Test Flight is a platform for hybrid practice in music and contemporary performance, created by Chamber Made and Speak Percussion. This opportunity is for artists to share work at its early stage of development, and get feedback from industry and peers. Test Flight is a low stress, light touch, supportive context for artists at all stages of practice.

Event Schedule

10:30: Venue opens

11:00: SESSION ONE

Featuring short works by Carolyn Connors, Ash Dor-Shiffer, Oscar Lush 

Followed by breakout for three group feedback sessions

12:45 - 1:30: Lunch Break (light catering provided)

1:30: SESSION TWO

Featuring short works by David Chesworth, Kate Hunter, Daryoosh Karimi 

Followed by breakout for three group feedback sessions

The world premiere of Noongar composer and viola player Aaron Wyatt’s exquisite audio experience. Decolonising the Bells questions how and what we commemorate.

Decolonising the Bells re‑imagines a familiar instrument whose sound carries deep colonial symbolism.

This work foregrounds and problematises Victoria’s Federation Handbells and their emblematic significance as a gift associated with the formation of Australia.

In this intimate and poignant concert by Aaron Wyatt, Speak Percussion and special guest bellringers, audiences are surrounded by historically resonant, moving sounds. A lone viola weaves through harmonically pure, pealing bells, revealing their remarkable precision. Twelve bell ringers overlap in performance – present and absent at once.

Taking Speak Percussion’s highly successful community engagement project Bell Curve as its starting point, the work deconstructs it, demolishes it, and decolonises it.

Decolonising the Bells asks, what’s in a name? What are the consequences of symbolic power, and the limits of symbolic counter‑action?

Two performances: 2pm + 4pm

Kindred People is an Indigenous‑led gathering held on Boonwurrung Country, guided by Elders and an Indigenous Steering Committee. Each event sits within a broader program of ceremony, performance and knowledge exchange, grounded in respect for Country and the sharing of living Indigenous knowledges. These works invite audiences to listen deeply, learn together and come to the gathering with care.

Praised for her ‘mesmerising emotional truth’ (The Australian), acclaimed vocalist Jane Sheldon and Rubiks Collective explore what it means to love, hope, and navigate an increasingly complex world.

Featuring three bold works by leading contemporary composers, Laura Bowler's award-winning ‘Wicked Problems’ pairs voice and bass flute in a meditation on humanity's greatest challenges, and our narrow odds of getting them right. David Lang's ‘How to Pray’ draws on the psalms, an atheist's take on the shape of prayer, its rhythms, its pacing, and its quiet hope for an answer. Thomas Meadowcroft's ‘Love Songs without Subjects’ sets French philosopher Lacan's writing on love and desire, threading unlikely pairs through its vocal line, ‘Dido's Lament’ beside ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,’ ‘Michelle’ beside ‘My Funny Valentine.’

Anchored by the beautiful and instantly recognisable lament bass sequence, the ensemble creates the slowly descending Shepard tone effect – always falling, never landing. Rather like love. Tackling love, religion, climate change and the agony of uncertainty, experience an evening of music that is searching, intimate and unexpectedly moving.

ANAM alumna Kaylie Melville, Co-Artistic Director of Speak Percussion and Rubiks Collective, returns to direct ANAM’s percussionists in Missy Mazzoli’s Millennium Canticles — a post-apocalyptic song cycle that reimagines ritual in a fractured world.

Written in 2022 for the Chicago ensemble Third Coast Percussion, the work blends ancient chant with mechanical rhythm and flashes of dark humour. Its five movements follow a community of imagined survivors rebuilding belief through sound — part prayer, part invention.

Under Kaylie’s direction, ANAM’s percussionists bring this strange, compelling world to life, revealing Mazzoli’s vision of renewal through rhythm, precision and play.

Jeanette LITTLE Shifting Worlds
Missy MAZZOLI Millennium Canticles 
Thomas MEADOWCROFT Home Organs 
Christopher CERRONE Ode to Joy 

Kaylie Melville (alum, 2015) director/percussion 
ANAM Percussion

ANAM alumna and Melbourne-based percussionist Kaylie Melville is a soloist and chamber musician dedicated to new music performance. Noted for her “extraordinary ability to impart a sense of musicality to even the smallest gestures” (Partial Durations), Kaylie is Co-Artistic Director of the new-music organisation Speak Percussion and of the contemporary ensemble Rubiks Collective, and frequently collaborates with leading Australian ensembles and orchestras. Alongside performing, her practice spans improvisation, direction, curation and teaching.

Join Kaylie as she reflects on her career and achievements since graduating from ANAM in 2015, and offers insight into her specially curated performance with the ANAM Percussionists – Millennium Canticles.

The Canberra International Music Festival’s finale concert unites towering 20th century works and an exciting Festival commission to reveal the two-piano-plus-percussion ensemble at its most visceral and expressive.

Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances (1940), heard here in its original two-piano form, is his final musical statement – an autumnal work of rhythmic vigour, lush harmonies, and haunting reflection, culminating in a triumphant transformation of an Orthodox chant.

Festival composer-in-residence Fiona Hill approaches the form with a new work that stretches percussion instrumentally and performatively, generating exciting new sonic and dramaturgical languages. Her finely-honed command of timbre, combined with extensive training as a concert pianist, places her in a formidable position to engage with – and challenge – the surrounding 20th century heavyweight pieces.

Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1913), arguably the most important work of the century, will be heard here in its two-piano version, stripped away by Stravinsky himself from its orchestrational colour to foreground the raw, percussive heart of this revolutionary ballet. Its premiere caused a riot, and its primal rhythms and tonal sounds still stun some hundred years later.

Bell Curve is a powerful sonic intervention that places Victoria’s iconic Federation Hand Bells, a gift marking the centenary of Federation, into a symbolically charged national setting. In this reimagined context, the bells become the centre of a spatial work that listens deeply to history, power and possibility.

Composed by Eugene Ughetti, Bell Curve is now being offered to Noongar musician, conductor and composer Aaron Wyatt to be decolonised throughout 2026. Through this process, the work will be re-examined, reshaped and expanded through First Nations knowledge systems, cultural practice and community consultation.

This Canberra International Music Festival performance features twelve local community members, trained by Aaron Wyatt and Speak Percussion, who activate the Federation Hand Bells in a spatial choreography of sound. Surrounding the audience, the performers are guided by networked click tracks and a quadraphonic sound system that enables perfectly calibrated attacks, resonances and timbral shifts.

Book of Hours is a meditation on the mystery of time; a captivating multimedia experience, combining animation and screen dance with a dynamic live musical performance.

Inspired by the ways we spend our time and divide our days for work, rest and play, A Book of Hours is full of moments to surprise and delight audiences of all ages: a quartet for toothbrushes, vegetables swirling in stop-motion, and wind-up toys whirring across a stage full of instruments.

Created by composer Kate Neal, filmmaker Sal Cooper, choreographer Gerard Van Dyck and performed by the contemporary classical ensemble Rubiks Collective, expect an enchanting sonic and visual feast for the senses from this award-winning team of Victorian artists.

Time collapses, days invert and nights implode.
Tick tock, tick tock. Watch it all unwind…

“Call it dance or art music or just live performance. Whatever it is – A Book of Hours is the best kind of puzzle.” — ★★★★ The Age

“...a spectacular intertwining of artforms... clever and entertaining for all.”  — Classikon

A shared offering of food, music, and conversation for Melbourne Food & Wine Festival.

Join food industry legend and musician Duré Dara OAM for an evening of culinary creativity, meaningful exchange and spontaneously performed interactive composition.

Created in collaboration with Speak Percussion, chef Andrew McConnell's Cumulus Inc and Chalmers Wines, this event serves percussion, discussion and food.

Taste head chef Allan Eccles’ four-course seasonal menu.

Listen to the inventive virtuosity of Speak Percussion.

Engage in a guided conversation with new friends and old.

Savour a unique never-to-be-repeated evening.

Percussion, Conversation, Degustation is a series of events featuring improvisational music and cross-artform performance led by Duré Dara, Speak Percussion and friends.

Presented by Speak Percussion and Darebin Arts, join us for a multi-sensory 'menu' of percussion, performance and discussion – with a special food experience from local charity Alex Makes Meals. Duré and collaborators invite you to pause, listen, eat and reflect on the intersections of experimental music, the restaurant industry and social inclusion. Audience seating is on the Darebin Arts Theatre stage, inviting a communal salon setting for this intimate performance.

Food is provided as part of the event. Vegetarian or non-vegetarian options can be selected when booking.

Embark on a musical journey through the unexpected with Rubiks Collective in a world premiere performance of ‘The Big Idea’ by Australia composer Matthew Shlomowitz—a thrilling and poignant monodrama that dares to ask: what if? A theatrical work performed by a single character, this monodrama invites listeners to experience their inner world.

Celebrating their 10th anniversary, Melbourne's cult-favourites Rubiks continues to push boundaries and challenge conventions. Hailed for their ‘incredibly personal, strangely spiritual and ultimately deeply touching’ (Limelight) experiences, they have established themselves as fearless innovators in Australia's contemporary classical landscape. 

‘The Big Idea’ explores the moments when inspiration strikes, following one person's journey as their life-changing idea spirals into delightful absurdity. Featuring celebrated vocalist and long-time Rubiks collaborator Lotte Betts-Dean, this thought-provoking work combines spoken word, music, and theatrical elements, celebrating the beautiful collision between our dreams and reality.

The ensemble weaves an extraordinary tapestry of musical styles, from samba to Scandinavian jazz, late Romanticism to old-school Broadway musical—whilst seamlessly shifting between classical and contemporary instruments to create a sound world as dynamic as the human imagination itself.

A Book of Hours is a meditation on the mystery of time, a multimedia performance combining projected movement and a quirky live musical score. With a quartet for toothbrushes, vegetables swirling in stop-motion and wind-up toys whirring across the stage, this revelatory new work is a triumph of imagination from a team of award-winning Victorian artists.

Created by composer Kate Neal, choreographer Gerard Van Dyck, filmmaker Sal Cooper and performed by new music ensemble Rubiks Collective, A Book of Hours explores how we divide our time and spend our days.

New arrangements of works by Baroque classical composer Couperin (1668-1733) sit alongside distinctively contemporary compositions featuring synthesisers, reception bells, cardboard boxes and speaking clocks.

A sonic and visual feast for the senses, A Book of Hours is full of moments to surprise and delight audiences of all ages.

Time collapses, days invert and nights implode.

Tick tock, tick tock. Watch it all unwind…

“Call it dance or art music or just live performance. Whatever it is – A Book of Hours is the best kind of puzzle.” — ★★★★ The Age 

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

A Book of Hours is a meditation on the mystery of time, a multimedia performance combining projected movement and a quirky live musical score. With a quartet for toothbrushes, vegetables swirling in stop-motion and wind-up toys whirring across the stage, this revelatory new work is a triumph of imagination from a team of award-winning Victorian artists.

Created by composer Kate Neal, choreographer Gerard Van Dyck, filmmaker Sal Cooper and performed by new music ensemble Rubiks Collective, A Book of Hours explores how we divide our time and spend our days.

New arrangements of works by Baroque classical composer Couperin (1668-1733) sit alongside distinctively contemporary compositions featuring synthesisers, reception bells, cardboard boxes and speaking clocks.

A sonic and visual feast for the senses, A Book of Hours is full of moments to surprise and delight audiences of all ages.

Time collapses, days invert and nights implode.

Tick tock, tick tock. Watch it all unwind…

“Call it dance or art music or just live performance. Whatever it is – A Book of Hours is the best kind of puzzle.” — ★★★★ The Age 

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body. The project has also been supported by the Faculty of Fine Arts & Music, The University of Melbourne.

Homophonic! and The Consort of Melbourne are proud to present the Australian premiere of Wally Gunn & Maria Zajkowski's epic oratorio: Moonlite.

'Moonlite' tells the true-crime queer love story of the 19th-century Australian bushranger Andrew George Scott, in the form of a 90-minute oratorio for voices, percussion and viola.

Winner of the Albert Maggs composition prize, this is a powerful work that effortlessly transcends musical genres to paint a picture of Victoria's own star-crossed lovers, set uniquely in our Gold-rush-era past.

Performed by 6 voices of The Consort of Melbourne: Katherine Norman, Kristy Biber, Elspeth Bawden, Timothy Reynolds, Jack Jordan, & Lachlan McDonald; joined by percussionists Louise Devenish, Kaylie Melville, Hamish Upton, and Zela Papageorgiou; and violist Phoebe Green.

Directed by Miranda Hill and Steven Hodgson. 
Lighting by Bronwyn Pringle. 

Moonlite is supported by a City of Yarra Arts Grant, and is assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

Homophonic! and The Consort of Melbourne are proud to present the Australian premiere of Wally Gunn & Maria Zajkowski's epic oratorio: Moonlite.

'Moonlite' tells the true-crime queer love story of the 19th-century Australian bushranger Andrew George Scott, in the form of a 90-minute oratorio for voices, percussion and viola.

Winner of the Albert Maggs composition prize, this is a powerful work that effortlessly transcends musical genres to paint a picture of Victoria's own star-crossed lovers, set uniquely in our Gold-rush-era past.

Performed by 6 voices of The Consort of Melbourne: Katherine Norman, Kristy Biber, Elspeth Bawden, Timothy Reynolds, Jack Jordan, & Lachlan McDonald; joined by percussionists Louise Devenish, Kaylie Melville, Hamish Upton, and Zela Papageorgiou; and violist Phoebe Green.

Directed by Miranda Hill and Steven Hodgson. 
Lighting by Bronwyn Pringle. 

Moonlite is supported by a City of Yarra Arts Grant, and is assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

Percussion, Conversation, Degustation is an innovative project by Speak Percussion, featuring trailblazing percussionist and women's equity activist Duré Dara OAM.

It's not just a concert; it's a multi-sensory experience that combines improvised music, engaging storytelling, and locally sourced food. This is designed as a "made-to-order" event, structured like a menu with "courses" of improvised music, stories, and local food bites. The project actively involves post-instrumental practice, where all sounds are valued as music, and improvisation, which Duré Dara sees as a democratising force, breaking down traditional hierarchies.

Students from Bairnsdale Secondary College will be participating in the project and local artist, Deirdre Jack will be painting live in response to the musical performance.

FREE. Booking essential, call 03 5153 1988 or email info@eastgippslandartgallery.org.au to book

'Moonlite' tells the true-crime queer love story of the 19th-century Australian bushranger Andrew George Scott, in the form of a 90-minute oratorio for voices, percussion and viola.

Winner of the Albert Maggs composition prize, this is a powerful work that effortlessly transcends musical genres to paint a picture of Victoria's own star-crossed lovers, set uniquely in our Gold-rush-era past.

By Wally Gunn (music) and Maria Zajkowski (words), featuring The Consort of Melbourne
Presented by Homophonic! and the City of Yarra

Enter a genre-defying artwork where you can watch, listen, or fall into moving pictures of thought via live performance, drawing, film and soundscape.

Inspired by physics diagrams, astral photography, and graphic musical scores Diagrammatica is an ever-evolving improvisation. An extended meeting between logic and abstraction. Created by Jason Maling, in collaboration with sound artists Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey, along with filmmaker Rhian Hinkley, it’s an interactive living diagram, accessible from the underground. Sparks of ideas float freely and coalesce. Musicians perform out of view through a hyper-directional audio system. Shifting soundscapes submerge you.

Go deeper into the rift, with an intimate, subterranean experience in Slot 9. Or stay out in the open, above ground to watch the happenings for free in the Atrium.

Speak Percussion, All the Queen’s Men, Contemporary Music for All (CoMA) and local musicians herald the opening of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival with a composition by Thomas Meadowcroft. With bespoke choreography they create an immersive sonic experience that re-imagines the concept of a marching band – celebrating community and peace over military might.

A Book of Hours is a meditation on the mystery of time, combining a world of projected movement and a dynamic live musical score. Created by composer Kate Neal, filmmaker Sal Cooper, choreographer Gerard Van Dyck and performed by new music ensemble Rubiks Collective, A Book of Hours is a sonic and visual feast for the senses.

‘A Book of Hours’ combines stop-motion filmed humans and animation on screen, choreographed musicians and wind-up toys on stage, representing the slippage of time and the embodied vulnerability of the human form.

“Call it dance or art music or just live performance. Whatever it is – A Book of Hours is the best kind of puzzle.” – ★★★★ The Age

A Book of Hours is a meditation on the mystery of time, combining a world of projected movement and a dynamic live musical score. Created by composer Kate Neal, filmmaker Sal Cooper, choreographer Gerard Van Dyck and performed by new music ensemble Rubiks Collective, A Book of Hours is a sonic and visual feast for the senses.

‘A Book of Hours’ combines stop-motion filmed humans and animation on screen, choreographed musicians and wind-up toys on stage, representing the slippage of time and the embodied vulnerability of the human form.

“Call it dance or art music or just live performance. Whatever it is – A Book of Hours is the best kind of puzzle.” – ★★★★ The Age

March Static is an immersive site-specific mobile work for massed musicians, that reframes the marching band phenomenon as a celebration of community gathering around peace, over representations of military might.

Composed by Thomas Meadowcroft (AU/DE) and led by new music luminaries Speak Percussion, March Static brings together a mass of roaming musicians, creating a gentle spectrum of choreographed sound to envelop its listeners. The assembled musicians will move in and around the audience as they perform, reframing the performer-audience relationship while simultaneously challenging the traditional performance format of marching bands.

Presented by Monash University Performing Arts Centres, Speak Percussion and All the Queens Men.

Presented within the oldest continuous Chinese settlement outside of Asia, The Ninth Tone speculates on the legacy of Chinese Music outside of China since the 1800s. First conceived by Leung in 2022, this iterative project uses intonation, materiality, memory, and echo in a hauntological reimagining of Chinese Australian music.   

This project problematizes simplistic dominant cultural understandings of ‘east meets west’ that ignore significant historic lineages. Chinese culture and music has been present in Australia for almost 200 years, and cross-cultural collaboration is almost as old. The Ninth Tone offers an alternative answer to the question of what Chinese Australian music is and can be. 

Concept / Composer / Performer: Jasmin Wing-Yin Leung
Artistic Collaborator / Sound Artist / Performer: Sally Ann McIntyre
Performer: Mindy Meng Wang
Performer: Kaylie Melville
Producer: Chelsea Byrne
Produced by Speak Percussion

Songs about solitude, connection and the world's loneliest whale.

A free all-ages concert and refreshments for City of Yarra residents

Rorqual is an indie-classical concert exploring withdrawal, solitude, resilience, and connection, with new songs inspired by the true story of “the world’s loneliest whale”. Using found and repurposed texts drawn from the deep past to the present, composer Wally Gunn’s songs fuse classical and indie-rock music, featuring the ethereal vocals of jazz singer Gian Slater and the virtuosic musicians of Rubiks. From the ocean’s shimmering surface to its mysterious depths, and back, join us for Rorqual - the story of a modern-day mythological creature that continues to sing its one-of-a-kind song.

Event Details

Saturday 30 November, 2024 
75 Reid St, Fitzroy North 3068

11am concert
12pm refreshments + conversation with the artists

FREE for City of Yarra Residents
$10 for non-residents
Please register for catering numbers here

Experience sonic innovation as Displaced Bodies unites two of Melbourne’s cutting-edge ensembles. Ossicle Duo, an award-winning trombone-percussion ensemble, pushes boundaries with their technically refined and high-energy exploratory art music. Rubiks Collective, a dynamic ensemble of Australia’s most versatile young performers, take audiences on a sonic journey through their ‘incredibly personal, strangely spiritual and ultimately deeply touching’ performances. Together, they fearlessly explore the boundaries of sound in the highly anticipated world premiere of Jakob Bragg’s acclaimed composition, ‘Displaced Bodies, Weapons of Action,’ a recipient of the prestigious Melbourne Recital Centre & Melbourne Conservatorium of Music Composition Award.

Full program and tickets available here.

Music at McClelland is held on the third Sunday of the month, 2–4pm, and features exceptional performers from across Victoria.

In Assemblage, Speak's Assistant Artistic Director Kaylie Melville showcases works at the forefront of post-instrumental practice - a movement revealing the hidden musical potential in everyday objects. Plants, wine glasses, alarm clocks and saw blades sit alongside an array of traditional percussion instruments, creating a universe of endless sonic possibilities.

Full program and tickets available here.