Directors
Tamara Kohler - co-artistic director/Flutes
Tamara Kohler is an Australian flautist and arts producer, specialising in new music performance. She is Co- Artistic Director and flautist of award-winning Australian art music ensemble Rubiks Collective, and is also Chief Executive and Artistic Director of Contemporary Music for All (CoMA) - UK based participatory new music charity, dedicated to broaden open opening within communities to new music participation, and increasing accessibility for underrepresented minorities within the UK arts sector.
Noted for her “fearless execution” in performance, Tamara has performed internationally throughout Australia, Europe, America & Asia with many leading new music ensembles. Tamara has performed countless Australian and world premieres of new works, with her festival credits including the Klangwerkstatt Festival (DE), theinaugural Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab (USA), Australia Fest (IN), Bang on a Can Summer Festival (USA) and Darmstadt International Festival for New Music (DE).
She has held multiple artistic residencies at the Banff Centre (CAN) and in 2017 was a Classical Freedman Fellowship finalist. In 2020, she was selected to represent Australia at Classical:NEXT. Tamara is passionate about opening access within the arts for underrepresented voices, having worked with high profile arts charities Raw Material (Brixton, UK) and Short Black Opera (Melbourne, AUS) to design and deliver various community projects. She is in demand as a creative arts leader, having been invited to deliver keynote presentations at conferences in Germany, Belgium and England.
She regularly mentors young people interested in embarking on less conventional creative careers and has guest presented at the University of Melbourne, Australian National Academy of Music, the University of Queensland, Monash University and the Melbourne Recital Centre.
kaylie melville - co-artistic director/percussion
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 founding Co-Director of Rubiks Collective, Artistic Director of Australia’s leading percussive arts organisation Speak Percussion, and frequently works with leading Australian ensembles and orchestras. In addition to performing, Kaylie's practice incorporates directing, producing, curating, improvising and mentoring.
As a passionate advocate of new music Kaylie has performed in the world premieres of award winning Australian works, including Liza Lim’s ‘Atlas of the Sky’ (Performance of the Year, 2019 Art Music Awards) and Kate Neal's 'Semaphore' (Performance of the Year, 2016 Art Music Awards). Her festival appearances include the Melbourne Festival, Sydney Festival, Salihara Festival (Indonesia), Australia Fest (India), George Town Festival (Malaysia), and the Percussive Arts Society’s International Convention (US).
Kaylie is currently the recipient of a two-year artistic fellowship awarded by the Ian Potter Foundation and Australian National Academy of Music. Her fellowship project is focused on artistic leadership in the contemporary art music sector and the development of new projects for Rubiks and Speak.
Kaylie has a keen interest in community-engaged and education projects that make participation in music accessible to all. From 2015 to 2024 she led Speak’s Sounds Unheard secondary education program, which was recognised five times as a finalist at the Art Music Awards for Excellence in Education. In 2024-2025 she co-designed Rubiks workshops for young people with vision impairment with Melbourne Recital Centre and Vision Australia, and co-designed music workshops at the University of Melbourne for young people from the d/Deaf community with the Science Gallery. Kaylie has presented guest lectures and workshops at the University of Melbourne, Griffith University (QLD) and the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA).
