Kaylie Melville is gearing up for a “wildly exciting” concert with these percussionists

BY CUTCOMMON

“Percussion is quite literally the beating heart of so much of our music.”

So says Kaylie Melville, one of Australia’s top performers of percussion, a seemingly endless range of instruments from gongs to drums to wooden planks, and any other surface an artist may choose. In the case of her upcoming performance with percussionists from the Australian National Academy of Music, the human breath is another texture that these performers will layer on top of the sounds they produce with all the energy in their bodies.

Millennium Canticles is ANAM’s concert program that centres around Missy Mazzoli’s work of the same name, featuring musicians with their instruments, their voices and their breath. We wanted to ask Kaylie (pictured throughout) about the piece she describes as “wildly exciting”.

We also touched base with her about a new role that sees her stepping into a leadership position with a major Australian arts organisation — one of the many career moves that expands her approach to this fascinating form of performance.

First of all, congratulations is in order — you’ve just been named the new Artistic Director for Speak Percussion! How has this new role impacted or changed your own musical journey?

I’m really honoured to be taking on the Artistic Director position at Speak, steering us into a new era of cutting-edge percussive practice. Speak’s mission is to redefine the potential of percussion, and our program for 2026 certainly showcases this!

Prior to this announcement, I’d been the Co-Artistic Director of Speak for several years alongside Speak’s founder Eugene Ughetti. This means the new role is less of a change and more of a gentle shift. There’s still a very collaborative energy at Speak in our team and our broader community of artistic colleagues, which I’ve always valued and I think is a great marker of our work.

One noticeable change through this period has been a greater emphasis on composition as part of my regular work. I’ve been improvising and writing for myself for some time, but it’s been a delight to work more closely with other musicians and to see how they interpret and expand on these ideas.

As an ANAM alumna, how are you approaching your upcoming Millenium Canticles concert?

I was so thrilled when ANAM approached me with the idea of collaborating with the percussion department. I’ve chosen four works that showcase a lot of my loves in music. All four works are from the contemporary repertoire and they all involve multi-percussion set-ups, where the players are working with combinations of instruments — for example, drums, gongs, resonant metals, wooden planks — as opposed to a singular instrument, say, a marimba. I love the challenge of these types of works, where players need to carefully select their instruments to build the sonic world of the piece.

I also think quite a lot about representation in programming. Half of the Millennium Canticles program is repertoire by Australian composers, and there’s also a 50/50 gender split in the program.

Most of all, I wanted to pick pieces that would be a blast to play – and I hope the ANAM musicians are enjoying them as much as I am!

Have you performed Missy Mazzoli’s Millenium Canticles before, or will this be your first time?

This will be my first experience with Millennium Canticles, but not my first experience with Missy Mazzoli’s music. Missy’s piece Still Life with Avalanche was a feature in the early programming of Rubiks Collective, a new music chamber ensemble I co-founded at ANAM in 2015. When I started searching for repertoire for this concert, I was very excited to discover that Missy had finally written a percussion quartet!

Something I particularly enjoy about Millennium Canticles is the use of the voice. My studies included some background in theatre as well as music, and I love works that play with text, vocalisation, choreography. In this piece, the percussionists whisper, speak, yell, and use their breath as another rhythmic device. The impact is wonderful: it’s intense and dramatic and wildly exciting.

ANAM describes the work Millenium Canticles as having dark humour undertones. How do you feel that audiences might connect with it today?

Missy Mazzoli drew inspiration for Millennium Canticles from the 2012 play Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn. The play is set in a post-apocalyptic world, following a group of survivors who are trying to recount a particular episode of The Simpsons. The play jumps forward through time, so at first, the retellings contain small errors and memory slips – but when we arrive 80 years into the future, the episode’s plot has taken on a ritualistic form, becoming an epic story of good versus evil, vengeance, and hope.

For me, the piece resonates on many levels. The stories and rituals we share are so important in creating connection and hope, particularly in troubled times. Missy plays with this idea in her music by transforming the musical material: the first movement is titled Famous Disaster Psalm and the closing movement Survival Psalm. That idea of hope, survival, renewal is something that I hope will resonate with the players and the audience.

While studying at ANAM, what were some memorable experiences that influenced your musical development and direction?

There were so many wonderful moments! Some highlights for me were performing Per Nørgård’s percussion concerto For A Change, playing timpani in Brahms 4 under the baton of Simone Young, and of course the formation of Rubiks Collective with my ANAM colleagues.

One of the greatest gifts ANAM gave me was the opportunity to try on so many different hats — orchestral percussionist, chamber musician, soloist – and then, the gift of the realisation that I didn’t necessarily have to pick just one path. I’d always loved the variety of instruments and experiences that percussion offered, so it made sense that I’d be seeking something similar in my career: opportunities to always be learning, growing, and embracing new ideas. By staying open to possibility, my career has taken some unexpected but delightful turns along the way.

You’ll also be involved in a conversation session with ANAM. What discussions, advice, and experiences do you look forward to sharing with the next generation of Australian classical musicians?

I think the key advice is – just do it! Program and put on a concert. Start an ensemble. Apply for a grant. Reach out to your musical hero. People in our industry are generally kind, supportive, and really take note of people who are taking initiative to realise their dreams. The impacts can be incredibly far-reaching in terms of new opportunities and connections, and I promise you’ll learn so much from the experience.

You’ve talked about percussion as having an ever-relevant place in music; that it “holds the key to the future of music”. How do you see percussion shaping the future musical landscape in Australia? And what opportunities does your role as Artistic Director of Speak Percussion lend to this future?

Percussion is one of the oldest instrument families, and features in so many cultures and traditions. At the same time, it’s ever-evolving: percussionists are masters of building, repurposing, and reimagining instruments. We move across genres with ease. Percussion is quite literally the beating heart of so much of our music.

Our instrument is also interesting in term of its accessibility. You can very quickly teach someone to hit a percussion instrument and make a nice sound, but you can also spend a lifetime mastering technique and repertoire.

In my work with Speak, we have a whole branch of beautiful projects that involve working with community members, including amateur musicians or even people who have never played music before! This is possible because of the diversity and accessibility of percussion, creating opportunities for connection and participation that are so unique and special to our instrument.

To me, this feels vital to the future of Australia’s musical landscape. I believe we’re seeing a real desire from audiences to not only watch and listen, but to also join in the making of the music. These projects have been some of my favourites in the Speak repertoire, and I’m certainly daydreaming about ambitious new works in this space!