BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Where will your music career take you?
For Melbourne percussionist Kaylie Melville, it led her into major festival appearances, premieres of Australian works, fellowships and extensive studies in Australia and overseas.
It also led her towards Speak Percussion — and from her 14-year relationship with the Australian arts organisation, she has now stepped into the role of co-artistic director.
Kaylie, who first started with Speak as an emerging artist, tells us how she’s formed deep connections with Speak that have evolved into her new leadership position in 2024.
Kaylie, congratulations on your new role! How have you been feeling about stepping in as co-artistic director of Speak Percussion?
It’s a really exciting time! July marked the official beginning of this new role for me, but it’s been wonderful to have lots of time to dream about new projects since the plans for Speak’s co-leadership were announced in August last year.
I’m in the early stages of new collaborations with a number of artists I really admire — Roslyn Oades, Mindy Meng Wang, and All the Queen’s Men — and have been exploring new technologies, researching ancient Chinese percussion instruments, and spending time recording and interviewing Australia’s leading female weightlifters.
I was a participant in Speak’s first emerging artist program as a student in 2010, and to now be leading the company alongside Speak’s founding artistic director Eugene Ughetti is still a little surreal.
There are many things I love about Speak’s work – curiosity, innovation, collaboration – and I’m really excited to be continuing and building on this legacy.
You’ve worked as assistant artistic director of Speak Percussion since 2021. What was involved in making that move to becoming the co-artistic director?
Since I began working with Speak in 2015, I’ve moved through a series of roles: young artist in residence, company artist, artistic associate, assistant artistic director, and now co-director. Throughout that time, I’ve also developed and managed our award-winning education program Sounds Unheard, which has been a vital part of many of our larger scale works — A wave and waves, Bell Curve, March Static. Over this time, my creative relationship with Speak’s projects has been continuously evolving, and this has felt like quite a natural next step.
The biggest and most significant change in my time with Speak has been in how I’ve seen myself, broadening my practice out from classically trained percussionist to also include roles like collaborator, improviser, composer.
I’ve loved that my role in our creative processes and projects has become so much more direct and hands-on over the years.
As a percussionist, what appeals to you about taking on these leadership positions and gaining new perspectives behind the music?
I’ve always thrived on variety, which I suspect is a common trait among percussionists! Director roles really mean wearing many hats in a small organisation, and I find it really energising and exciting to be involved in creative decision-making across every level of the organisation and our projects.
There’s also a responsibility that comes with leadership positions in creating opportunities for other musicians and artists. This is something I’m really passionate about in Speak’s work: supporting new voices and new ideas through our education and mentoring programs, with our artistic associates, and with our project collaborators. It’s always a beautiful reciprocal relationship. We have so much to learn from each other, and building that network of support is so vital for our community.
There’s a lot of discussion lately about transferable skills among performing artists who also take on other roles. I’d be interested to hear how your skills in percussion have transferred to your creative direction roles — or, how the performance of music has empowered you as an arts leader.
Thinking about my work as a percussionist, particularly in a new music context, there’s a lot of overlap with the skills a good leader needs: imagination, creativity, flexibility, curiosity. An ability to embrace detail but also see the bigger picture. A high level of organisation, drive, dedication.
I think where percussionists often shine in leadership roles is our ability to learn quickly! The nature of our field is that there’s always a new instrument or technique to master, and our notation can be wildly different from one piece to the next.
For me, percussionists really embody the Zen concept of beginner’s mind – openness and adaptability – and that ‘can do’ attitude translates beautifully into other types of work.
So as a co-artistic director, how do you see this working from a collaborative perspective? How do you plan to work around the creative differences that may pop up in a shared role?
I’m a big fan of collaborative leadership models, especially coming from my work co-directing Rubiks Collective with flautist Tamara Kohler since 2015. Eugene and I (below) have been collaborating on Speak projects for almost 10 years as well, so in many ways this change is just formalising our existing creative relationship.
Working with a co-director has a lot of big advantages, including more support, greater flexibility, and being able to each work to your greatest strengths.
Creative differences are inevitable in any collaboration, whether it’s as artists or directors. Something I really appreciate about Speak is that everyone in our team loves a robust discussion, but they’re also always open to changing their minds. We know that everyone’s focused on how we can get to the best outcomes – and having to occasionally argue for your point of view is very helpful in working out what’s most important to you as an artist!
How do you hope that Speak will grow under your shared leadership — and in what direction would you like to see it develop?
Speak is entering a really exciting period where our shared leadership model has given us the capacity to support more artists and projects than ever before. I’ve long had an interest in addressing gender equity in music, and a number of my new projects are focused on supporting women as both creatives and artistic leaders.
In addition to projects that Eugene and I are developing – collaboratively and individually – we also have projects with our creative director Duré Dara, artist in residence Aaron Wyatt, and our artistic associates Zela Papageorgiou and Alon Ilsar.
We have a number of projects that bring students and community groups into this world of experimental music. Coming up very soon, we’re supporting 12 of Melbourne’s most exciting early and mid-career artists to share new works and ideas at the Axon Lab in Darebin Arts Centre in September as part of our Bespoke mentoring program.
The potential of percussion feels endless, and I’m thrilled to see how Speak is growing to encompass so many expansive new ideas and approaches to music-making.
How do you feel Speak plays an important role for percussion in Australia, and how would you like to see that influence expand under your direction — whether that’s in the form of opportunities or representation for percussionists, composers, or engagement with audiences of percussion music?
Over the past 24 years, Speak has been a great innovator in the field of percussion, not only in Australia but also internationally. Through post-instrumental practice, instrument design, new technologies, interdisciplinary collaborations and site-specific work, there’s always been a drive to think about ways of exploring new sounds, environments, and approaches to performance.
I come from a background in theatre and literature as well as music, so I’m excited to continue pushing at the boundaries of what a musical performance can be. I enjoy the challenge of making work that grapples with big ideas in what is still really an abstract artform. For me, good art provokes curiosity, questions, conversations, and I hope Speak’s work under our co-leadership will keep building and expanding on this.
Learn more about Speak Percussion on the website.
Images supplied. Featured images by Bryony Jackson. Kaylie and Eugene by Darren Gill.
