Penny Lomax and Maureen Cooney, the founding producers of ABC Radio National’s The Music Show, will be presented with the Richard Gill Award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music at the 2021 Art Music Awards.

Penny Lomax and Maureen Cooney

Penny Lomax and Maureen Cooney. Image supplied.

Over its 30 years on air, The Music Show has become one of the most treasured institutions on Australian broadcasting, celebrated for its revealing interviews, extraordinary depth of knowledge, and its entirely genre-agnostic approach to music – rare then, but almost completely extinct in our modern era of hyper-specialisation and audience segmentation.

These were the qualities that Lomax and Cooney built into the program from the outset. They have been the driving force throughout the program’s history, and their enthusiasm and meticulous preparation has made The Music Show appointment listening.

Speaking exclusively to Limelight, current host Andrew Ford said, “I don’t think everyone realises how much RN is a producer’s medium. There are two full-time producers on The Music Show and one very part-time presenter. So it’s the producers who choose the music and the guests. Penny and Maureen did that together from...