Evan J Lawson

Evan J Lawson (b.1989, he/they) is one of Australia’s leading queer artists, working at the forefront of contemporary culture as composer, writer, curator, vocal coach, and conductor, chiefly as artistic director of interdisciplinary company Forest Collective.

Hailed by Clive O’Connell that ...the sonorities that emerged often proved extraordinary... Evan has been composing music since the age of 10, is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, and developing artist programs with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Malthouse Theatre, the Australian Conducting Academy and Gragenegg Festival. In Australia, he has studied with Benjamin Northey, Richard Gill, Kevin March, and Johanna Selleck, and internationally with David Aronson, Christopher Hogwood, and Matthias Pintscher 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, a member of the Academy of Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in 2020 and 2021, served as the principal conductor for the Bendigo Festival of Exploratory Music in 2019, and is currently musical director of the Monash University Choral Society.

As a creator of critically acclaimed, unorthodox music-theatre presentations, Evan's work includes original works such as his 2013 opera Calypso (Forest Collective, Samuel Yeo libretto, Stephanie Osztreicher dir.), the 2019 dance-opera Orpheus (Forest Collective, Ashley Dougan chor., Density512 & Prismatx Ensemble) described by Clive O’Connell that ...Lawson found a striking compositional vein that promised a sort of catharsis…, the 2021 micro-opera Vois (Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Claire Tipy libretto, Geordie Brookman dir.) inspired by life in the digital world, and most recently in 2023’s The Sea (Forest Collective & BK Opera, Kate Millett dir.), described by Patricia Di Risio as a highly atmospheric opera that moves the audience through its fervent composition and in 2024 with Labyrinth (Forest Collective, Daniel Szesiong Todd lib., Ashley Dougan chor.) described by Paul Sellar as Intelligently conceived, thrilling and evocative new work.

Since 2020 Evan has been the resident conductor of BK Opera.

Other acclaimed productions include a digital reimaging of Arnold Schoenberg’s masterpiece Pierrot Lunaire (Forest Collective, Ashley Dougan chor., Underground Media direction and editing), Benjamin Britten's Curlew River (ACOCo, Linda Thompson dir.), Georges Bizet’s Carmen (In Good Company, Greg Eldridge, dir.), Claudio Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea (ACOCo Yarra Valley Opera Festival, Gale Edwards AM dir.) and the Melbourne premiere of Peter Maxwell Davies The Lighthouse (BK Opera, Kate Millett dir.).

Evan’s practice goes beyond the standard concert hall to encompass various collaborative works including After the long night in collaboration with Deborah Cheetham for Melbourne Pride 2022, Nico with Cabaret sensation Danielle Asciak, fluttering hearts // thinking machines by pop music doyen Addison, Chlorophyll and Fountain with intrepid queer singer-songwriter Max Lawrence, the Australian premiere of Holcombe Waller's Requiem Mass: LGBT (Mardi Gras, Performance Space and CarriageWorks), the Australian premiere of Robbie Blake’s Town Choir (Melbourne Fringe, Theatre Replacement) and Come Away with Me to the End of the World by Adriano and Raymondo Cortese (Ranters Theatre, Malthouse Theatre and Dublin Theatre Festival).

Evan has premiered and commissioned over 100 works from the likes of Marc Anthony Turnage, Nick Cave, Gerard Grisey, Tan Dun, Lisa Illean, Cat Hope, Dylan Lardelli, Philip Venables, Kym Alexandra Dillon, Micah Thompson, and more.