Mama Alto is a jazz singer, cabaret artiste, and gender transcendent diva.
Mama Alto is a jazz singer, cabaret artiste & gender transcendent diva. She is a transgender & queer person of colour, living with disability, who works with the radical potential of storytelling, strength in softness and power in vulnerability.
Her solo performances are critically acclaimed & programmed at venues & festivals including Chapel off Chapel (Melbourne, Australia), Melbourne Recital Centre (Melbourne, Australia), Adelaide Cabaret Festival (South Australia, Australia), Festival of Voices (Tasmania, Australia), the legendary Joe's Pub (New York, USA) & more. She has collaborated with legendary figures across the arts including Finucane & Smith, Declan Greene, Taylor Mac, and Brook Andrew. She is the co-creator of highly acclaimed variety cabaret “Gender Euphoria,” Australia’s largest ever trans & gender diverse main stage production, and is currently an ensemble member in Taylor Mac & Matt Ray's epic queer opera "Bark of Millions."
Additionally in the arts, she has worked as a diversity, equity and inclusion specialist (including as a consultant, and as former Artist Development Coordinator at Midsumma Festival), as a writer (including for Archer magazine, for publications from the NGV and Queerstories, and an MTC Cybec Electric playwright), and a cultural development specialist - for which she was awarded the prestigious 2021 Australia Council for the Arts Kirk Robson Award.
She has also been recognised with a 2020/2019 Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship, a 2019 Creative Victoria Creators Fund fellowship, and awards including the 2019 Australian LGBTI Awards Music Artist of the Year, 2018 City of Yarra Contributions to the Arts Award, and the 2017 GLOBE Melbourne LGBTI Awards Artist of the Year.
Working in service to her diverse communities, she has served as CEO of Transgender Victoria (2021-2022), a Board Member of Switchboard Victoria (2020-2022), Artist Development Coordinator at Midsumma Festival (2020-2021) and has sat on multiple advisory groups to government and industry.
MAMA ALTO in MORE DETAIL
Mama Alto is a jazz singer, cabaret artiste & gender transcendent diva; a community advocate, arts facilitator & creative freelancer. She is a transgender & queer person of colour, living with disability and chronic illness, who works with the radical potential of storytelling, strength in softness and power in vulnerability.
Mama Alto’s acclaimed solo cabaret performances have been programmed at acclaimed festivals and venues, including:
- Joe’s Pub (New York City, USA - 2024)
- Melbourne Recital Centre (Melbourne, Victoria - 2015, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024)
- National Gallery of Victoria (2019, 2021, 2024)
- Adelaide Cabaret Festival (Adelaide, South Australia - 2023)
- Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras (Sydney, NSW - 2018)
- FEAST Festival (Adelaide, South Australia - 2017, 2018)
- Festival of Voices (Hobart, Tasmania - 2018, 2019, 2024)
- Perth International Cabaret Festival (Perth, Western Australia - 2024)
- And many more…
Mama Alto is co-creator of the highly celebrated trans and gender diverse landmark cabaret work, “Gender Euphoria” (Midsumma 2019, Melbourne International Festival 2019, Sydney WorldPride 2023, Arts Centre Melbourne 2023), and which features in the inaugural exhibitions at the Qtopia national LGBTIQA+ museum in Sydney, Australia.
She has been a featured performer in:
- Finucane & Smith cabaret, burlesque & performance art works (2014- ongoing)
- Alan Cumming’s Club Cumming, Adelaide Cabaret edition (2021)
- Declan Greene’s “The Homosexuals” presented by the Malthouse Theatre (Melbourne) and Griffin Theatre Company (Sydney), (2017)
- Taylor Mac’s “24 Decade History of Popular Music” Melbourne edition (2017)
- Midsumma Festival Gala, Extravaganza, and Live at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl performances (2019-2023)
- Paul Grabowsky’s jazz projects at The Count (2019-2020)
- Brook Andrews' "De Anima" installation and performance works (2014-2017)
- Phillip Adam BalletLab at the National Gallery of Victoria (2014)
- And many more…
Mama Alto is currently an ensemble member of Taylor Mac and Matt Ray’s “Bark of Millions” (Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York; Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley; Berliner Festspiele, Berlin; Sydney Opera House, Sydney).
She has independently released four vinyl records, "Songbird," "Torch Songs," "The Salon Series" and "Lady Sings The Blues," recorded in 2016 on vintage analogue equipment from the 1950s and 1960s and additionally available online on download and streaming services including Spotify, Apple Music and more.
Her work has been recognised with awards and fellowships from the Australia Council of the Arts (Kirk Robson Award for Cultural Arts and Community Development 2021), Creative Victoria (Creators Fund 2019), GLOBE Melbourne (Artist of the Year Award 2017), and many more.
Her unique and important voice has been recognised by the prestigious accessioning into the collections of Australia's National Film and Sound Archive.
She appeared on the cult classic ABC Australia television music quiz show "Spicks & Specks" (2022).
She is also an author and writer, recipient of a Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas fellowship, and having been published in print and online including with the National Gallery of Victoria, Archer Magazine and Hachette Books and in news and street press media, and as a playwright including in development at Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC Cybec Electric 2019). Her first co-authored academic paper ("Is Life A Cabaret? A Living Archive of the Other") was published in the peer-reviewed scholarly journal CURATOR in 2020.
She has modelled in fashion shoots for Archer Magazine and performed for the opening night runway of Melbourne Fashion Week 2023 (Fashion x Theatre) for Moth Design & Saint Stella M.
She is exploring her work as an emerging visual artist in multiple media.
Mama Alto has been a facilitator, panellist, guest speaker and programmer for various projects with:
- Arts Centre Melbourne
- Melbourne Fringe
- The Wheeler Centre
- Melbourne International Comedy Festival
- Multicultural Arts Victoria
- Melbourne Writer’s Festival
- MPavilion
- Emerging Writer’s Festival
- Switchboard Victoria
- Midsumma Festival
- Liminal Magazine
- And many more…
She has fundraised for many organisations, including in support of Switchboard Victoria suicide hotline, Thorne Harbour (the former Victorian AIDS Council), Minus18, Equal Love, Safe Schools, Trans Sydney Pride, IDAHOBIT Day, Transgender Victoria, Victorian Pride Centre, the Victorian Public Sector Pride Network, & multiple other community causes and individual benefits including bushfire emergencies, funeral funds, surgery funds and for community elders in crisis.
In service to her diverse communities, she has served as CEO of Transgender Victoria (2021-2022), a Board Member of Switchboard Victoria (2019-2022), and Artist Development Program Coordinator of Midsumma Festival (2020-2021), and as an Ambassador for Public Libraries Victoria’s “Libraries Change Lives” campaign (2018-present) and the Melbourne Queer Film Festival (2019). Her work has been recognised with inclusion in the groundbreaking publication "Transgender Australia: A History since 1910" by Dr Noah Riseman.
She has served as advisory panellist, committee member or subject expert for the Green Room Awards (2020-2022), Switchboard Victori18-2020), VicHealth (2020-2022), The People of Cabaret (2020-2021), and many more, as well as grant assessment panels for Creative Victoria, Antipodes Theatre and many more.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts as a Participant in the Dean’s Scholar’s Program from Monash University Australia, majoring in musicology and ethnomusicology, where she won multiple student awards including the Ernst Morawetz Prize for Musicology, and is a proud alumna of MUST (Monash University Student Theatre).