Chamber Made turns Recital Centre into a sonic playground for Now or Never

This August, Chamber Made invites Melburnians to step into a world where sound is both the subject and the medium.

As part of the City of Melbourne’s Now or Never festival, the acclaimed multi-artform company will transform Melbourne Recital Centre into an immersive sonic playground for three days of performances and installations exploring memory, identity, and the act of listening itself.

Titled Listening Acts, the bold program is less a traditional concert and more a series of auditory encounters – moments that ask audiences to hear differently, feel deeply, and reflect inwardly.

“Amid all the noise, listening is a radical choice,” Chamber Made’s artistic director Tamara Saulwick said. “Our works don’t exist in isolation – they’re part of a larger conversation across the city about how we engage with sound, technology, and each other.”

Running from August 22 to 24, Listening Acts features six free sound installations and three intimate live performances. Each work investigates the intersection between sound, technology, and the human condition, drawing on the artists’ lived experiences, cultural perspectives and personal histories.

“We’ve always encouraged artists to push beyond traditional boundaries,” Ms Saulwick said. But Listening Acts takes that even further by presenting these explorations across multiple lenses at once.”

Audiences can expect a tactile duet between a vocalist and a hospital IV machine (Song to the Cell by Biddy Connor), a surreal binaural headphone experience by Aviva Endean (Tactile Piece for Human Ears), and an evolving trio performance (sounding forms / forming sounds by Alexandra Spence) with resonating sinewaves and custom-built instruments.

Throughout the venue, sound installations echo with humour, grief, and transformation. Monica Lim’s Chit + Chat imagines two watercoolers in uncanny AI conversation, while Thembi Soddell’s deeply personal In Silence explores ancestral trauma through one-on-one audio encounters.

For Chamber Made, the festival marks its first collaboration with Now or Never, and a shift into more curatorial terrain.

“This format allowed us to build a bigger story – not just through one work, but through many artists interrogating what it means to listen in a world saturated with sound,” Ms Saulwick said.

Interior spaces of the Recital Centre – some public, others hidden – will be reimagined to host the experiences, with installations encouraging individual discovery and performances inviting shared contemplation. The result is a dynamic and disarming cultural intervention, one that reframes sound not as background, but as meaning itself.

“Listening Acts doesn’t just ask what technology does to us,” Ms Saulwick added, “but what we might do with technology when approached with curiosity and care.”

Listening Acts runs from August 22 to 24 at Melbourne Recital Centre. For full program details and bookings, visit
nowornever.melbourne •