Songs about solitude, connection and the world's loneliest whale.

A free all-ages concert and refreshments, supported by the City of Yarra

Rorqual is an indie-classical concert exploring withdrawal, solitude, resilience, and connection, with new songs inspired by the true story of “the world’s loneliest whale”. Using found and repurposed texts drawn from the deep past to the present, composer Wally Gunn’s songs fuse classical and indie-rock music, featuring the ethereal vocals of jazz singer Gian Slater and the virtuosic musicians of Rubiks. From the ocean’s shimmering surface to its mysterious depths, and back, join us for Rorqual - the story of a modern-day mythological creature that continues to sing its one-of-a-kind song.

Event Details

Saturday 30 November, 2024 
75 Reid St, Fitzroy North 3068

11am concert
12pm refreshments + conversation with the artists

FREE thanks to the support of Yarra City Arts
Please register for catering numbers here

Exploring the shadowlands of dawn and dusk, Shy Creatures is a captivating world of surprising sounds and offbeat rhythms. From driving beats to shimmering microtonalities, expect the unexpected from Rubiks in this quirky program of world premieres and recent favourites.

Kate Neal’s dream-like Sunrise and Cello Solo (A Game) create unexpected pairings of instruments and sonorities: harpsichord and gamelan gongs, soulful cello melodies and hushed exhalations. Dmitri Tymczko’s Shy Creatures is a three-movement romp through his genre-bending, mercurial approach to new music, drawing on rock, jazz and romanticism.

Sylvia Lim’s Shades of Night, the fifth Pythia Prize commission, will immerse you in the strange beauty and deep richness of secluded nocturnal landscapes. Pairing an intimate soundscape with a bespoke lighting installation by Cambodian-Australian artist Allison Chhorn, this collaboration is an evocative meditation on stillness, darkness and quietude.

Program

Kate Neal - Excerpts from A Book of Hours (2023)

Dmitri Tymoczko - Shy Creatures (2024)
WORLD PREMIERE 

Sylvia Lim - Shades of Night (2024)
WORLD PREMIERE
2022 Pythia Prize commission

Rubiks
Flutes and Co-Director, Tamara Kohler
Percussion and Co-Director, Kaylie Melville
Cello, Gemma Kneale
Keyboards, Jacob Abela
Lighting Design, Allison Chhorn

Ticket Prices:
General Admission: $25 + booking fee
Concession: $20 + booking fee

If you would like to attend this event, but find the ticket price to be a barrier, please contact Kaylie and Tamara (hello@rubikscollective.com). 

Shy Creatures is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and the Australia Cultural Fund. 

Experience sonic innovation as Displaced Bodies unites two of Melbourne’s cutting-edge ensembles. Ossicle Duo, an award-winning trombone-percussion ensemble, pushes boundaries with their technically refined and high-energy exploratory art music. Rubiks Collective, a dynamic ensemble of Australia’s most versatile young performers, take audiences on a sonic journey through their ‘incredibly personal, strangely spiritual and ultimately deeply touching’ performances.

Together, they fearlessly explore the boundaries of sound in the highly anticipated world premiere of Jakob Bragg’s acclaimed composition, ‘Displaced Bodies, Weapons of Action,’ a recipient of the prestigious Melbourne Recital Centre & Melbourne Conservatorium of Music Composition Award.

Richard Barrett - EARTH
Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh - Quietude
Noemi Liba Friedman - CardioMyopathy
Jakob Bragg - Displaced bodies, weapons of action*
*World Premiere

Celebrating world premieres by internationally recognised art music specialists Maria Kaoutzani and Alice Chance, this performance explores the intricacies between love, intergenerational relationships and a modern-day perception of ‘home’.

Five Love Songs by Greek composer Maria Kaoutzani was written for Rubiks as part of a larger suite from American based composer collective, Kinds of Kings. While its title suggests simplicity of format and concept, the work interrogates Kaoutzani’s personal experiences of love and belonging regarding intimate relationships and nationalistic identity.

Following is a work that has been described as a ‘mother-daughter motet’. Heirloom by Australian composer Alice Chance includes the recorded voices of three generations of women from the same family line and explores generative musical processes in both vocal and instrumental lines. With the ensemble’s underscoring, the recorded voices speak to complex layers of history, the strength of family ties, and the fragility of intergenerational memories.

Maria Kaoutzani - Five Love Songs*
Alice Chance - Heirloom*
* World Premiere

Join Rubiks and Pythia Prize winner Dr Felicity Wilcox for the launch of our 'Sound Fields' music video!

The evening will include a Q&A with the ensemble and composer about their experiences creating this new work, the first screening of the Sound Fields video, and a glass of wine to toast to our 2021 Pythia Prize winner.

This event is free but places are limited. Please RSVP at the link below or by emailing hello@rubikscollective.com.

Rubiks takes you on a journey across the Pacific, celebrating our long-standing collaboration with USA new music laboratory Black House Collective. Featuring three world premieres commissioned by BHC, Futures Exchange pays homage to our creative partners in the US and our formative roots as an ensemble. 

Missy Mazzoli - A Thousand Tongues
Melody Eötvös - Wild October Jones
Akari Komura - In the language of the bloom
Viet Cuong - Electric Aroma

Interval
Celka Ojakangas - Butcherbird*
Jenna Lyle - What to do with all those old power adapters in the drawer you don't talk about*
Hunter Shelby Long - Futures Exchange*

* World Premiere

A wonderful journey of art, music and play where everyone is a budding composer! Rubiks presents two fun-filled workshops for 4-8 year olds as part of the Melbourne Recital Centre's Music Play Families Festival 2023.

In these interactive sessions each participant is invited to create their very own musical score, which will then be performed by Rubiks Collective with their instruments spanning flute, cello, clarinet and percussion.

A wonderful journey of art, music and play, this creative session is fun for everyone. Tickets admit one child and one guardian.

Session times: 10:30am & 11:45am
Duration: 45 minutes

Music, She Wrote is a festival celebrating women in music. Since its inception in 2021, the festival has proudly presented Melbourne's finest local chamber musicians in diverse programs of classical, jazz, and folk music by female composers. 

On Thursday March 30 Rubiks will present 'Breaking Step', a program featuring just a few of the excellent works by female composers that Rubiks have performed, premiered and commissioned over our seven year history.

In the elegant setting of Alpha60 Chapter House, we'll be revisiting the nostalgic loops of Leah Blankendaal's Beacon, the beatbox glitch of Julia Wolfe's East Broadway and the driving rhythms of Gemma Peacocke's Sky-Fields. We'll also be sharing a special performance of the very first of our Pythia Prize commissions - aimed at addressing gender equity in Australian music - with Samantha Wolf's Want Not, an award-winning ode to discarded objects.

Join us in the live audience at Alpha60 Chapter House or on the livestream for a fantastic night celebrating these composers!

Anna Clyne - Fits and Starts
Samantha Wolf - Want Not^
Julia Wolfe - East Broadway
Molly Joyce - Less Is More*
Leah Blankendaal - Beacon^
Gemma Peacocke - Sky Fields^

* Australian premiere
^ Rubiks Commission

In 2022 Dots+Loops Nonstop returns bigger and better than ever, taking over The Tivoli for a 7-hour celebration of Australia's most exciting and adventurous post-genre artists.

Singer-songwriter Jo Davie fuses grace and fire in the first of two sets collaborating with artists from Dots+Loops’ Performance Fellowship program. Cellist Nick Photinos [USA] makes his Australian solo debut with Origins, a set whose program spans Haiti to Iran, the United States to Australia. Meanjin’s Nozomi Omote combines percussion, children's toys and retro game consoles in a set that ranges from quirky to ethereal to tongue-in-cheek, featuring a new work by our Composition Fellow Jen Hankin. In a special collaboration with our First Nations partners Cre8tive Nations, their artists Poji and Deline Briscoe are joined by players from string orchestra Ensemble Cherubim for a performance featuring newly commissioned arrangements. Naarm’s Rubiks Collective join forces with local artists for a riotous set featuring Holly Harrison’s off-kilter sensation Lobster Tales and Turtle Soup. Chinese-Australian musician Mindy Meng Wang 王萌 and electronic producer Tim Shiel oscillate from breakbeat to minimal house influences and laid-back dub and pop sounds, underpinned throughout by both traditional and avant-garde sounds of the Chinese guzheng. Dots+Loops’ Performance Fellows return to the stage alongside Pat Carroll for a winding and expansive performance exploring left-field techno and house, followed by the explosive Meanjin debut of Lost Few’s Unfuror, a visceral experience inhabiting the spaces somewhere between experimental electronic music and immersive installation artwork. Bringing some serious party vibes, the night will be strewn with pop-up drag and cabaret performances hosted by local queer dance party aficionados Shandy, with DJ Sweaty Baby bringing the dance floor to life with his signature eclectic mix of disco, house, pop, and hip hop.

Alongside this musical smorgasbord, slip into an otherworldly experience like no other with an immersive VR art gallery – 100 VR headsets available for audiences to explore an exhibition of virtual reality artworks curated to accompany the music lineup, including a new commission by local artist Taana Rose.

Deborah Cheetham presents Woven Song, a contemporary chamber series inspired by the Australian Tapestry Workshop Embassy Tapestries.

The Embassy Tapestries are a vibrant collaboration between Indigenous artists and the master weavers at the Australian Tapestry Workshop that places large-scale hand-woven tapestries on loan to selected overseas Australian Diplomatic Missions.

Through this important project, Cheetham gives voice to the material works, engaging in the telling of First Nations stories. Woven Song is a unique collaboration across cultures and art forms, building international creative communities. Cheetham performs with musicians local to each country – Singapore, Japan, France, Ireland, China and India – breathing new life into each work.

Woven Song celebrates works of art from an ancient culture, reinterpreted and recreated by the exceptional weavers at the Australian Tapestry Workshop, inspiring a contemporary response in current classical music practice.

Rubiks are proud to be a collaborating partner in the Woven Song series, and will perform Article 27.

They Swim Through Air showcases the exuberance, imagination and artistry of new music creators from Australia and beyond with a program that reflects on the rituals and processes of life.

Inspired by Tolkien’s use of the term ‘sky-fields’ in Lord of the Rings, Gemma Peacocke reflects on the travels of the sun and the power of hope, while Leah Blankendaal’s Beacon explores how memories are retained within the body over a lifetime.

Rubiks’ virtuosic playfulness comes to the fore in Jessie Marino’s The Whale Is a Capital Fish, a celebration of the ritual absurdity and technical mastery exhibited in everyday activities.

The program finishes with the premiere of ‘Sound Fields’, a new commission from Dr Felicity Wilcox, Senior Lecturer at University of Technology Sydney and the winner of Rubiks’ 2021 Pythia Prize. Wilcox’s vivid new work offers sonic interpretations of the lush and emotive imagery by New York expressionist painter, Helen Frankenthaler.

Read more about Felicity’s work here.

Hosted by the Melbourne Recital Centre, Making Waves is presented in partnership with Virtual School Victoria to provide opportunities for young composers to develop their craft.

A unique professional development offering for Victorian student composers, this program includes a range of live compositional workshops, digital resources, and a showcase concert in the Primrose Potter Salon for selected VCE Music Style and Composition students.

Rubiks perform as the featured ‘mixed instrumentation’ ensemble in this workshop, presenting excerpts of our commissioned repertoire and working ideas on how to write non-conventional groups.

In the ensemble’s first appearance at the Canberra International Music Festival, Rubiks presents Gemma Peacocke’s Waves & Lines; a multimedia song cycle for soprano, electronics, and chamber ensemble based on a tradition of Afghan women’s folk poetry. Collected in the book I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays From Contemporary Afghanistan, these poems offer a surprising and vivid – and often humorous – glimpse into the lives of women existing under the watch of an ultraconservative regime.

Exploring the distance, anonymity, and strange intimacy of phone calls, text messages, and radio broadcasts in which the poems are shared, the song cycle features fixed electronics, projections and the stunning vocals of Persian born, Melbourne based performer Gelareh Pour.

Together with luminary soprano Deborah Kayser, Rubiks Collective present the Australian premiere of the whisper opera, David Lang’s intimate love letter to live performance. Join them for a delicate and deeply moving listening experience in Primrose Potter Salon, a space which befits the compositions intimacy.

‘What if a piece were so quiet and so intimate and so personal to the performers that you needed to be right next to them or you would hear almost nothing? A piece like this would have to be experienced live… it can never be recorded, or filmed, or amplified. The only way this piece can be received is if you are there, listening very, very closely.’ – David Lang, composer

6pm & 8:30pm, Friday 1 April 2022

the whisper opera is proudly supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants, Regional Arts Victoria and the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.

Two of Melbourne’s most vibrant chamber music ensembles, Rubiks Collective and Ossicle Duo, unite to present Heirloom, an exploration of the brighter and darker lots that one carries throughout life.

Alice Chance’s delicate Heirloom parallels the beauty and difficulty of moving time, while Annie Hsieh’s Quietude pauses the mind through a tinkling pallet of delicate glass objects. The concert culminates in the world premiere of a new work for the virtuosic forces of these two combined ensembles by rising Australian composer Jakob Bragg, recipient of the 2019 University of Melbourne Commission Award.

Alice Chance Heirloom**^
Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh Quietude
Andrew Aronowicz New Work**
Jakob Bragg Displaced bodies, weapons of action** (2019 University of Melbourne Commission Award)

** World Premiere
* Australian premiere
^ Rubiks Commission

CANCELLED DUE TO COVID 19

“What has been long neglected cannot be restored immediately.”
- Eve Belgarian, Five Things.

Last year, our relationships with natural, domestic and digital spaces changed abruptly. This Soft Eclipse is a program that reflects on our capacity to endure, restore and evolve. In a sonic and visual journey touching on climate change, pop culture and musical icons, Rubiks presents works by new music luminaries Eve Belgarian and Nicole Lizée, and premieres from two of the world’s most adventurous young compositional voices – including the winners of the 2019 Pythia Prize and 2020 Bouman Fellowship.

Akari Komura In the language of the bloom** (2020 Bouman Fellowship Winner)
Holly Harrison Frogstomp
Nicole Lizée Softcore*
Eve Beglarian Five Things*
Bianca Gannon New Work **^ (2019 Pythia Prize Winner)

This project is generously supported by the City of Yarra.

** World Premiere
* Australian premiere
^ Rubiks Commission

You're invited to the launch of Rubiks' new music video for 'Waiting'. Join Rubiks and 2018 Pythia Prize winner Christine McCombe for a behind-the-scenes chat with the composer and a glass of wine with some excellent company. 🥂

This is a free event but bookings are essential. Please book at Eventbrite.

Rubiks’ COVIDSafe Checklist for this event can be accessed here.

Rubiks Collective performs a feast of works from some of the world’s most impressive innovators in contemporary music. Suzanne Farrin’s The Stimulus of Loss explores the unique and haunting sounds of the ondes Martenot (early electronic instrument) combined with ‘glissando headjoint’ (a modified flute headjoint that mimics the human voice). Rubiks’s virtuosic playfulness comes to the fore in Jessie Marino’s The Whale Is a Capital Fish, a celebration of the ritual absurdity and technical mastery exhibited in everyday activities. Capping this off are new Australian works from Sydney’s trailblazing Alice Chance and the winner of Rubiks’s 2019 Pythia Prize.

Alice Chance New Work
Suzanne Farrin The stimulus of loss
Jessie Marino The whale is a capital fish (new arrangement)**^
2019 Pythia Winner New Work**^

* Australian premiere
** World Premiere
^ Rubiks Commission

CANCELLED DUE TO COVID 19

CANCELLED DUE TO COVID 19

Rubiks perform a recital for the Yarra Ranges Council.

Pre-concert talk at 1pm.

Jennifer Higdon Zaka (2003)
Simon Eastwood Clink (2017)^
Melody Eötvos Wild October Jones (2015)
Viet Cuong Electric Aroma (2017)
Chris Cerrone South Catalina (2014)

^Rubiks Commission

POSTPONED DUE TO COVID 19

‘Towards Home’ is an evening-length work exploring themes of home and displacement by the US-based, all-female composer collective Kinds of Kings. The work will explore the diverse backgrounds of the collective, which includes two immigrants and two biracial American women of colour, and their unique and complex experiences of home, place and identity. This work represents Rubiks and Kinds of King’s shared mission to promote diversity in contemporary art music and to advocate for underrepresented voices in our art form. The concert will be the final event in Kinds of Kings' 2019-20 season, and is expected to attract a high level of attention from the New York arts media.

POSTPONED DUE TO COVID 19

Rubiks present a recital as part of Monash University’s Lunchtime Recital Series. This recital is in conjunction with Rubik Collective’s 2020 residency at Monash University.

Christine McCombe Waiting^ (2018 Pythia Winner)
Melody Eötvos Wild October Jones
Samuel Smith Species^

*Australian premiere
^Rubiks Commission

POSTPONED DUE TO COVID 19

Two of Melbourne’s most vibrant chamber music ensembles, Rubiks Collective and Ossicle Duo, unite to explore the logic behind human action.

Donnacha Dennehy’s Mild, Medium-Lasting, Artificial Happiness veers between whimsical and sarcastic unisons, Panayiotis Kokoras’s Study on Phonetics juxtaposes metallic jolts and whispered bowings, and two percussionists examine a tinkling pallet of delicate glass objects in Annie Hsieh’s Quietude.

The concert culminates in the world premiere of a new work for the virtuosic forces of these combined ensembles by rising Australian composer Jakob Bragg, recipient of the 2020 University of Melbourne Commission Award.

Kevin Juillerat Study on Phonetics*
Donnacha Dennehy Mild, Medium-Lasting, Artificial Happiness*
Panayiotis Kokoras Morphallaxis*
Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh Quietude*
Jakob Bragg New Work**^

* Australian premiere
** World Premiere
^ Rubiks Commission

TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE

Sculptress is a celebration of female artists who are reshaping contemporary music by re- examining our past. New approaches to sound, notation and genre play against tributes to early electronic music pioneers, field recordings and the 1950’s golden age of American advertising.



Featuring the sonic investigations of ‘musical scientist’ Nicole Lizée, the enigmatic atmospheres of Anna Thorvaldsdottir and a new composition by the winner of the 2018 Pythia Prize, Rubiks present five premieres paying homage to some of the most innovative creators of the 21st-century and those who have paved the way.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir Fields*
Sara Glojnaric Indispensable Ms. Jones*
Gemma Peacocke Quiver*
Christine McCombe (2018 Pythia Prize Winner) New Work**^
Nicole Lizée Sculptress*

* Australian premiere
** World Premiere
^ Rubiks Commission

TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE

Rubiks Collective​ co-headline Dots + Loops Feedback, performing ​Marcus Fjellström’​s quirky and engrossing cross between a video game, movie and live musical performance, "Odboy and Erordog". Rubiks will also premiere a new work written for the concert by Brisbane audiovisual composer ​Chris Perren​.

TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.” 
- T.S. Eliot

In ‘Hush’, Rubiks present five contemporary works exploring the power of voice, breath and gesture. Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh’s ‘The thin air between skins’ explores shimmering, nuanced exchanges between performers, Annika Socolofsky’s sextet invokes the fragility and fury of the female voice, and human and machine duel in Dmitri Tymoczko’s world premiere song cycle featuring acclaimed London-based mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts- Dean.

PROGRAM NOTES HERE

Annika Socolofsky Don’t Say a Word*
Erin Gee Mouthpiece 28*
Amy-Beth Kirsten World Under Glass No.2*
Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh The thin air between skins
Dmitri Tymoczko Ghosts**^

* Australian premiere
** World Premiere
^ Rubiks Commission

TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE

Rubiks performs as a feature artist in Melbourne Recital Centre’s series of Relaxed Performances. This series provides an opportunity to hear MRC’s exceptional artists within an environment particularly suitable for audience members with autism, learning disabilities or sensory sensitivities.

Jennifer Higdon Excerpt of Zaka
Ross Edwards Mvt I and III of Animisims
Melody Eötvös Wild October Jones
Anna Meredith Honeyed Words*
Viet Cuong Electric Aroma*
Christopher Cerrone Excerpt of South Catalina*

* Australian premiere
** World Premiere