BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
When your first performance of a program is a sell-out, and you receive a donation of funds to record an album based on that program, you know you’re onto a good thing.
Not only that, but you know you’re onto something the community wants to support; something there’s a need for.
In 2021, the Divisi Chamber Singers commissioned and premiered Australian music from LGBTQIA+ composers, based on texts from LGBTQIA+ writers. This project was called Compose Queer, and the first performance was so successful, Divisi received a private donation to record and release the music.
This album is called Spectrum — named after the spectrum of colours in the rainbow and inspired by composer Sally Whitwell’s music — and it’s about to be launched at the MC Showroom. According to Divisi, it’s “Australia’s first-ever complete album of queer classical music by local LGBTQIA+ composers”.
On top of their success with Compose Queer, Divisi Chamber Singers also received a grant from Creative Victoria — and won an ABC Composer Commissioning Award. They’ve chosen to commission a new song cycle from young queer composer Meta Cohen, which incorporates the works of young queer poets.
In this interview, we chat with Divisi’s co-artistic directors Alex Gorbatov and Bailey Montgomerie, who tell us the story behind Compose Queer, and how their new album Spectrum serves not only the community of LGBTQIA+ creators, but the classical music community as it prepares to embrace a healthy cultural change.
Alex and Bailey, you’ve said this is the first album of queer classical music by Australian composers. Why do you think it’s taken so long — literally forever — for the local music industry to make it to this milestone?
ALEX: I think it’s for both social reasons and practical reasons. Australia has made some progress in its social acceptance of queer people, but the plebiscite and Religious Discrimination Bill have highlighted that misunderstanding queerness and homophobia is still very present in Australian institutions, and classical music is no exception.
I think this environment of fear, and a lack of role models — in the past at least — I can imagine it is difficult to conceptualise taking on the difficult task of an album. Now, with the support and role models of people like Miranda Hill at 3 Shades Black with the decade-long Homophonic pride prize, and Coady Green for his endless support — it has become more achievable.
The practical element is that albums are expensive, time consuming, and rarely make a profit — certainly in the Spotify era, and especially for fringe classical artists who are performing queer music. Without the support form Sustaining Creative Victoria and an anonymous donor, this would not really have been possible.
BAILEY: I think the name that has been chosen for our discipline says a lot. ‘Classical’ has this association with old music. Composers have been trying to break out of this romantic paradigm of valorising the old masters since the early 20th Century, and a lot of fabulous modernist ensembles are continuing that tradition. But, I suppose it’s not surprising that the experiences of the marginalised haven’t been taken up in the canon when our discipline still has so much modernising to do in so many areas.
What does your amazing community response tell you about the need for this album, and at this time?
A: I was flabbergasted at the response. Classical music, its institutions, and its audience need change — and I think the audience response to something different highlights this. We had people from a huge range of backgrounds, and lots of people from the music scene. I don’t think I’ve seen a more diverse audience at a concert I’ve been to since, but to be fair COVID does make that difficult.
Without a change to the people coming to classical music concerts, and who are interested in the genre, I’m afraid the genre will die. Something that challenges the genre like this may scare some people, but if we have even two or three people coming away from these concerts having a different impression of what classical music can be, that is super valuable.
B: I think that audiences, grant bodies, and even mainstream institutions are ready to hear something different from the classical music industry. The fact that we have been so successful in our efforts to ‘queer’ classical music so early in the life of our young ensemble really shows that there is a thirst for something new and different.
Queer stories and themes really fit bill here, because thematically, they’re bursting with feeling and they can be very moving. Musically, queerness also invites the use of a host of idioms into the classical medium from jazz to pop — since queer art in other creative fields has always been multidisciplinary.
I think that these stories and soundworlds are something that our audience really enjoyed at Compose Queer, and that shows me that this is something audiences want to see more of in classical music.
In addition to the representation of LGBTQIA+ artists in the creation of Spectrum, how does the album help to share queer stories?
A: When we commissioned our composers for Compose Queer, we asked them to write something — a story, experience, anything that was queer. This means we can actually put queer stories into classical music, instead of traditional stories or experiences by queer artists. For example, Robert McIntyre’s piece, text written by Savannah Wegman, deals with ‘internal standings within the queer community’ and what it means to be ‘not gay enough’. Although there is a universal core to this experience, not being enough and being rejected from community is something that all people can have the displeasure of experiencing, but how that is uniquely manifested within the queer community is a story we are so lucky to tell.
We hope to do more of this through our commissioning project with the ABC and Meta Cohen where we have commissioned four queer love poems.
B: We actually named the original commissioning project Compose Queer for two reasons. It’s true that one of the aims of the program was platforming queer composers, but it was also deeper: we also asked them to bring queerness into their compositions.
In crafting this album, we continued this mission by selecting works that were conceptually based on something queer. For example, the title track Spectrum by Sally Whitwell abstracts this idea, basing movement of the song cycle around a different colour of the rainbow flag. Another work commissioned by Miranda Hill’s Homophonic in 2021 discusses a queer woman’s true story of experiencing homophobia while working at the Australian Defence Force. The works we commissioned include everything from a queer lullaby to personal reflections on being marginalised, to a critique of the very concept of identity!
There’s a lot of thematic and structural content that is not widely discussed in classical music which this album explores.
Who are some of the most exciting artists involved?
A: Working with Meta has been a delight! I’ve known them for a number of years, since we were both choristers in Gondwana Choirs, and hearing their compositional voice develop and experiment with us as voices has been so exciting. They are a big fan of complex rhythm and rich textures, which are a challenge to rehearse but pay dividends in performance. They also have a really interesting lens as a dramaturg and sound designer, which gives them a fantastic theatrical way of writing. For vocal music, I think this is so important and gives it a real edge.
B: I’m really excited to have Sally’s song cycle on this album as the title track. Not only is she an incredibly experienced and knowledgeable musician, but she has also been working with choirs for a lot of her composing career and really understands how to write for voices. Its always a pleasure to work with someone with a detailed knowledge of the instrument that they’re writing for. The work itself is also a really creative incorporation of queerness into the program. Many of our composers have used text as their way of incorporating queerness into their work, but Sally’s texts discuss the Australian landscape, blood rushing through an artery, and even the pageantry of the 2016 Presidential Election! Instead, the queerness within the cycle is located in the form, with each movement adopting a different colour of the rainbow pride flag, which Sally has described as the ‘framework for her creativity’ when composing the work.
The release of this album is a historically significant event, being the first of its kind. So what change do you hope this will make to the future of the Australian music industry?
A: I hope that we can start to get more young people interested in the genre. Going to a party and saying that I’m a classical musician still feels like a bit of a dirty word. I want to see a future where classical music is not seen as stuffy and elitist, but a cutting-edge and self-aware genre that engages with themes and experiences that can be related to by everyone.
For the Australian scene, I hope to see more queer practitioners come out of the woodwork and do more work in this space, but also hopefully different marginalised communities embracing their rightful places within a new, colourful, and diverse classical music space.
B: Due to the lack of LGBTQ+ representation and awareness in the mainstream of classical music, I think that queer musicians in the industry don’t get an opportunity to see themselves reflected in the art they create. It would be amazing if this project fosters a deeper connection between queer musicians and the art that they create, perform, and promote.
I also hope that projects like will serve as a flashpoint for the expansion of this rich, growing corpus of queer-centred repertoire.
Beyond Spectrum, you’ve also received an ABC Composer Commissioning Award and you’re commissioning a new song cycle — tell us about that.
A: The ABC cycle is an incredible opportunity to commission a major work, which is a rare and fantastic opportunity for a small ensemble like us. The song cycle is between names at the moment, but each movement is set to a different poem about queer love by an emerging queer poet. In the end, we will have four love songs in total, one of which we will be premiering at our concert on 18 March!
Meta seemed like the perfect candidate to write the music. The brief is a difficult one to fill, being able to straddle the line between being honest about the transgressive nature of queer experience, and creating a piece of music that is ‘airplay friendly’ which, when talking about queer culture, can sometimes be difficult. We also love the dramatic elements that Meta includes in their writing.
B: A big part of why we commissioned this piece is to participate in the ‘queering’ of art song. There’s a rich history of art song in classical music, which reached incredible heights in the romantic period all over Europe. These songs were often set to sensual romantic poetry with heightened language and eclectic themes. They touched on a variety of concepts, but love songs were a key element of the genre. While there is a lot of evidence to suggest that composers of lieder like Franz Schubert were queer, and that the romantic subject of many of his love songs may have been male, this notion and its impacts have often been overlooked in musical scholarship. To me, this cycle is a brazenly queer reflection on the legacy of art song that challenges the heteronormative face of the classical canon, which has effectively straight-washed composers like Schubert.
This is also why we chose Meta for the job. Aside from being a multidisciplinary creative dividing her time between musical and theatrical spaces, Meta is also an academic with a keen interest in queer theory and its relationship to creative practice. Because of this, we knew that their exploration of this would be nuanced, interesting, and fun to listen to! We can’t wait to record the whole thing in May.
Having launched such a successful project in Compose Queer and its album Spectrum, how would you encourage the musicians of Australia to increase their own representations and support of local LGBTQIA+ artists?
A: I ask other local artists, even those not in the queer community: if they have the opportunity, consider commissioning something from a queer composer and explicitly allow it to be on a queer story of their choice.
Talking to Meta Cohen, they mentioned that the important part here was the ‘permission’ to write this explicitly queer work. But, without the expense and stress of a commission, the best way to support local LGBTQIA+ artists is to go to their concerts and buy their albums.
We are producing some fantastic things, and our sexuality is no inhibition to our music making.
B: All classical musicians know that the most tangible way to support a musician is to show up to their concerts and support their creative output in whatever form it takes. So of course, I’d encourage them to show solidarity and be an ally in this way.
But, I think an equally important thing fellow creatives can to do support LGBTQ+ artists and queer art is to think critically about their craft. Classical music is a conservative discipline relative to other creative fields. If our colleagues take this opportunity to think about how the complicated history of queer oppression and straight-washing has influenced what classical works are played today, and how classical works in the canon are interpreted and valued within the community. If I could encourage my colleagues in the industry to take away one thing about the place of local LGBTQ+ artists in this context, it would be that!
Anything else you’d like to share with our musical readers?
A: I would like to implore anyone who reads this to take a chance on emerging small ensembles of any style, genre, anything else. There is such a rich tapestry of this in Melbourne, and these emerging ensembles have so many experimental and exciting new ideas. Take an example like Forest Collective.
B: I’d like to talk a bit about the incredible support we’ve received from the queer classical music community in Melbourne. Coady Green is an incredibly experienced concert pianist with a lot of industry knowledge, and he has been our biggest collaborator, mentor, and support throughout this project. He has contributed so many in-kind hours behind the scenes for no other reason than that he loves and believes in this project.
Miranda Hill and her queer music prize Homophonic have also been a huge help to us. […] She sat down to talk with us about all things queer music when we were putting together Compose Queer [and assisted in our Spectrum arrangement and recording of the work I Am Who I Am, which was originally composed by Caerwen Martin for the 2021 Homophonic showcase*].
Our local LGBTQ+ community has been so supportive of this endeavor, and we couldn’t have done it without their amazing contributions!
Spectrum will launch as part of Chamber Music Week at the MC Showroom, Prahan, 18 and 19 March.
18 MARCH SOLD OUT
*Update 11 March 2021 (supplied by artist): “Upon publication of this article, Divisi was not aware of the circumstances under which the work I Am Who I Am was composed for the 2021 Homophonic showcase. In this regard, we would like to acknowledge the original composer and copyright holder of the work, Caerwen Martin. Without Caerwen’s permission and guidance throughout the arrangement process, it would not have been possible to include this incredibly special work on the album. Caerwen’s contributions to this project deserve a special mention and we are very grateful for this support.”
Images supplied.
