Solomon Frank (“Solly” to friends) is an Australian experimental artist wearing many hats, sometimes literally. He’s a composer, clarinetist, comedian, drag artist, and avant-garde performer. I first met him on Grindr in 2023 at Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin in 2023. We became quick friends and, eventually, collaborators.
Last year, we performed together in Berlin: a playful piece called Elasticine, which Solly co-created with artist Niki Johnson. It involves the clarinet, near-nudity, and latex balloons of every size imaginable. The show was held at Heizhaus in Ufer Studios, though it has since been performed in cities across Europe.
This is the general tenor of his projects: wild, playful, often slyly homoerotic works that deconstruct the clarinet in surprising ways (I Love Clarinet) and may involve dogs (Dog Choir). In Australia, he also runs a queer hiking club (Power Botany). Just this month, he arrived in Berlin for a six-month stay to work on his next project, an opera that will premiere in Sydney in 2027, and to have lots of sex.
We’re both experimental artists working in the scene, so to properly start his Berlin residence, we chat on the phone about music, comedy, and keeping it stupid.
This is Stall Talk with Solomon Frank.
Luke Nickel. Solly, you do so much! You’re a clarinetist and composer. You’re a drag artist. What do you plan to do in Berlin?
Solomon Frank. Experimental music, queer life, parties, and new adventures. I just finished my PhD, and now I’m trying to figure out what’s next. Australia feels like a very far-away place, and Berlin is kind of mythic to us. I want to explore the myth.
LN. I remember when we went clubbing last year, you told me your grandmother is from Berlin.
Solomon Frank. Yes, she was born here. She lived on the Kurfürstendamm. Her family fled the Nazis in 1936. My time here really feels like a big fuck you to that history, a big middle finger.
“Here I am, a faggot experimental artist, here to have a really hedonistic, queer, joyful, strange, free time in Berlin.”
LN. That’s amazing. We are both doctors in the field of music. A lot of people are surprised you can even get a PhD in music. What do you tell people at a party when they ask about it?
Solomon Frank. I try to remain as vague as possible.
LN. [laughs] Me too!
Solomon Frank. If pressed, I say my PhD is about the entanglement of music, dogs, and media.
“A core thread in my work is taking silly things seriously.”
Like, on America’s Got Talent, there’s a piano-playing dog. What we’re seeing there is actually incredibly avant-garde and kind of profound. It’s a beautiful, ridiculous collaboration between a human and a dog that is the product of tens of thousands of years of co-evolution. It’s fascinating! What was your PhD about?
LN. Oh god. I came up with a crazy idea of how to create music using a process like the telephone game. Like, one person tells another person something, then it’s transformed by mishearing and misremembering as it’s told to more people, etc.
Solomon Frank. That sounds kind of silly too.
LN. I don’t think I felt that way when I was doing it, but now I think you’re right. Before dogs came into the picture, how did you start off playing music?
Solomon Frank. When I was 8, my dad picked up the clarinet and learned it for a year. When he stopped, he told my brother and me that one of us had to learn it. Being a little people-pleasing sycophant, I did it, though I didn’t like it at first. Later on, I got obsessed with the idea of being a film composer, but I eventually realized I don’t want to be an artist who’s told what to do.
LN. I find the idea of doing composition for film a bit unsettling. Like, a director gets attached to a bunch of music while editing, then sends it to me and tells me to make another version of it. It’s tricky.
Solomon Frank. Yeah, I want to build a project that is more my own thing.
LN. Speaking of projects, you’re now working on composing an opera that involves performing dogs. Tell me more!
Solomon Frank. It’s called The Castration of Uranus. The venue in Sydney where it’ll premiere is embargoed, but it’s a big one. To get into it, I should tell you, I love bushwalking, which really just means hiking. I’m really into native plants, and I’ve become obsessed with orchids.
“The word orchid means testicle, and I only have one testicle. So my nature and hiking obsession, my search for native orchids, is a search for a missing part of myself, a missing testicle.”
Musically, I’m finishing an unfinished Baroque opera from 1730 called The Castration of Uranus, which tells the story of Uranus and the story in which his testicles are cut off by his son Cronus and thrown into the ocean. And from that foam that forms from the testicles in the ocean, Aphrodite is born. By the way, I have to tell you this: I just walked past a beautiful Eurasian red squirrel in Volkspark Friedrichshain. Oh my gosh, it’s eating a funny little chestnut thing. It’s so cute! I’m sorry. Back to the questions.
LN. No problem! Tell me about the dog in the opera.
Solomon Frank. I wanted a performer that is uncontrollable. A being that doesn’t adhere to the sanctity and reverence of opera.
LN. Any favorite dog performances you can link me to?
Solomon Frank. Pam and Casper singing “All By Myself” on America’s Got Talent.
LN. We performed together last summer in Berlin at the iconic Heizhaus at Ufer Studios. When I filled in for Niki Johnson in your co-developed work Elastiscene, I was struck by how funny it was. We made so many funny noises with balloons! Where did you develop such a good sense of physical comedy?
Solomon Frank. Really early in my career, I wrote my first serious orchestra piece. It was meant to evoke ancestral traces of my grandparents, who experienced the Holocaust.
“At the premiere, part of the audience was a group of elderly people. There was a big buildup to a climax, then the music stopped abruptly. At that moment, one of the older people in the front row did a very delicate fart. I was sitting onstage and lost it. Couldn’t stop laughing.”
That was a cosmic sign from the universe that my music has to have a twinkle in its eye. It has to be funny, irreverent, and stupid.
LN. That’s amazing. And totally makes sense to me. You do work a lot with clarinets making fart-like noises, modifying them with tubes and balloons—
Solomon Frank.
“I’m sorry, I have to interrupt again, there’s a beautiful owl that just cried. Oh my god, it’s not an owl! It’s a bird of prey of some kind. A falcon maybe? Two of them!”
LN. Wow! You’re great at spotting birds.
Solomon Frank. I’m obsessed with iNaturalist, which helps.
LN. Your drag alter ego is Princess Diana Rhea. Who is she?
Solomon Frank. There’s a lot of lore. Her real name is Ruth Helfgott, the name of my grandmother. The only reason she performs is that she’s saving up for a Pandora bracelet at Bondi Junction Westfield. She’s 16 years old. She is an embodiment of a very shy, very Jewish, neurotic side of me. Her performances start in the realm of caricature but then move into surrealism.
LN. What’s her go-to club track?
Solomon Frank. “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler, but I edited the track so that the only lyric is ‘turn around’.
LN. How did you start doing drag?
Solomon Frank. I never wanted to dress up as a woman. I wanted to dress up as a girl.
“I felt eternally 16 from about the age of 16.”
She’s this embodiment of naive adolescence and an idea of beauty that is so misguided.
LN. What music are you listening to at the moment?
Solomon Frank. Honestly, Zara Larsson’s Midnight Sun album on repeat for six months. And Dvořák’s Symphonies 5-8. They’re so dramatic, campy, and ooky-spooky.
LN. Are you reading anything good?
Solomon Frank. Private Citizens by Tony Talaf-Bemuta. It’s a biting takedown of millennials.
LN. I read that last year, and it makes sense to me that you like it. You’re kind of shady in a low-key way. Actually, at WHOLE Festival last weekend, you mentioned in passing that you like to shade the clarinet. What’s your most insulting hot take?
Solomon Frank. The clarinet is a literal piece of plastic garbage. And classical clarinet music is also garbage!
LN. [laughs] I’m a flute player, and even though it’s metal, I feel the same way. Playing flute was the first time I got called a faggot. Now I think faggot is a useful part of my identity. Sometimes I struggle with thinking about gay and queer as both sexuality and political orientation. How do you identify?
Solomon Frank.
“I’m gay but in the process of becoming a little bisexual. Queer also works. In terms of gender, I’m definitely he/him. But I’m a boy, not a man.”
LN. How do you make it work living as an artist? It’s a tough economy.
Solomon Frank. I have a few side gigs, some of which I won’t discuss here. When people ask, I say that I have a patchwork income. My favorite is doing conservation work at New South Wales National Parks, stuff like putting out cameras to look for brush-tailed rock wallabies in Yango. What about you?
LN. Yeah, it’s all about having stable side gigs that don’t take too much energy, like writing these articles!
Solomon Frank. Hopefully you’re going to spend some energy on it! [laughs]
LN. For sure, don’t worry. Got a favorite place in Berlin so far?
Solomon Frank. I love Romeo und Romeo, this super cute gay cafe in Schöneberg.
“There’s a line of older guys who sit out front, smoking, and as you walk past, they just fuck you with their eyes. You go in and eat a mediocre piece of cake, but it’s delicious. Have a coffee, chat with some older German faggots. It’s the dream.”
LN. I love it there. There’s something about it, like being on holiday, even though I live in this city. Do you have any questions for me about Berlin, life, or things to do here?
Solomon Frank. How does recycling here work?
LN. Honestly, I have no idea. Anything else you’d like to add?
Solomon Frank. Nothing really, except that it’s a huge privilege for me to be in Berlin considering this moment in history where Israelis and Jewish people like me are committing some of the worst atrocities on this planet.
“I have to say it: Free Palestine! Any amplification of Free Palestine and anti-Zionist messaging is important.”
LN. Some people reading this might look you up and be super curious about your work. So what’s next?
Solomon Frank. Just the opera! I’m thinking of it as a sort of Gesamtkunstwerk, a synthesis of different strands of my practice. It entangles orchids and Australian ecology, with an exploration of the clarinet, and the clarinet’s identity as it entangles with who I am. But it’s also about chamber music, and specifically Baroque music. I have a lot of work to do!
LN. Last, most important question: Have you finalized your CSD weekend plans?
Solomon Frank. I’m here with some lesbian friends from Sydney who will guide my Pride.
“I was just at WHOLE Festival, and I have to say, the first couple of nights were kind of evil, in a debaucherous, naughty way.”
Coming from Australia, these kinds of experiences don’t happen so often, so my friend and I didn’t exert much self-control. At one point, we ran into a friend of ours from Melbourne, and we asked him how his WHOLE Festival was going. He said it was “heart-centered.” My friend and I looked at each other and thought to ourselves, we are not very heart-centered right now.
Follow Solomon Frank on Instagram at @sollyfrank and at solomonfrank.com.
Dr Luke Nickel is an award-winning Canadian multidisciplinary artist, writer, and composer living in Berlin. His interests include experimental music, speculative fiction, roller coasters, and contemporary performance. He’s eager to write about people and practices on the margins of the mainstream. Follow him on Instagram and at lukenickel.com.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. All images courtesy of the artist and used with permission.
Edits: Alexander Cheves
