Eugene Ughetti, the Melbourne-based composer and founder of boundary-pushing musical ensemble Speak Percussion, is offering an inspired take on clay pigeon shooting, where musicians become the birds in the crosshairs.
Another quirky addition to his new show Pigeons, performing in this year’s RISING festival and hosted by Melbourne Recital Centre, is that the clay pigeon launchers – the things that are usually employed to hurl discs into the air, only for them to be destroyed by hunting rifles – will actually be used as musical instruments in their own right.
This strange choice of percussion was a flash of inspiration that came to Eugene somewhat out of nowhere. “It was just a sheer, wild visual spectacle of flying clay targets,” he recalls today, “that just excited me as a kind of performative proposition.”
Pigeons at RISING
- 14 June
- Melbourne Recital Centre
- Get tickets here
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He is quick to underline the inherent health and safety risks of flinging clay discs at a stage filled with musicians. “Oh, it’s massive! Massive,” he confesses. “So we worked with two costume designers to ensure that we are safe; in parts of the body, we’ve got three layers of protection. And at the same time, we kind of transform our appearance into something between a pigeon and a classical musician.”
The amusing oddity of this visual image is not lost on Eugene as he explains it to me over the phone: he lets out a small laugh and responds affirmatively, “Yes,” as I acknowledge what he has just told me.
Fair to say we’re keenly entering seen-to-be-believed territory at this point. One of the other considerations amidst all of this, too, is not just seeing but hearing – this is a musical performance, after all.
How has Eugene adapted the environment in such a way that clay pigeons being flung into a wall will actually sound nice? “In two ways,” he declares. “The flying clay targets, they smash on impact… but they fire directly at these custom-made, large-scale percussion instruments. So we’ve designed these fifteen large objects that are made of metal and wood. Each of these objects have been designed to sound amazing on impact!”
In addition to this, the mechanical trap machines are also serving the soundscape of the Pigeons experience. As they move, their resulting sounds are detected by an electromagnetic coil microphone which, Eugene assures, gives the impression of an analogue synthesiser.
“As it kind of prowls across the stage and takes aim at different targets,” he says, “you actually hear the movement of the trap machine as these kind of synthetic tones.”
For such an unusual audio-visual experience as this new show, it perhaps isn’t surprising to learn that Eugene’s creative process as a composer works in the opposite direction to how one would commonly expect.
He began by conceptualising all of the different materials needed to embody the specific aesthetic setting of the show, grounded in the novel concept of the titular pigeons being performed by the ensemble musicians. Then, he made sense of whatever music emerged from these materials.
“It’s not like I’m trying to create a specific style of music or a particular sound world, or even represent any of the sounds that are already in my head,” he clarifies. “What I’m trying to do is give birth to a sort of performance environment in which new sound worlds can emerge.”
The pathfinding involved in such an ambitious, peculiar spectacle has led to the inception of many new instruments, including the performers’ ‘pigeon wings’ that are flapped onstage during the performance. These, in and of themselves,s have undergone seven different iterations.
The goal in this case was less in the pursuit of achieving a specific sound, but instead working within the limitations of such a large, relatively cumbersome prop to explore how far it could reach as a musical instrument.
“To some degree, it’s about seeing what we get,” he suggests. “From another perspective, it’s about shaping it to become something interesting, something musically expressive and full of potential.”
Eugene Ughetti’s newest show provides no shortage of potential, and certainly no lack of ambition. An exciting addition to RISING and one, surely, to be seen – and heard – to be believed.
Speak Percussion’s new work Pigeons will take place during RISING, hosted by Melbourne Recital Centre on 14 June 2025. Book your tickets here.
This article was made in partnership with Melbourne Recital Centre.
