BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Australian percussionist Kaylie Melville offers a fun teaser for her upcoming Melbourne Recital Centre event: “Our performance begins before you even arrive in the main performance space!”
Speak Percussion — of which Kaylie is assistant artistic director — has tested out this venue to make the most of its acoustics when they present Sonic Eclipse. And this means they’ll welcome you into a space overflowing with more than 60 musicians positioned across three floors. It’s surround sound in its purest form, immersing you in music ranging from “bombastic to the extremely fragile”.
Beyond the sensory experience of Sonic Eclipse, you may also enjoy knowing it’s an all-Australian program — and two new works will be premiered.
Kaylie talks us through the process of rehearsing with tens of musicians — including Speak Percussion ensemble members, along with community instrumentalists — all to bathe you in sound.
Kaylie, Sonic Eclipse sounds super interesting — and we’re going to get right into it! But firstly, tell us why you’re looking forward to performing this music in Elisabeth Murdoch Hall.
When it comes to incredible venues for music in Melbourne, you just can’t go past the Melbourne Recital Centre. The acoustics in the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall are so fantastic; despite the large size of the space, I’m always struck by how intimate performances feel as both a performer and an audience member.
The Elisabeth Murdoch Hall is ideal for a project like Sonic Eclipse, which is about surrounding and immersing the audience in soundworlds that vary from the bombastic to the extremely fragile.
Sonic Eclipse is all about “spatialised sound”. Talk us through that concept.
Spatialised sound is about localising sound sources; in our case, placing musicians in positions in and around the audience so that the music becomes a real surround-sound experience. There’ll be musicians in front of you, behind you, above you – it’s a sonic feast!
The works in Sonic Eclipse are particularly interesting because they play with different versions of this spatial relationship. There will be times where the music will move around you, and times where you’ll move through the music. You might hear a kind of whirlpool of sound circling around you, or two synchronised sounds suddenly coming from opposite ends of the room.
For me, this work is so exciting because we get to really place the audience in the centre of the music – and many of the effects and moments of synchronicity really do feel like magic.
There’ll be more than 60 drummers and wind players. What’s going to happen when audiences step into this space?
A little spoiler – our performance begins before you even arrive in the main performance space!
Thomas Meadowcroft’s March Static for roaming wind, brass, and percussion musicians will be taking over the recital centre’s many foyers.
As you move up through the foyer levels, you’ll encounter different groups of musicians, and hear how the piece shifts depending on your location.
We recommend arriving early to give yourself plenty of time to explore – it’s like a choose-your-own musical adventure.
How did you go about gathering, planning, and rehearsing with so many instrumentalists, anyway?
March Static is definitely a huge undertaking! We put out a call to the community earlier this year for volunteers to take part in this piece, and the response has been overwhelming. We have players from community bands and orchestras, students, musicians who have been playing for decades, and musicians who are picking up their instrument again for the first time in years. It’s beautiful to see people from different walks of life coming together through music.
The planning has been immense – it takes a lot of organisation to make a work like this run smoothly, but we’re all having a fantastic time bringing this piece to life.
Tell us more about March Static, which I understand puts an interesting spin on the marching band configuration.
March Static is a beautiful re-imagining of marching band music, celebrating peace and community rather than military might.
Many of the musical choices are quite unexpected when you think about marching traditions. The wind and brass players move through cycles of shifting, ethereal chords, while the percussionists play small fragments of marching motifs.
The performers will be roaming through the foyers, but there’s no marching in formation here! It’s a much gentler experience, designed to really welcome you into the performance.
What went into your choice of programming?
We’re really thrilled to be presenting an all-Australian program in Sonic Eclipse, and to be premiering two new works for 12 percussionists.
Catherine Milliken’s To Sing offers up a series of musical tableaus, each a unique sonic offering – think micro-tonal metals in one, snare drum canons in another. Damien Ricketson’s Is Anybody There? is more like an otherworldly sound bath, using tuned cowbells, bell plates, Thai gongs and other bespoke instruments to create rich harmonies and complex timbres. Both works really play with the idea of spatialisation, surrounding the audience and combining sounds in fascinating ways.
The central work in the program is Erkki Veltheim’s The Sacred Table of Saturn, a mesmerising trio for tam-tams and electronics. Compositionally, it draws on astronomy, astrology, and contemporary physics to explore the harmony of the spheres — the idea that the motions of heavenly bodies create a kind of unheard music. It aims for an experience of hypnosis through sound, offering up a period of stillness and reflection.
This event seems pretty venue-specific, considering the “spatialised sonic choreography” as described in the listing. How did you ensure this massive event would be well-choreographed to this venue’s acoustics?
We’re fortunate to be quite familiar with the MRC’s spaces, but there have been many site-visits — some for dreaming up ideas, some for testing to make sure they’re actually possible. This has been particularly true for March Static, which uses an FM radio transmission to coordinate the 60+ players who are roaming the venue.
It’s been really fun designing paths for the players, and seeking out unexpected nooks for performers in the foyers. We’re really interested in this idea that any space could be a performance space with a bit of imagination!
What are you most looking forward to in Sonic Eclipse?
It’s far too hard to pick one thing for this show. I’m so excited to see how March Static will play out across the entire venue, and how the audience will experience the work — but I’m also excited for the moments of stillness and really intimate listening in the other works.
I love listening to these spatialised pieces with my eyes closed, and really trying to hone in on the direction of each sound, hearing how they’re moving around me. It’s such a beautiful, deep listening experience and I hope the audience enjoy it as much as we do.
Speak Percussion – Sonic Eclipse takes place as part of the RISING Festival at the Melbourne Recital Centre. Experience this concert at 8pm June 15 in Elisabeth Murdoch Hall — tickets available online.
Images supplied. Featured image by Aimee Schollum.
