Carnegie Hall

Meow Meow’s unique brand of subversive and sublime entertainment has hypnotized, inspired, and terrified audiences globally from London’s West End to Lincoln Center, Berlin to Shanghai, and the Hollywood Bowl to the Sydney Opera House. Named one of the “Top Performers of the Year” by The New Yorker, the crowd-surfing tragi-comedienne’s solo works have been commissioned by David Bowie, Pina Bausch, and Mikhail Baryshnikov, among others.

Meow Meow specializes in Weimar repertoire and French chanson, as well as jump-cut explorations of Schubert, R. Schumann, and contemporary composers. She has played Jenny in Weill/Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Anna in The Seven Deadly Sins with Berlin’s United Ensemble, and performed Andriessen’s De Materie with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She performed her Pandemonium concerts with the San Francisco, Seattle, and Oregon symphonies; Sydney and Melbourne symphony orchestras; and Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. She has toured with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, performing Barry Humphries’s Weimar program at Tanglewood, the Barbican, and at concert halls across the UK and Australia.

The 2023–2024 season includes debuts with the Toronto and Vancouver symphony orchestras; a concert tour across the US; and a collaboration with The Royal Ballet’s Edward Watson and choreographer Arthur Pita.

Meow Meow’s theater credits include Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls at Royal Albert Hall, La Maîtresse in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg on London’s West End, and Pegleg in Tom Waits’s The Black Rider. She is also a guest artist with Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.

Meow Meow’s original musical theater work Apocalypse Meow was performed at Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave festival in 2019, having premiered at London’s Southbank Centre. She has created numerous “fantastical history” song cycles for crumbling theaters in Australia and the UK, and bespoke civic events.

Her latest album, Hotel Amour with Pink Martini’s Thomas Lauderdale, was named one of the top 100 albums of the year by The Times (London)and features duets with Rufus Wainwright, Michel Legrand, and the von Trapps. She is a frequent guest artist with Pink Martini, performing across Europe and North America.

Isaac Hayward is an award-winning Australian music director, multi-instrumentalist, and arranger who has worked on a wide range of projects internationally. His Australian music direction credits include Ladies in Black (Queensland Theatre Company), The Rabbits and West Side Story (Opera Australia), Come Rain or Come Shine (Melbourne Theatre Company), and Muriel’s Wedding The Musical (Global Creatures), for which he won a Helpmann Award and a Sydney Theatre Award.

Hayward’s international work includes Spamalot, Bad Cinderella, King Kong, and The Phantom of the Opera (Broadway); Into the Woods (Holy City Arts & Lyric Opera); The Mikado (New Zealand Opera); and The Secret River (Shakespeare Theatre Company / National Theatre London). He is also the artistic director and conductor of Hell’s Kitchen Laboratory Orchestra in New York City, in which professional musicians play their secondary instruments.

Hayward’s arranging work includes Muriel’s Wedding The Musical, Ladies in Black, Come Rain or Come Shine, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, and arrangements for Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Sony Pictures, and Warner Bros. He was the recipient of a 2022 Mike Walsh Fellowship and a finalist in the 2023 Mendelssohn International Conducting Competition.

Nicholas Crosa has performed as a soloist with ensembles that include the Oregon Symphony, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Aspen Concert Orchestra, Aspen Young Artists Orchestra, Portland Youth Philharmonic, Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra, Florestan Trio, and other ensembles. Crosa won the gold medal and first prize at the Stulberg International String Competition and was also first-prize winner in the Nakamichi Violin Concerto Competition at the Aspen Music Festival. Other awards include first prizes in the National String Competition of the Music Teachers National Association, the Oregon Symphony’s Corbet Young Artists Competition, and the Portland Youth Philharmonic Concerto Competition. He was also a prize winner at the 1996 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. Crosa was selected as the 1998 Stulberg Artist-in-Residence at Western Michigan University.

Crosa’s first major appearance as a soloist was at age 11 with the Portland Festival Symphony, and his international debut occurred when he performed a recital series as a guest of the Conservatory of Music of the City of Buenos Aires. He has also performed in chamber music recitals and as a soloist at the Aspen Music Festival, Dalton Center, Fontana Festival of Music and Art, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar, and at various other venues in Portland, Missoula, Savannah, and New York.

In Portland, Crosa studied with Jeanette Wood, Lajos Balogh, and Carol Sindell. He was a scholarship student of the late Dorothy DeLay and Won-Bin Yim at The Juilliard School in New York, where he also studied chamber music with harpsichordist Albert Fuller and cellist Jerry Grossman. Crosa has been a member of the beloved, award-winning “mini orchestra” Pink Martini since 2005.

Dan Witton has worked as an actor, physical performer, musician, composer, sound producer, and vocalist in theater, dance, performance art, and screen media. He is based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia.

With Meow Meow, he has performed Apocalypse Meow: Crisis Is Born at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Pandemonium with the Seattle Symphony and the Sydney, Melbourne, West Australian, New Zealand, and Vancouver symphony orchestras, as well as in appearances at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Perth International Cabaret Festival, and Sydney Festival; and the production of Souvenir in Hobart and Adelaide.

Other companies, productions, and commissions include Sonic Labyrinth and Baby Whispering (ArtPlay); Urchin (Melbourne Recital Centre); Still Awake Still! (New Victory Theater, US and Australian tours); Woyzeck and The Story of Mary MacLane By Herself (Malthouse Theatre); The Rabbits and Boris Godunov (Opera Australia); HATE (Belvoir St. Theatre); Strange Fruit (Sydney Festival, Shizuoka Festival); Phobia (Chamber Made Opera); Not Yet It’s Difficult (Hanover World Expo); Blue Grassy Knoll (Galway International Arts Festival, Edinburgh Festival Fringe); The Ennio Morricone Experience (Sydney Opera House, Arts House Melbourne); Circus Oz; Bush Gothic (Jodhpur RIFF, WOMADelaide); and desoxy Theatre (Sydney Festival, PICA, Adelaide Festival).

Most recently Witton toured The Sunshine Club by Wesley Enoch and John Rodgers and played bass in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill for the Melbourne Theatre Company and State Theatre Company South Australia. Learn more at danwitton.com.au.

David Berger is a drummer whose feel perfectly matches his spirit: deep, nuanced, generous, soulful. His style can be described as a roux, mixing equal parts “flour” (techniques passed down by the masters) and “fat” (the feel of the music through the ages), which no doubt evolved from his time spent in and with the music of New Orleans.

Over the course of his career, Berger has toured, recorded, and performed with Nefesh Mountain, Amy Helm, Lou Reed, Marianne Faithfull, Deva Mahal, Erin McKeown, The Hot Sardines, The Flying Neutrinos, Meow Meow, Ana Gasteyer, Nellie McKay, Charles Neville, Cassandra Wilson, Binky Griptite, Justin Vivian Bond, Joey Arias, Taylor Mac, Bridget Everett, Matt Ray, Spencer Day, Daniel Isengart, Lance Horne, Shimon Lev Tahor, Fantuzzi, Elysian Fields, Jim Sclavunos, Little Annie, and Mary Fahl, among others.

In addition to performance duties, Berger teaches drums and guitar in one-on-one and workshop settings, writes music, and contributes his skills as producer and arranger to many artists with whom he works. In his free time, Berger cannot be found, as there is none.