Divisi returns to Midsumma Festival for our third year in a row — this year at Kew Court House Live. A one-night-only chance to see our 2026 Midsumma program in one of Melbourne’s most intimate concert spaces.
In a program that celebrates queer love as eternal, brave and multifaceted, Divisi’s voices will transport you through beautiful song and compelling narratives from queer histories around the world, including Ancient Greece, medieval Italy, Samoa, Sydney and right here in Melbourne.
Expect a mix of new arrangements and old favourites as we honour the rich, enduring presence of queer people and stories across time and culture.
Presented in partnership with Midsumma Festival as part of the Kew Court House Live series.
Thursday 29 January 2026
7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Kew Court House, 188 High Street, Kew
Tickets: $25
Divisi has sold out every Midsumma show so far, and with $25 tickets and only 90 seats, we expect to again. Buy today to secure your spot!
Presented in partnership with Midsumma Festival and City of Boroondara as part of the Kew Court House Live series.
Past Concerts
Help Divisi Create a Brighter Future for Australian Music
This Cup Day, Divisi brings you the inaugural Big Sing — a joyful, one-night celebration of queer voices, community, and music-making.
The concert features performances by the Divisi sextet, the newly-formed Big Sing community choir, drag superstar Opal Essence, and local funk favourites Tracksuit Larry. Together, we’ll eat, drink, play games, watch some amazing performances, and record some new works for emerging Queer’s portfolio’s.
The Big Sing is a fundraiser to support Divisi’s future projects, commissions, and recordings. Every ticket helps us continue championing queer voices in classical music and beyond.
On cup day 2024, Punters spent $221.6 mil on torturing horses.
Say nup to the cup, and yup to some gay-ass singing.
God and gays
I find religious spaces both beautiful and oppressive, peaceful and manipulative.
Somewhere between a theatre show, a classical music gig, and a church service; this show explores the relationship between queer people, religion, and performance. We will take you through a service with readings, motets, hymns, a sermon, a psalm, prayers, Credo, and even communion. We will challenge who church music is for and what it can be. Performed by some of Melbourne’s most exciting vocal performers, Divisi.
Fri, 21 Mar – Sun, 23 Mar, 6:00 pm
Mainstage at Arthur Arthouse, Adelaide.
Compose Queer x Queerstories
Twelve queer composers draw inspiration from twelve queer writers to produce an anthology of completely new work, performed in concert by the innovative, youth-led choir Divisi Chamber Singers. Stories of resilience, resistance and fierce queer pride, set to music and sung in soaring harmony. This is not a stuffy matinée. This is where classical music meets club and cabaret. Creating connections across community, each composer has selected a piece of writing from the Queerstories archive that spoke to their own identity, creativity or experience.
With compositions by Sia Ahmad, Lucy Blomfield, Gabi Cadenhead, Connor D’Netto, Olivia Diamant, Leila Harris, Lillian Hearne, Cameron Lam, Caerwen Martin, James Rushford, Alex Turley and Sally Whitwell.
Drawing inspiration from stories by Liz Duck-Chong, Teddy Dunn, HANDSOME, Dmetri Kakmi, Paul Kidd, Fiona Kelly McGregor, Tommy Misa, Bastian Fox Phelan, Fletcher Quilty and Omar Sakr.
This project marks the second iteration of Divisi’s Compose queer programming – developing work by emerging queer composers to tell our stories in new ways. Although there is a thriving amateur queer music scene of community organisations and hobby musicians, there is limited opportunity for composers to express their queerness at a professional level. These programs give voice to tell stories at a professional quality of musical expression.
Divisi Chamber Singers is a youth-led, not-for-profit organisation that supports early-career creative artists. We strive to break down established norms of classical music through commissioning and performing innovative creative works and projects.
Queerstories is a national LGBTQI+ storytelling project directed by Maeve Marsden for the last ten years, with an award-winning podcast and events all around Australia, from Sydney to Melbourne, Hobart to Shepparton, Newcastle to Brisbane, to Albury, Adelaide, Mullumbimby, Mudgee and beyond.
Divisi partners with National Youth Choir of Australia for a workshop with the ever-so-exciting Luminescence Chamber Singers and Roland Peelman. This open workshop is a great opportunity to see Divisi in progress and vulnerable, taking advice and getting better. If you’re a singer, Roland and Luminescence will surely leave you with something to think about at your next performance.
Date: Tuesday 2nd July
Time: 7:30 pm
Price: $10 Students, $20 Adults
God and Gays is our second annual performance at Tempo Rubato’s festival of Queer music, Tempo Queer. In this concert we examine the complex relationship between queer performers and the churches they sing and write for. We will perform an exciting selection of Queer composers, many of whom are contemporary Australians.
Date: Friday July 12th
Time: 8:00 pm
Price: $22 Students, $30 Adults
Stories and seasons are always connected – they affect our moods, our intentions, metaphors for the passing time in our lives, and our ability to get out of bed in the morning. This concert presents premieres of stories and seasons, firstly the world premiere extension of composer Connor D’Netto’s work Stove Photography and the Melbourne premiere of Jonathan Dove’s minimalist masterwork The Passing of the Year. Join the most exciting young chamber choir in Australia – Divisi Chamber Singers – as they tell two captivating stories, one contemporary and one eternal at their second annual appearance at the fortyfivedownstairs chamber music festival.
Divisi, in collaboration with Melbourne Recital Centre for Midsumma 2024, present a vibrant program of classical vocal music by three major, award-winning Australian queer composers – Meta Cohen, Sally Whitwell and Connor D’Netto.
Two of these names, Meta and Sally should be pretty familiar to long-time listeners and Connor D’Netto is new to us but not new to the country being labelled by ABC classic as “the model contemporary Australian composer.” Having an opportunity to perform ‘a love is a love is a love’ and Spectrum again is terribly exciting. Re-performing and giving life to this music which tells enchanting stories never before told by classical music. Connor’s new work, a world premiere and commission by Divisi and Coady Green, will bring to live the stories of Bastian Fox Phelan as told in Maeve Marsden’s Queer Stories podcast. Check it out here, or come to the concert.
Performers
Alex Gorbatov voice
Bailey Montgomerie voice
Alex Ritter voice
Anish Nair voice
Marjorie Butcher voice
Monika Harris voice
Coady Green piano
Program
Meta Cohen
a love is a love is a love
Connor D’Netto
Stove Photography
Sally Whitwell
Spectrum
Listen here
Glitter and be Gay!
Divisi is trying something new for Tempo Queer. Four of our singers will take some of their favorite jazz standards and theatre songs and give them a contemporary-queer makeover. We want to put these songs to the test of time and give some of them a makeover suitable of Queer Eye for a saucy and sometimes emotional new look.
Join us for a silly, confronting, and camp evening.
Performed by:
Alex Gorbatov
Marjorie Butcher
Bailey Montgomerie
Alexandra Amerides
Coady Green
Divisi’s debut in Melbourne Recital Centre’s Primrose Potter Salon explores the intrigue of madrigals, taking six narrators’ individual interpretations and coordinating them into a beautiful, cohesive story. Divisi Chamber Singers will take four hundred years of madrigal storytelling tradition and weave masterworks with contemporary comparisons. Ben Rowarth’s The Turn, an Australian premiere, gives further context to Monteverdi’s Lamento D’Arianna. Gavin Bryars’ madrigals shed more light on ancient poetry with intricate contemporary harmony.
Challenging its singers’ virtuosic abilities, we hope to provide audiences with an experience of storytelling that transcends time and style, telling ancient stories in modern ways.
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.’
Divisi is joined by Ensemble Ancien to perform an exciting new work by emerging composer Christopher Healey with new text by Rose Forrest inspired by Historia Di Jonas, a striking oratorio by Giulio Carissimi.
Enjoy a relaxing hour being serenaded by delicious 17th Century songs, and witness the world premiere of Healey and Forrest’s unique new work that offers a modern reflection on the book of Jonah.
Quick concert! The Lieder Society of Victoria and Chapel off Chapel has presented us with an opportunity to present two world premiere’s at their incredible venue by Naarm (Melbourne based) composers.
Firstly, Meta Cohen’s queer song cycle A Love Is A Love Is A Love. We recorded this at the ABC to go on classic FM in May and gave you a little hint of this at our March concert. Come hear all four movements of this ground-breaking work.
Secondly, Cameron Lam’s new vocal cycle The Splendour of Lying Naked in the Sun. Taking text from Salvatore Scibona’s short story by the same name, this multi-movement work explores themes of self-identify and ones relationship with your body. Most importantly, the peace of lying naked in the sun.
These two premieres will be interspersed by works by Caerwen Martin, Joseph Twist and Gavin Bryars for an exciting reflection on what art song can be!
“Spectrum” Album Launch – 18th and 19th of March 2022
As part of Chamber Music Week at the MC Showroom, Divisi debuts Spectrum, Australia’s first-ever complete album of queer classical music by local LGBTQIA+ composers. Join us for a celebration of the album’s release and hear a performance of works from the album alongside other pieces by queer composers.
Get your tickets here today!
La Nuova Musica – 18th and 24th April 2021
In this concert we contrast Nuova Musica (new music) with La Nuova Music, a style of music dominated by Montiverdi and Gesualdo. We will tackle this difficult repertoire with a group of 6 expert singers, just as it would have been performed in the Early Baroque Italian tradition.
Compose Queer – 26th February 2021
Compose queer is now finished. For more information about this program and any updates about its participants go to www.divisichamber.com/composequeer
Divisi in Recital – 9th August 2019
A showcase recital in Wyselaskie Auditorium featured a selection of choral masterpieces by Arvo Pärt, Franz Biebl, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, and a contemporary arrangement of Waltzing Matilda by Ruth McCall. In our second major program, we challenged our singers by introducing professional rehearsal expectations and deadlines.
Tallis to Tavener – 25th May 2019
A reflective anthology of the evolution of English choral music. The selection of unaccompanied choral compositions features an array of pronounced English composers; documenting the development of the English tradition in choral composition and divulging its contributions to the distinct styles and techniques we hear in contemporary choral music.
