3pm, Sunday 15th November

Enter The Village Square. On your left, music and fables. 

On your right, your own imagination.

The Village Square is a show that combines live music performance and storytelling. Set in an imagined town some years ago (as all good fairy tales are), The Village Square presents narratives of love and loss, misfortune and mirth, the graceful and grotesque.

Featuring renowned cellist Zoe Knighton, award winning guitarist/composer Robbie Melville, and the charismatic and much-loved Richard Piper as The Narrator, the fables sparkle with the magic of traditional mythology.

In The Fruit Mechanic, the engine of an obnoxious tourist’s thunderous motorcycle is transformed into silence by an artful greengrocer. In The Fog, a thick cloud descends upon The Village, sending the entire population into a deep sleep until The Dogs discover a way to rouse them. Kind And Sorrowful tells the story of a young man who is saved from drowning by the River Spirit with unforeseen repercussions.

Piper’s alluring narrations pack an emotional punch in the most unobtrusive way, and the soundtrack quality of the compositions display Melville’s characteristic sense of warmth, quirkiness and romantic melancholy. Though travelling through environments of contemporary classical, folk and jazz, Knighton and Melville weave the disparate elements into a unified world.

The Village Square enjoyed a sold out run at the 2025 Melbourne Fringe Festival, receiving multiple Judge’s nominations for Best Music Show. Evocative, enchanting and above all, human, The Village Square is a captivating combination of music and spoken word.

A beautiful work of storytelling and music working in symbiosis - Music Judge, 2025 Melbourne Fringe Festival

You’ll find no pyrotechnics here, no extraneous notes. Just Melville’s exquisite, unadorned compositions, painting word-pictures in music - Des Cowley, Rhythms Magazine November 2025

Watching this trio doing what they do best was incredibly moving, simple, and held us in a wisdom that was immensely deep yet light as a feather. This show is a gentle lullaby to the world in pain. Re-enchanting the extraordinary within the ordinary - Holly Rowan, Heartline Reviews 2025

Artist Bios

Robbie Melville is an Australian guitarist and composer whose work blends jazz, contemporary classical, folk, experimental and improvised musics into intimate and evocative narratives. Over a career spanning more than three decades, he has earned acclaim as both a performer and a composer. Beginning his performance career in his teens, he was appointed Principal Guitar Chair of the Australian Pops Orchestra in 2005.

His supportive musicianship has led to work with artists as diverse as Shane Howard, Nat Bartsch, Stephen Magnusson, Liz Frencham and Krystle Warren, and to international tours with Irish musicians Mundy and Roesy.

In 2025, Melville launched The Village Square, a multi-format storytelling project that stands at the forefront of his creative work. Set in an imagined town out of time and place, the project combines an album, a book of short stories with wood engravings by Australian artist David Frazer, an audiobook, and a live performance show. Featuring renowned cellist Zoe Knighton and the charismatic narrator Richard Piper, The Village Square weaves music and spoken word into an enchanting, human-centred experience.

Melville’s earlier projects highlight his breadth as a composer and bandleader. His quintet cleverhorse released Goodnight, Mr. Monster (2007) and 50:fifty (2016), while his trio Antelodic received praise for Quiet Sufficient (2017) and To Iceland! To Iceland! (2020, ABC Jazz). His solo album Tangled Trails (2023) reimagines a 1921 silent film through a richly varied musical lens spanning jazz, blues, contemporary classical and folk.

Melville’s compositions have received multiple awards, including the 2021 Johnny Dennis Music Award and first place in the 2018 International Songwriting Competition Instrumental Category. He has composed for film and media, including Hidden Truths and the British documentary Genus.

His current projects include his folk ensemble The Secret Trio, his contemporary jazz Quartet, Antelodic and the Smallchestra. He continues to explore improvisation with drummer Ronny Ferella in The Magic Lantern Sessions, creating in the moment live soundtracks to silent films.

“While subtly evading expectations, Robbie Melville loads his music with a restrained melancholy conveying innocence rather than knowingness, the upshot being an unusual emotional ambiguity blending resignation and contentment.” John Shand, Sydney Morning Herald

Zoe Knighton

After starting cello at the age of nine with Jill Kahans, and graduating from the University of Melbourne with the highest mark of her year, Zoe went on to establish herself as one of the country’s most sought after cellists. Having studied with Christian Wojtowicz, Michel Strauss (Paris) Nelson Cooke, and Angela Seargeant, she is now in demand as chamber coach and teacher at various institutions. A regular panelist for major competitions, Zoe combines many facets of her career with performing.

Zoe has played numerous concertos with Melbourne Orchestras and with pianist Amir Farid, made an impressive debut at the Melbourne Recital Centre to great critical acclaim in 2009. Their partnership has resulted in recordings for ABC, concerts throughout Australia and the release of five CDs on the MOVE label. Zoe and Amir will reunite in 2020 with performances in New York and throughout Australia.

Zoe has been praised for her “thrilling tenor sound” (Limelight Magazine), “sublime phrasing” and “many great technical demands carried off with ease.” She has released three other titles on the MOVE label, including the complete suites for solo cello by J.S Bach.

Zoe is a founding member of Flinders Quartet and plays a 1780 Benjamin Banks, a 2020 Rainer Beilharz cello made in Castlemaine, Victoria, and a Michael Taylor bow made in 2012.

“Knighton has produced a reading of great artistic integrity.” Gordon Kerry

“She radiates confidence in her work and participates with personality and no little finesse … Well worth hearing for the pleasure given through this player’s familiar warmth and honesty of musical character.” Clive O’Connell

Richard Piper

Richard Piper has had a distinguished acting career in England and Australia, appearing in over 80 productions, including 40 for Melbourne Theatre Company. After training at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, Piper appeared in West End productions Grease and Elvis. In the 1980s he travelled to Australia as part of the band The Bouncing Czecks, before deciding to move to Melbourne permanently.

His Australian theatre credits As You Like It, The Lady in the Van, Twelfth Night, Born Yesterday, Double Indemnity, Ghosts, Music, The Gift, Drowsy Chaperone, Rockabye, Entertaining Mr Sloane, The Give and Take, Dumb Show, The Daylight Atheist (Green Room Award), Betrayal, Man the Balloon and Life After George for MTC. Other theatre credits include The Black Rider, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Picasso at the Lapin Agile (Malthouse Theatre); The Secret River, Gross und Klein, Great Expectations, Moby Dick (Sydney Theatre Company); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Wars of the Roses, Henry V, Henry IV (Bell Shakespeare); Moby Dick, Marat Sade, The Comedy of Errors, Restoration, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, What the Butler Saw (STCSA); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing (Australian Shakespeare Company).

Piper has appeared in the musicals Oklahoma!, King Kong, Billy Elliot, Come From Away, and on screen in Wentworth, Tangle, Underbelly, City Homicide, Satisfaction, Correlli, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spreadsheet and the upcoming Savage River for the ABC.