Evan J Lawson
Evan J Lawson (b.1989, he/him) is one of Australia’s leading queer artists, working at the forefront of contemporary culture as composer, curator, and conductor, chiefly as artistic director of Forest Collective.
Hailed by Bridget Davies in The Age that Lawson’s innovative musical imaginations...are striking… Evan is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts and the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. He has studied with Benjamin Northey, Richard Gill, Johanna Selleck, David Aronson (at the Wiener Staatsoper) and Matthias Pintscher (at Grafenegg Festival) who has said that his music is serene, deep, it's even breathing the heritage of Mahler.
Evan was composer-in-residence at Billilla Mansion in 2015 and has completed developing artist programs with the Malthouse Theatre, Grafenegg Festival, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
Alexander O’Sullivan of Partial Durations has said Lawson's music is, bar to bar beautiful.
Evan has performed across Australia, Asia, Europe and the USA, working with a variety of companies, such as the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Tonkünstler Orchestra, Moravska Filharmonie, Forest Collective, ANAM Orchestra, Australian Youth Orchestra, Melbourne Youth Orchestra, Geelong Symphony Orchestra, Density 512, Gertrude Opera, Performance Space, Ranters Theatre, Prismatx Ensemble, Victorian Youth Symphony Orchestra, Australian Children's Choir and Syzygy Ensemble, for Melbourne International Arts Festival, Metropolis New Music Festival, Grafenegg Festival, Austria, Dublin Theatre Festival, Ireland, Sydney’s Mardi Gras, Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music, Melbourne Recital Centre, Malthouse Theatre, CarriageWorks, Jinji Lake Concert hall, China, Midsumma Festival, the Universities of Melbourne, Paris, Texas & Oregon and SoundSCAPE New Music Festival, Italy.
As opera conductor Evan has performed Benjamin Britten's Curlew River (Gertrude Opera, Linda Thompson dir.), Bizet’s Carmen (In Good Company, Greg Eldridge, dir.), Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea (Gertrude Opera, Yarra Valley Opera Festival, Gale Edwards AM dir.), Mozart’s The Magic Flute (Gertrude Opera, Linda Thompson dir.) and his own two operas Calypso (Forest Collective) and Orpheus (Forest Collective, Density 512 & Prismatx Ensemble).
Evan’s practice goes beyond the standard concert hall to encompass various collaborative works including Nico with Cabaret sensation Danielle Asciak, the premiere of his dance-opera Orpheus with choreographer Ashley Dougan, fluttering hearts // thinking machines by pop music doyen Addison, Chlorophyll with intrepid queer singer-songwriter Max Lawrence, Australian premiere of Holcombe Waller's Requiem Mass: LGBT (Mardi Gras, Performance Space and Carriageworks) and Come Away with Me to the End of the World (by Adriano and Raymondo Cortese for Ranters Theatre, Malthouse Theatre and Dublin Theatre Festival).
Conducting the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, January 2020. Photo by Brad Harris.
Evan has worked with some of the world's finest artists, including Sir Andrew Davis, Brett Dean, Fabian Russell, Christopher Hogwood, Jan Willem de Vriend, Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, Tan Dun, Marshall McGuire, Tony Arnold, Gale Edwards and Warwick Stengards.
Photo by Karin Locke