Sounds Unheard Lab: 20 – 24 January, 2025
A week of creative music making for percussionists & computer-based composers
Darebin Arts Centre, 401 Bell St, Preston VIC 3072
Cost: FREE
Daily workshops from 9:30am – 4pm
Sounds Unheard Lab concert: 6pm on Friday January 24
Percussion // sound design // cutting-edge technology
This January, Victorian secondary students are invited to join Speak Percussion for the first Sounds Unheard Lab: a week of creative music making inspired by Speak’s innovative and experimental projects.
In 2025 the lab will focus on Speak’s new Ghost in the Guzheng project, created by Speak co-Artistic Director Kaylie Melville, guzheng virtuoso Mindy Meng Wang and instrument designer Alon Ilsar. Ghost in the Guzheng is a series of unique performances responding to the classic ghost story collection Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, suspenseful cinema soundtracks and sonic spectres.
CLICK HERE TO APPLY NOW
Applications due Sunday 15 December, 2024
Percussionists will explore the AirSticks, a gestural instrument that combines the physicality of drumming with the unlimited possibilities of computer music. Students will create their own performance pieces, transforming live sound and samples to create new instruments with supernatural capabilities.
Composers will work with composer Biddy Connor to create imaginary film scores, inspired by ancient and modern ghost stories from China and Australia. This exciting week will lead to a performance at Darebin Arts Centre, featuring students’ live and electronic works alongside Speak’s first Ghost in the Guzheng presentation. Applicants must have access to & experience using a DAW that works with movies. (ie. Logic Pro, Cubase, Reaper, Digital Performer, Ableton)
For enquiries or application support, please contact us at soundsunheard@speakpercussion.com
For further information, please download the Sounds Unheard Lab Flyer.
Kaylie Melville
Workshop Facilitator / Percussionist
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 the co- Artistic Director of the luminary new music organisation Speak Percussion,
co-Artistic Director of the contemporary ensemble Rubiks Collective and frequently works with leading Australian ensembles and orchestras.
In addition to performing, Kaylie’s practice incorporates improvising, directing, curating and teaching.
Biddy Connor
Workshop Facilitator / Composer
Biddy Connor has composed, arranged and performed for film, television, theatre, large- scale community events and games.
In 2016 she was a finalist in The Melbourne Music Prize Outstanding Musicians Award.
Biddy is the Artistic Director/violist/vocalist for The Letter String Quartet, an innovative ensemble who push the sonic possibilities of the string quartet into new realms.
Biddy has worked with The Breeders (USA 2024), Spirtualized (Supersense Festival 2017), Mick Harvey, Winged Victory for The Sullen (USA), Jherek Bischoff (USA),
Jen Cloher, Thelma Plum, Holy Holy and John Cale (Supersense Festival 2016).
Mindy Meng Wang
Workshop Facilitator / Guzheng player
Mindy Meng Wang is a versatile Chinese/Australian Composer and world leading contemporary Guzheng Performing Artist.
She is a pioneer to bring the Guzheng (ancient Chinese harp) into many western genres such as experimental, Jazz, western classical, Electronic, pop and improvisation.
In Europe, she collaborated with many high-profile artists like Gorillaz and in Australia her collaborators include
Regurgitator, Tim Shiel, Paul Grabowsky and Deborah Cheetham, AAO, Orchestra Victoria, SSO among others.
Mindy has won “the Best Musician” of the 2021 Music Victoria Awards and the 2021 “the 40 Under 40: Most Influential Asian-Australian Awards”.
Mindy’s long-term vision is to creates a strong voice for female composers and artists of Asian heritage, and more importantly, create a deeper and reciprocal musical connection between Australia and Asia. https://mindymengwang.com
Alon Ilsar
Workshop Facilitator / Instrument Designer
Alon Ilsar is a drummer, improviser, instrument designer and researcher.
He is currently an ARC Industry Fellow at Monash University’s SensiLab researching the uses of the AirSticks,
a gestural instrument he invented, in the field of health and well being, making music creation more accessible to the broader community.
Alon has played the AirSticks at Sydney Festival, Sydney’s Vivid Festival, on Triple J’s Like a Version and at NYC’s MET Museum,
with projects such as Trigger Happy ‘Visualised’, The Hour, The Sticks, Tuka (from Thundamentals), Sandy Evans’ ‘Ahimsa’ and ‘Rockpool,’
Ellen Kirkwood’s ‘[A]part‘, Kirin J Callinan, Kind of Silence (UK), Cephalon (US), Melinda Smith’s ‘Conduit Bodies’ and Speak Percussion’s Before Nightfall.
