Melissa Madden Gray

Melissa (and her wild alter-ego Meow Meow)’s unique brand of subversive and sublime entertainment has hypnotized, inspired and seduced audiences worldwide from London’s West End to Carnegie Hall, to the Hollywood Bowl, to the Sydney Opera House! Her original music theatre works have played from Berlin to Berkeley, to Edinburgh to Shanghai and have been presented by David Bowie, Pina Bausch and Mikhail Baryshnikov amongst others.

The stage-diving tragi-comedienne has performed her “orchestrated chaos” with The London Philharmonic, Sydney, Melbourne, Seattle, Bergen Norway, Oregon, Vancouver and San Francisco Symphonies and she is a frequent guest with the orchestra “Pink Martini” including at the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Albert Hall London and with the LA Philharmonic at Disney Hall and at Hollywood Bowl. With orchestras she often specialises in Weimar and French chanson repertoire as well as jump-cut explorations of Schubert and Schumann and contemporary and original work.

Her latest album Hotel Amour with Pink Martini’s Thomas Lauderdale was ranked in the Times UK top 100 albums of 2019. Her theatre credits include Titania in Emma Rice’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls with the Royal Philharmonic at Royal Albert Hall, La Maîtresse – a role created for her in Michel Legrand and Kneehigh’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg on London's West End, Jenny in Die Dreigroschen Oper with the London Philharmonic in London and Paris, and Anna 1 and 2 in Die Sieben Todsünden at the Berlin Konzerthaus under Vladimir Jurowski, and at Hamer Hall with Orchestra Victoria , Victorian Opera, and in San Francisco under Edwin Outwater. She has performed as “Pegleg” in Tom Waits’ The Black Rider with Orchestra Victoria, Sitwell/Walton’s Facade at Berlin Konzerthaus, cond Jurowski and Louis Andriessen’s de Materie at Disney Hall with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She has narrated Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale for Melbourne Symphony and curated their orchestral programme: The 20’s And All That Dissonance. She has been presented by Renée Fleming at Kennedy Center, DC , is the recipient of an Australia Council Creative Fellowship Award, and is a Fellow of Trinity College, University of Melbourne, and this year was made a research/ director’s Fellow at New York University’s Center for Ballet.

She has made numerous award winning original music-theatre works which have been presented at Southbank Centre London, Sydney Opera House, UK tours and Edinburgh International Festival, including Vamp, Meow’s Little Match Girl, Meow’s Little Mermaid. She has created numerous “fantastical history” song cycles for crumbling theatres in Australia and the UK, and bespoke civic events – most recently in Liverpool UK for the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album involving the city’s brass bands, a three day “riot” and a requiem in a graveyard. Her recent music theatre work Apocalypse Meow was presented at Southbank Centre London, had a return season at Shakespeare’s Globe London, Malthouse Theatre Melbourne and at BAM’s Next Wave Festival in NYC . In 2024 she also collaborated with choreographer/director Arthur Pita, Olivier-Award winning Royal Ballet former Principal Edward Watson MBE, composer Frank Moon and Oxford Kafka Research Programme to perform Kafka’s A Hunger Artist, commissioned by Oxford Cultural Programme and the Royal Ballet.

Melissa as Meow Meow has toured the concert halls of Australia, the UK and the US with The Australian Chamber Orchestra and Barry Humphries’ acclaimed Weimar programme, including an extended return season at the Barbican in London. She is guest artist with the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch in The Seven Deadly Sins since 2008, and has just had her Carnegie Hall solo debut with her programme: "Sequins and Satire, Divas and Disruptors : the Wild Women of the Weimar Republic”. Next: concerts at Soho Theatre London May, Bar Jeder Vernunft Berlin June, and a new work “Meow’s Red Shoes” with director Kate Champion of DV8 and Force Majeure companies.