BY CUTCOMMON
It’s not easy to get an ensemble off the ground. Nor is it easy to come out of a pandemic with a thriving performing arts initiative. But if there’s one group of musicians who can meet these challenges, it’s Rubiks Collective. Founded in Melbourne and performing across the world, Rubiks is now celebrating 10 years of what it does best: presenting a daring program of music played at the highest calibre. We caught up with percussionist Kaylie Melville (pictured below) who sheds light on Rubiks’ journey ahead of their tenth birthday concert series The Big Idea, named after the composition they’ll premiere.
Rubiks Collective is Kaylie, Gemma Kneale (cello), Tamara Kohler (flutes), and Jacob Abela (keyboards).
Ten years of Rubiks, what an epic milestone! Take us back to where it all began. At its founding, what did you imagine that Rubiks would one day become, or what need did you believe it would fulfil in live performance?
It feels like these 10 years have gone by in a blur! The idea for Rubiks goes back even further, all the way to 2013. The four of us were students at the Australian National Academy of Music, and realised we had a shared passion for new music and a drive to put together our own shows. We began playing together for internal chamber music projects and recitals, and officially launched Rubiks with our first self-produced show in 2015.
At that time, we were particularly inspired by two American ensembles – Eighth Blackbird and Bang on a Can. Both were putting together semi-staged concerts, playing with the form of what a concert could look like, and fusing rock/pop aesthetics with contemporary classical composition. Both were playing a lot of post-minimalist music that we found really exciting, full of rhythmic drive and energy.
Our early days were really about a desire to play and share this music that we were so excited about! It was a period of discovery, and we were lucky during this patch to connect with both Eighth Blackbird and Bang on a Can through their summer residency programs. This planted a lot of seeds for us and really gave us a sense of being part of a much bigger new music community.
As you now reflect on the decade that has passed, how have things changed since those early days? Did you achieve what you thought Rubiks would become, or did the nature of your initiative evolve into something different and equally exciting?
Rubiks has evolved so much from those early days. Particularly in the past few years, it feels like we’re making the kind of work we dreamt of when we were starting out.
A few very clear threads emerged in our work early on: a desire to showcase Australian music, to champion gender equity in the arts, and a real love of collaborative and interdisciplinary practice. We ran into a major hurdle early on, realising that there’s almost no music composed for our unusual quartet of instruments: flute, cello, piano and percussion. It meant commissioning became a part of our story very early on, and we’ve really cherished those collaborations.
The other big thread that emerged for us was the idea of storytelling. As an ensemble, we are quite theatrically minded, so working with themes or narratives was something we felt naturally drawn to. In some of our most recent shows, we’ve worked with an animator, a choreographer, a philosopher. We’re really interested in the new perspectives these collaborators bring to the music and to the experiences we’re creating for audiences.
What would you say has been the biggest achievement of Rubiks throughout the past 10 years?
One achievement that we’re particularly proud of is the Pythia Prize. We launched Pythia in 2016 as an initiative to look at gender equity in classical music. The prize supports a female or gender-diverse composer to create a new work with Rubiks. It was originally conceived as an annual initiative, but has now extended so that we spend two years with the chosen composer, giving us more space to experiment and explore before we launch their new piece into the world.
It’s also significant to us that the Pythia Prize commission fee is crowd-funded. It’s supported by our community: it’s a commitment from all of us to the change that we want to see in the arts world. Pythia wouldn’t be possible without our supporters, and we’re always so glad to see that they care about this as passionately as we do.
Pythia has supported five Australian composers to create and record new works with Rubiks: Samantha Wolf, Christine McCombe, Bianca Gannon, Felicity Wilcox and Sylvia Lim, who are all amazing creative minds and are making exceptional music. We have plans to launch our call out for the next round of the Pythia Prize soon – watch this space!
You have also faced challenges along the way, including a pandemic that completely disrupted the performing arts industry. What have been your biggest challenges and why was it important to push through and make sure Rubiks thrived through them?
The pandemic was certainly our biggest challenge to date. Like many ensembles, we faced some devastating cancellations, including a long-planned tour to New York to perform at National Sawdust with the brilliant Kinds of Kings composer collective. Our ensemble were geographically divided through this time too, scattered across Melbourne, Sydney, and London.
It meant we had to get really creative with working out how we could continue working. A residency at Monash University with their students became a recording project we could continue from isolation. Relaxed performances with the Melbourne Recital Centre became online instrument demonstrations for primary school students listening in from home. So many of us share these kinds of stories from this time!
What these years did give us was a chance to plan for better days ahead. We spent a lot of time talking – amongst ourselves and with our collaborators – about what we missed most in this time, and about what kind of music we wanted to make together on the other side. This really led to an explosion of new work for us: Kate Neal’s A Book of Hours, Wally Gunn’s Rorqual, Matthew Shlomowitz’s The Big Idea. There’s a lot in these works that’s about joy and/or connection, which really speaks to what’s driving us artistically.
How do you feel it’s possible to keep an initiative like Rubiks Collective alive for so many years?
There have been a couple of key ingredients that have kept Rubiks going through this past decade. We only take on projects that we’re really excited about, we choose project partners who are genuinely collaborative, and we have a strong focus on making sure the process of making/rehearsing new work is fun. That idea of the journey being as important as the destination is so important.
From a business perspective, we spent a lot of time in the early days with mentors, learning everything we could about grant writing, project management, the logistics side of bringing projects to life. All of us have other jobs outside of Rubiks, which means we can be flexible in terms of scaling our activities up or down depending on funding and schedules. We’ve had times of abundance and times where things were difficult. Sometimes we’ve had to stretch project timelines significantly to make things work, but we’ve always been sure we’ll find a way to keep going.
So how have you enjoyed planning your tenth birthday? And how does it speak to the heart of what Rubiks is all about?
When we realised our tenth birthday was approaching, Tamara and I spoke about the idea of commissioning the ensemble a birthday present. We have a list of composers we’d love to work with, and we had a long chat about who we should approach.
We’d both worked with Matthew Shlomowitz through our other jobs — Kaylie as co-Artistic Director of Speak Percussion, Tamara as CEO of the London-based music charity Contemporary Music for All. We loved Matthew’s mixing together of musical genres, and the clear sense of humour in many of his works. We had a hunch we’d all work together fantastically, which was entirely correct!
Matthew had recently worked with singer Lotte Betts-Dean, and suggested bringing her into the project. Lotte has featured in a few major Rubiks projects over the years — Second Self in 2017, Hush in 2019 — and is just an absolute star; an amazingly talented, versatile singer, and a delight to work with. She’s constantly on the road touring across the UK and Europe, so we were thrilled she also said yes to this idea!
We had a very cute moment in one of our first workshop periods for this new work, where Lotte and Rubiks realised we were back in the venue where we performed Second Self in 2017. It was one of our first shows; we were all recent graduates, we were all trying to find our way in the world. It was a lovely little moment of reflection on how far we’ve all come!
So tell us about the world premiere work! How did you decide on the right composer, and what is the piece about?
Our new piece – celebrating our tenth anniversary – is called The Big Idea. It’s a story of ambition and artistic obsession that spirals from bluest desperation into delightful absurdity, full of heart and humour.
At the centre of the piece is a single character on the brink. A new idea blossoms, a life unravels, and there’s a whole lot of tantalising chaos in between.
Matthew worked closely on this piece with Vid Simoniti, a philosopher who wrote the wonderful libretto. Created with the conviction that silliness and absurdity often carry the deepest truths, the piece is really about hope and our capacity for change.
For the ensemble, it’s an incredibly fun joyride through different genres – samba to Scandinavian jazz, from late-Romanticism to old-school Broadway. There’s a lot of doubling on unexpected instruments, but the favourite has to be when cellist Gemma rocks out on electric bass!
What are your own big ideas for the future of Rubiks?
We’re looking forward to pushing further with the kind of work we’re most excited about: exploring interdisciplinary collaborations, creating platforms for Australian and underrepresented voices, refusing to settle on a consistent genre!
The biggest idea for our next decade is going to be creating our own work. Beginning from 2026, we’ll be starting to compose our own new music for the ensemble. It feels like a really exciting next step for Rubiks – we’re always full of ideas, so it’s going to be really fun to see what unexpected directions this venture might take us in!
Anything else you’d like to share?
A thank you to our community – to all of our collaborators, guest artists, supporters through the years. You’ve all been a huge part of making 10 years of Rubiks possible, and this celebration is for all of us!
Celebrate The Big Idea – 10 Years of Rubiks Collective from 25-27 September in three cities. Bookings and more information on the Rubiks website.
Image supplied. Kaylie credit Devika Bilimoria.
