fortyfivedownstairs Chamber Music Festival 2026: My Favourite Penis Poems (and Other Love Stories)

My Favourite Penis Poems (and Other Love Stories)

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Del Tredici was one of the first major classical composers to fully embrace queerness in a radical act of joy, eroticism, and defiance. This concert highlights two sides of Del Tredici’s queer expression. There’s the outrageously camp My Favourite Penis Poems – a virtuosic, hilarious, and unabashed song cycle setting his favourite poems on the rise and fall of His Majesty, the Penis – and the deeply moving Gay Life – a meditative and tender exploration of queer identity, composed in 2001. Both works receive their Australian premieres, performed by a sensational ensemble of musicians including acclaimed American pianist and Del Tredici’s longtime friend, Marc Peloquin, baritone Bailey Montgomerie, tenor Boyd Owen, and soprano Marjorie Hannah.

Friday 24 April, 7:30pm