Upcoming Events.
Lyric Opera presents: Kiss My Sword
14 May 2025, 7:30 PM
fortyfivedownstairs, Naarm (Melbourne), Australia
Lyric Opera of Melbourne
fortyfivedownstairs Chamber Music Festival
Role: Composer
Piece: Kiss My Sword: Sword Songs (World Premiere)
Tickets
Meta Cohen’s international reputation as one of Australia’s most exciting young composers has skyrocketed in recent years. This concert presents a new song cycle based upon their upcoming opera Kiss My Sword, to be produced by Lyric Opera. It’s an exciting new queer cycle focusing on LGBTIQA+ histories, in particular, the life and times of 17th century opera singer, Julie D’Aubigny – lover of women, fencer, defeater of men in duels, and ground-breaking singer notable for the creation of many operatic roles.
Kiss My Sword is created by composer Meta Cohen, librettist Evan Bryson and director/dramaturg Alyson Campbell.
Sydney Chamber Choir 50th Anniversary Gala
5 July 2025, 3:00 PM
City Recital Hall Angel Place, Gadigal (Sydney), Australia
Sydney Chamber Choir, cond. Sam Allchurch
Role: Composer
Piece: Meteora (World Premiere)
Tickets
Celebrate the beauty and the thrill of new music, as we give the world premiere performances of five pieces specially commissioned by Sydney Chamber Choir from five of the most exciting compositional talents in the country, each exploring a different facet of what love can mean.
Sydney Chamber Choir, celebrating its 50th year of championing the creation and performance of new Australian music, is joined for this gala concert by soprano and tenor soloists and an ensemble featuring some of Australia’s finest chamber musicians.
Recent Archive.
Constellation - ChamberQUEER
14 June 2024, 5:30 PM
MITU580, New York, USA
Coady Green and Elizabeth Van Os
Role: Composer
Piece: Delphi Songs (US Premiere)
Internationally-award-winning concert pianist Coady Green presents a kaleidoscopic and joyous exploration of works by a diverse group of queer living composers. Aside from the evocative, nuanced etudes of Nico Muhly, this program is a celebration and promotion of music from Green’s native Australia, with nearly all the works on the program being US premieres. Featuring Elizabeth van Os on Meta Cohen’s Delphi Songs, the concert also includes premieres by James Rushford and Bryn Renard, along with other repertoire from Green’s years-long history of commissioning new works.
This event will be livestreamed.
The Question of Love
27 October 2024, 5:00 PM
West End Uniting Church, Meanjin (Brisbane), Australia
The Australian Voices
Melt Festival
Role: Composer
Piece: (i)dentity
The Question of Love promises to be a moving tribute to love, diversity, and inclusion, showcasing songs that highlight the beauty and strength of the LGBTQ+ community.
Come and experience the magic of choral harmony as we honour the spirit of equality and pride.
The RESPECT Project
10 November 2024, 3:00 PM
Shepparton Brewery, Shepparton, Australia
Homophonic and The Consort of Melbourne
OUTintheOPEN Festival
Role: Composer
Piece: Swerve
Tickets
Homophonic! The RESPECT Project is a musical celebration of our queer history. Emotive and powerful storytelling through works for voices and strings, drawing inspiration from intergenerational conversations between queer Victorian composers and seniors. This performance is emotional and powerful, preserving our shared cultural queer history through the mediums of music, humour, and a generous dose of collective outrage. Presented and performed by Miranda Hill, The Consort of Melbourne, and the Homophonic! String Quintet.
Homophonic! is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.
Homophonic! is assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.
Postmillenial Dramagurgies Panel
18 April 2024, 7 pm
Victorian College of the Arts, VIC, Australia
Role: Dramaturg/Panelist
In December 2023 a special edition of the international IATC journal Critical Stages/ Scenes was published on Australian and Aotearoa / New Zealand dramaturgy co-edited by Kathryn Kelly, Julian Meyrick, Fiona Graham, Moana Nepia and Emily Coleman.
This seminar brings the editors and selected contributors together in person for the first time to analyse their findings and to suggest possibilities for development.
Kiss My Archive
8 March 2024, 7 pm
The Ballroom, Trades Hall, Naarm (Melbourne), VIC, Australia
Tickets
Role: Composer/Sound Designer
A one-night-only event for International Women’s Day.
What is an archive? Who is in it? Who decides? Who is it for?
Drawing on research for the ‘Staging Australian Women’s Lives’ Project, this performance re-enacts and repurposes artefacts, testimonies and stories as a living archive of women’s theatre.
A night of unboxing, raging and remembering, song and celebration, as we honour how we got here and speculate on where we’re headed next.
a love is a love is a love
3 February 2024, 7 pm
Divisi Chamber Singers and Coady Green
Melbourne Recital Centre, Naarm (Melbourne), VIC, Australia
Tickets
Role: Composer
Piece: a love is a love is a love
‘A love letter to queerness and the LGBTQIA+ community.’ – Meta Cohen
As part of Midsumma Festival 2024, Divisi continue to amplify the voices of local LGBTQIA+ artists as they present a vibrant program of works by acclaimed Australian queer composers Meta Cohen, Sally Whitwell, and Connor D’Netto. Winner of the 2021 ABC Composer Commissioning Award, Cohen’s ‘a love is a love is a love’, is a poignant cycle of queer love songs based on the poetry of Australian queer writers. Join Divisi Chamber Singers as they continue to break barriers and inspire in this celebration of queer voices and perspectives.
Homophonic! The RESPECT Project
3 February 2024, 3 pm
Homophonic! and the Consort of Melbourne
Fed Square - The Edge, Naarm (Melbourne), VIC, Australia
Tickets
Role: Composer
Piece: Swerve
Singing our stories, loud and proud.
Works for voices and strings inspired by intergenerational conversations between queer Victorian composers and seniors. This is emotional, powerful storytelling; maintaining our shared cultural queer history through music, humour, and a healthy dose of shared outrage..
Homophonic!
9-11 February 2024
Homophonic! and the Consort of Melbourne
La Mama Courthouse, Naarm (Melbourne), VIC, Australia
Tickets
Role: Composer
Piece: Caedo
New music by queer composers.
Homophonic! is bringing the disco ball to the concert hall and celebrating the wonderful sound world of LGBTQIA+ composers today. Featuring the premiere of the Midsumma-Homophonic! Pride Prize for 2024 by Sophie Rose, performed by Judith Dodsworth. Performed by The Homophonic! Chamber ensemble and The Consort of Melbourne.
The Selkie Project
22-25 November 2023
Liminal Theatre Co
Rus Kitchen Studio, Euro Yuroke (St Kilda), VIC, Australia
Tickets
Role: Composer/Sound Designer
The Selkie Project is a new Australian work which explores gender roles, displacement, and inheritance, by re-examining the Celtic myth of the Selkie.
It follows the story of the Selkie, a seal-woman, displaced into an unfamiliar human world. Grotesquely animal, but trapped in the human roles of ‘woman’ and ‘mother’, she is an alien living on land and yearning for the sea. The work also traces the generational fracture created in her daughter, who lives and breathes the aftermath of this displacement, carrying the burden of the past.
A one woman show, the Selkie Project is a poetic collision of an old myth with contemporary experience, threaded by vast metaphoric imagery by Green Room Award winner Ivanka Sokol, and evocative sound design by Meta Cohen.
A Celebration of Female Composers
3 November 2023
Elizabeth Cooper (voice), John Martin (piano)
The Art House Studio, Wyong, NSW, Australia
Tickets
Role: Composer
Piece: White
A presentation of songs by female composers from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, including Clara Schuman, Amy Woodforde-Finden, as well as Australian female composers of note.
Starring Cinzia Montresor, Dominic Barry and Elizabeth Cooper; with accompaniment by pianist John Martin; and narration by Kirsty Carr.
While Meta does not necessarily consider themself a female composer, they were delighted to have their piece ‘White’ included in the program.
Gumura
14 October 2023
Sydney Children’s Choir
Coodye (Walsh Bay), Sydney, NSW, Australia
Tickets
Role: Composer
Piece: Of Motion
Gumura is your chance to explore the sounds and history of the Wharf as you travel through all the different spaces of Pier 2/3 brought to life with the voices of 400 choristers. The music includes new works commissioned from five Sydney Children’s Choir alumni who are now emerging Australian composers and the premiere of a new piece by longstanding collaborator and Gadigal artist, Matthew Doyle.
The evening begins together in the lower level of Pier 2/3 with a welcome to country from Matthew Doyle and Alice Chance’s mystical Aurora Eora. From there, we divide into four separate groups to experience a guided journey through four spaces upstairs – the Neilson, the Belgiorno Room, the Neilson Nutshell and the foyer – and in each one, a new piece by alumni composers of Sydney Children’s Choir. The evening concludes with a significant new work in Gadigal language by Matthew Doyle, ‘Gumura’, in a surround-sound choral experience designed by Lyn Williams and Andrew Walsh.
Join us for an unforgettable evening of choral music highlighting the rich history of our home.
Dramaturgical Thinking: a creative conversation about Australian dramaturgy
25 September 2023
Victorian College of the Arts, Naarm (Melbourne), VIC, Australia
Role: Dramaturg/panelist
This panel discusses post-millennial dramaturgy in contemporary Australian practice, and the role of the Victorian College of the Arts in fostering the field. Dramaturgy encompasses a set of practices, ethics and knowledges that can mobilise insight and productive discourse across a wide array of contexts, collaborations, and forms, including community-engaged and pedagogical practices, First Nations theatre, new writing, devising, rehearsal, production, performance, criticism, organisational management, artistic direction, live art, curating, devising, opera, musical theatre, new media, transmedia, branding, film, TV, and dance.
Songs of Heart and Soul
9 September 2023
The Consort of Melbourne
Wyselaskie Yuma Auditorium, Naarm (Melbourne), VIC, Australia
Tickets
Role: Composer
Piece: Caedo (World Premiere)
Join Melbourne’s premier vocal ensemble for a wonderful afternoon of sumptuous vocal harmony as The Consort of Melbourne presents 'Songs of Heart and Soul' - a programme of sacred and secular works by some of our favourite composers. Including vocal gems by Cecilia McDowall, Dan Walker, Benjamin Britten, Hubert Parry, Raffaella Aleotti and more, we'll set the wonderful acoustic of Wyselaskie Yuma auditorium ringing with the sound of some of Melbourne's best ensemble singers in perfect harmony.
This programme will feature the world premiere of Meta’s work Caedo.
Springtime Concerts
16 September 2023
Sydney Children’s Choir
Sydney Conservatorium of Music, NSW, Australia
Role: Composer
Piece: Of Motion (World premiere)
This programme will feature the world premiere of Meta’s work Of Motion, commissioned by the Sydney Children’s Choir.
Come As You Are: No Divide Kansas City
3 June 2023
Lyric Opera Kansas City, Kansas, USA
Tickets
Role: Composer
Piece: We (a love is a love is a love, Movement IV)
The purpose of Come As You Are is to break down barriers of access in the concert space. Concert music has contributed greatly to performing arts though it has also, at times, stifled vulnerability, maintained privilege and created exclusive expectations of formality. Such steep barriers create separation between creators, performers and audiences. This can lead to the music and its spaces feeling inaccessible to those who may feel they lack the privilege, training and/or formality to be welcomed into an experience. Come As You Are aims to open up these barriers through reimagined musical experiences and storytelling in the concert space.
Break the Binaries
28 April 2023
Science Gallery, Naarm (Melbourne), VIC, Australia
Tickets
Role: Composer/Performer
Meta will be performing a live-composed work in response to one of the works from the Science Gallery’s Break the Binaries exhibition.
‘This Friday Night Social is a love letter to live music from queer artists. Expect to be serenaded by a ton of local performers including Huntly, the Melbourne duo who aptly describe themselves as "best friends making electronic music you can cry to." Composer Meta Cohen will transform the gallery into a sensory playground while DJ Gaydad will once again be spinning some tunes. Alongside our music acts on the night, Born In A Taxi are back to entertain us with their weird and wonderful creatures and Peter Waples-Crowe is bringing us some video art.’
Australian Art Song for Chamber Choir
Divisi Chamber Singers and Coady Green
12 March 2023
fortyfivedownstairs, Naarm (Melbourne), VIC, Australia
Tickets
Role: Composer
Piece: We (a love is a love is a love, Movement IV)
Divisi Chamber Singers have, over the last few years, skyrocketed to become one of Australia’s most exciting and vibrant chamber choirs, winning a host of awards. This concert celebrates Australia’s own thriving contemporary choral tradition. Australia has a rich landscape of contemporary music, and here Divisi showcases local artists whose contributions are chronically under-recognised internationally in favour of older works by historical European masters. Divisi presents works by Meta Cohen, Robert McIntyre, Juliana Kay, Cameron Lam, and Linda Kouvaras, plus a Melbourne premiere of Joe Twist’s exciting new ‘Australian Song Cycle.’
promiscuous/cities
Midsumma Festival, 19-24 January 2023
Theatre Works, Euro Yuroke (St Kilda), VIC, Australia
Tickets
Role: Sound Designer
They’ve written endless songs about this city.
Can you feel the street’s pulse, how it rushes through your veins like a drug?
He’s in trouble, she’s falling in love, they’re cheating, she’s trapped and he’s alone.
But keep moving since we mustn’t fall behind.
A symphony of a single night in San Francisco – utopian dream destination of queers and misfits, promiscuous/cities encompasses a night in a big city where each of us is frantically maintaining the myth of ourselves we’ve created. Yet underneath the vision of ourselves that we peddle on social media – like! – there is an aching distance between us.
HOMOPHONIC!
Midsumma Festival, 27-28 January 2023
La Mama Courthouse, Naarm (Melbourne), VIC, Australia
Tickets
Role: Composer
Piece: Swerve
New classical music by LGBTQ+ composers!
Homophonic! is back for its 13th year of outrageously fabulous new classical chamber music written by LGBTQ+ composers. We’re bringing the disco ball to the concert hall, and celebrating homosexual harmonies, sapphic symphonists, and the soundworld of today's queer composers.
Performed by The Consort of Melbourne, and the Homophonic! chamber ensemble led by Artistic Director Miranda Hill. Presented by La Mama Theatre.
Feral Queer Camp
Midsumma Festival, 21 January - 12 February 2023
Further Info
Role: Tawny Owl/Feral Program Coordinator
Explore Midsumma with a gaggle of queer thinkers and makers
Let’s go feral!
(Feral: ‘in a wild state, especially after escape from captivity or domestication’)
Be part of a new feral cohort who will consider: how we learn (from each other) about what makes performance queer; how we talk about queer performance; how we make performance; and, above all, how we might develop a network of queer thinkers.
Facilitated by a gaggle of feral queer academics assembled by camp captains Alyson Campbell and Steve Farrier, this is open to anyone in the community – enthusiasts, developing artists, practitioners. We want to hear from people who have not (yet) had access to, or have been let down by, or have chosen not to enter into, Higher Education but are hungry to encounter a utopian queer curriculum largely of their own devising. FQC is about seeing performance and thinking about it; we will have artist conversations and group discussions stemming from the performances in Midsumma festival. We might try some collaborative blogging...