Conducting Day for Night Image by Hospital Hill

Conducting Day for Night Image by Hospital Hill

 

Evan J Lawson

composer, conductor, singer & writer

artistic director / FOREST COLLECTIVE

Resident conductor / BK Opera

 
 
 

What’s being said

...his music is serene, deep, it’s even breathing the heritage of Mahler.
— Matthias Pintscher
...the sonorities that emerged often proved extraordinary...
— Clive O’Connell, The Music February 2019
Lawson’s haunting, impactful music and Szesiong Todd’s lucid and lyrical libretto are a complementary marriage. And the incorporation of pianist as Minotaur, whose ominous expression is sporadically heard but unseen until turning the corner into the final space, is an ingenious conceit.
— Paul Selar's review of Labyrinth, Australian Arts Review
Evan’s music straddles definitions and categorisations. It has a beauty and accessibility, and yet it does not in the least bit shy away from the innovative approaches to harmony, rhythm, and melody that people can, in other 20th- and 21st-century music, find daunting. When you listen to this music you find yourself carried along by it, before you have even noticed how adventurous and exploratory its composition is.
— Ian Parsons, The Sound Barrier PBS FM
[In The Sea] Lawson conducts an evocative score that elicits feelings of freedom and exhilaration that being in a relationship and the sea can offer as well as the danger of becoming trapped and overpowered by said relationship and the sea.
— Myron My, My Melbourne Arts
Lawson’s music is, bar to bar, beautiful. Making the most of his small ensemble, he was able to achieve a variety of surprising effects, displaying a keen knowledge of the limitations of his ensemble.
— Partial Durations
This is an opera [The Sea] that directly addresses difficult themes and explores notions of coercion, corruption, and seduction. This is conveyed by a range of melodies that begin gently but build to more intense tones and sounds.
— Patricia Di Risio, Stage Whispers
...Lawson found a striking compositional vein that promised a sort of catharsis; in this tragedy, you find a consolation that broadens out into a generous efflorescence before the inevitable descent to darkness.
— Clive O'Connell, The Music February 2019
 

Up coming performances