Evan J Lawson.

Artistic director, composer, conductor.

Image by Daniel Rabin.

 
 

  • I first started playing music in grade 5, because my best friend had just started playing an instrument. From the moment I picked up an instrument, I started improvising on it. That lead to writing my ideas down. That lead to organising groups to perform those ideas. That lead to conducting those groups, and here we are.

  • So many wonderful shows since 2009 it’s hard for me to pick just one. My opera’s Calypso in 2013, Orpheus in 2019, The Sea in 2023 and Labyrinth in 2024 are major highlights for me, and our 2014 Melbourne Recital Centre concert The Garden of Ice is a huge favorite. I also can’t forget our portrait concert of Gerard Grisey where we performed the epic and deeply mystical 4 Songs to Cross the Threshold.

  • I am an exceptionally good whistler.

  • To choose is torture, but Turangalila Symphony by Olivier Messiaen for music, Narkissos by Jess for visual art, I don’t believe in outer space by William Forsyth for dance, L’mour de loin by Kaija Saariaho for Opera, Sunday in the Park with George by Stephen Sondheim for musicals and Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde for literature. Okay, I can’t pick one…

  • Some works that have given me the most joy - conducting any Beethoven or Brahms symphony, the early works of Arnold Schoenberg, Mozart operas, and working and collaborating with composers and songwriters on wonderful new sounds, especially Addison, Max Lawrence, Diimpa, May Lyon, Samantha Wolfe and so many more.

 

Evan J Lawson (he/they) is an award-winning queer artist, working at the forefront of contemporary culture as a composer, writer, curator, singer and conductor. Evan is a founding member and the artistic director of interdisciplinary dance company-chamber orchestra Forest Collective.

Whether working with leading orchestras across the globe or in intimate experimental music-theatre works for an audience of 2, Evan’s genre-defying work has led to collaborations with a wide range of professional, educational and community organisations, working with companies such as the Volksoper Wien, Australian Saxophone Quartet, Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM), Stonnington Symphony, Erda Ensemble, Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, Tacet(i) Ensemble, Density512, Moravian Filharmonic Orchestra, Tonkünstler Orchestra, and many more.

In 2026, Evan won a Green Room Award for Outstanding New Australian Opera for Labyrinth.

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 Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra as part of the Australian Conducting Academy, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Malthouse Theatre, and Grafenegg Festival.

Evan was composer-in-residence at Billilla Mansion, a member of the Academy writing a new opera for the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, served as the principal conductor for the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music, and was musical director of the Monash University Choral Society. Lawson is an Associate Represented Artist with the Australian Music Centre.

Evan is one half of POTION, an electro-acoustic-theatre duo, with harpist Jessica Fotinos.

He has studied with Benjamin Northey, Richard Gill, and Matthias Pintscher, who has said that his music is serene, deep, it's even breathing the heritage of Mahler.

Evan is the composer of several critically acclaimed, unorthodox music-theatre presentations. These works include the 2026 Green Room Award for Outstanding New Australian Opera, Labyrinth, a multi-room immersive dance-opera-piano concerto (Forest Collective, Daniel Szesiong Todd libretto, Cathy Hunt dir., Ashley Dougan chor.) described by Paul Sellar as an intelligently conceived, thrilling and evocative new work, 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.), and vocal consort-opera The Sea (Forest Collective & BK Opera, Nicole Butcher libretto, Kate Millett dir.) from 2023, nominated for Outstanding New Australian Opera at the 2023 Greenroom Awards.
As musical director, other acclaimed productions include a digital remerging of Arnold Schoenberg’s masterpiece Pierrot Lunaire (Forest Collective, Ashley Dougan chor., Underground Media dir. and editing), 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, Dublin Theatre Festival). As opera conductor, Evan has conducted Benjamin Britten's Curlew River (ACOCO and fortyfivedownstairs, Linda Thompson, dir.), Georges Bizet’s Carmen (Greg Eldridge, dir.), Claudio Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea (ACOCO and Yarra Valley Opera Festival, Gale Edwards AM dir.), the Australian premiere of Matt Boehler and Miriam Gordon-Stewart’s Fat Pig (Forest Collective & BK Opera, Kate Millet, dir.) and the Melbourne premiere of Peter Maxwell Davies The Lighthouse (BK Opera, Kate Millett dir.).
Evan has sung in the premiere of numerous works by Stuart Greenbaum, Nick Cave, Tan Dun, Joe Twist, and more.

Evan’s concert work goes beyond the standard concert hall, encompassing various collaborative works. These include After the long night in collaboration with Deborah Cheetham Fraillon 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, and the Australian premiere of Holcombe Waller's Requiem Mass: LGBT (Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, Performance Space, CarriageWorks).

Evan has commissioned and premiered 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, Alex Turley, and more.

Evan has acted as assistant conductor for Brett Dean, Warwick Stenngards, and Christopher Hogwood.

 

Previous Forest Collective performances.

Evan is our founding artistic director and has been involved with the company since the very beginning