The variety of musicians interviewed in the book – 45 of them at some length, another 125 of them or so represented by pithily related comments – corresponds to the amazing mixture of talent heard on ABC Radio National’s The Music Show on Saturday mornings. Jazz musicians, opera conductors, concert soloists, country and western performers, orchestral composers, pop and rock composer-singers, directors, scene designers, even the occasional writer, all make their appearances . . . For wit I give first place to the peerless mouth-organ player Larry Adler; for deep-seated goodness and wisdom Bob Copper of Rottingdean, whose family has been singing traditional songs in parts for generations. Similarly inspiring is Kev Carmody’s account of how the indigenous droving camps he knew in his younger days lapped up radio broadcasts of Bach and discussed at length the characters of Dylan Thomas’s radio play Under Milk Wood.
Roger Covell, Sydney Morning Herald
Radio National’s The Music Show makes cleaning the house on a Saturday morning almost bearable. Just when I’m getting into an existential funk about the pointlessness of it all, I’ll be diverted by pianist Mitsuko Uchida talking about the crucial differences between Beethoven and Mozart, or jazz singer Annie Ross recalling the time she had to fill in for Billie Holiday . . . As someone who isn’t a music aficionado, I often don’t know the interviewees but it usually doesn’t matter. In radio and book form, these conversations are an entertaining education in what it means to make music.
Fiona Capp, The Age
This was never going to be an unbiased review. Having said that, Talking to Kinky and Karlheinz more than lives up to the expectations of this rusted-on listener. One of the joys of The Music Show is its eclecticism: the show’s charter is to cover as many types of music as possible, and it spans classical, jazz, folk, blues, country, gospel, comedy, rock and pop . . . [The book] reflects the element of suprise always present in [the show] . . . An interview with Chad Morgan, discussing the perfect country song (everyone dies), is immediately followed by Yehudi Menuhin’s recollections of playing to recently liberated prisoners of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Robyn Murray, Southern Highlands News