Michael Matthews is a Canadian composer who resides in Victoria, Canada. His work has been commissioned and performed by ensembles in Canada, Mexico, the United States, Europe and Asia. Matthews is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Canadian Music Centre, the Canadian League of Composers, and the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. In addition to his work as a composer, Matthews is also active as a photographer, and his images have appeared in exhibitions in Germany and the US. In October 2021 Canadian publisher At Bay Press released Gibbous Moon, a book of photography and poetry created in collaboration with poet Dennis Cooley.
Drawing inspiration from the realms of nature and literature, Michael Matthews composes music that invites listeners to transcend the ordinary, immersing them in paradoxical imagery and an intricate, ever-shifting tapestry. His works have been performed internationally, earning him prestigious commissions and accolades, including a Rockefeller Foundation residency at the Bellagio Center in Italy and a scholarship to the Composition and Computer Music Seminar at the Bartók Festival in Szombathely, Hungary. A versatile artist, Matthews is also a conductor, a founding member of the chamber ensemble Thira and a founder and artistic co-director of the GroundSwell new music series. From 2002 to 2004, he served as Composer-in-Residence with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra.
Early Life
Michael Matthews was born in Gander, Newfoundland, in 1950. At the time, his father, John Matthews, was working as a ground operations manager for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. When Matthews was still an infant, the family relocated to Miami, Florida, where his father began working for Pan American Airways. During his childhood and adolescence, Matthews lived in a number of cities, including Miami, Kingston (Jamaica), Managua (Nicaragua), Port of Spain and Piarco (Trinidad), and Karachi (Pakistan). He received his high-school diploma from the Karachi American School (KAS).
University Study and Teaching
After spending a year at Purdue University studying aeronautical engineering, Matthews shifted his focus to music and moved to Los Angeles. He studied composition under Aurelio de la Vega at California State University, Northridge, Ben Glovinsky at California State University, Sacramento, and later, under the mentorship of renowned composer Larry Austin, at the College of Music at North Texas (formerly North Texas State University), where he earned his Ph.D. Following his graduation, Matthews accepted a nine-month teaching position at the University of Manitoba, which was followed by a two-year teaching stint at Mokwon University in Taejon, Korea. He then returned to Canada to assume a tenure-track position as head of the Composition Department at the University of Manitoba’s School of Music, now the Desautels Faculty of Music.
Winnipeg
During his years in Winnipeg, Michael Matthews was deeply engaged in the city’s musical and artistic community, serving as a composer, professor, conductor, and concert presenter. He co-founded the contemporary music ensemble Thira and the GroundSwell new music series, both of which became vital platforms for innovative musical expression.
Matthews contributed to the arts community as an assessor for the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council, and the Winnipeg Arts Council. Additionally, he served on the Winnipeg Arts Advisory Board, playing a key role in shaping the city’s cultural landscape.
Throughout this period, Matthews became an active member of several prominent organizations, including the Manitoba Composers’ Association, the Canadian Music Centre, the Canadian Electroacoustic Community, the Canadian League of Composers, the Winnipeg Musicians’ Association, the International Computer Music Association, the Electronic Music Foundation, and the Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers of Canada (SOCAN).
Matthews has been awarded a Major Arts Grant in Music from the Manitoba Arts Council, a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Study and Conference Center, a Klinker Foundation Grant to participate in the Visiones Sonoras Festival in Morelia, Mexico, and several residencies at the Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras in Mexico. He was the first Canadian to receive the prestigious International Computer Music Award from the International Computer Music Association. In addition he has received numerous commissioning grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Manitoba Arts Council.
Performances
Michael Matthews has a distinguished history of performances. His latest work, Two Movements for String Sextet, recently received its world premiere in Winnipeg on the GroundSwell new music series. In November 2021 his new work it is raining gently with light, was performed in Winnipeg on the GroundSwell new music series. Madeline Hildebrand, Kerry DuWors and Cathy Wood performed. In October 2020 his work till our bodies into the night slip premiered in San Antonio, performed by the SOLI Chamber Ensemble. His Septet was first performed in February 2017 in both Calgary and Winnipeg by ensemble mosaik. . Other recent premieres include Sólo queda el desierto (Montreal Chamber Orchestra) and String Quartet No. 4 (Penderecki Quartet).
Commissions and Awards
Matthews has been the recipient of numerous commissions and awards; in 2016 he was elected to the Royal Society of Canada. He held a Rockefeller Foundation residency at the Bellagio Center in Italy. and in addition has been a participant in the Composition and Computer Music Seminar of the Bartók Festival in Szombathely, Hungary. His orchestral work Two Interludes was awarded a prize in the du Maurier Arts Ltd. New Music Festival Canadian Composers Competition. Matthews was the first Canadian to receive a prestigious commission from the International Computer Music Association.
He has also received Canada Council and Manitoba Arts Council grants, the Winnipeg Rh Institute award for interdisciplinary research, a residency at the EMS computer music studios in Stockholm, Sweden, and a prize in the Premio Musicale Cittá di Trieste, Italy for his orchestral piece The Wind Was There. He has worked at the Banff Centre, at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University and, more recently, at the Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras, in Morelia, Mexico, where he composed a piece for piano and tape commissioned for pianist Duane Cochran.
Recent Activities
In 2012 Michael Matthews retired from twenty-seven years of full-time teaching at the Marcel A. Desautels Faculty of Music at the University of Manitoba and is now Professor Emeritus there. In 2017 he was elected as a Fellow to the Royal Society of Canada. He recently finished writing a large song cycle for Laura Loewen and Dawn Bruch, based on texts by Canadian poet Dennis Cooley’s book Bloody Jack.
Recent performances have included:
- Two Movements for String Sextet (Winnipeg – Agassiz Chamber Music Festival)
- perishable light (Winnipeg – Park Sounds Duo)
- Sky Rings (New York City Electronic Music Festival)
- Sólo queda el desierto (Montréal – Montréal Chamber Orchestra)
- String Quartet No. 4 (Mexico City – Arcano Quartet)
- Six Poems of Novica Tadić (Mexico City – Foro Internacional de Música Neuva)
- The Language of Water (Winnipeg – The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra)
- String Quartet No. 3 (Winnipeg – the Molinari Quartet)
- Away, Tear Away (Mexico City – Foro Internacional de Música Neuva)
- String Quartet No. 2 (Belgrade – 14th International Review of Composers)
- Piano Quartet (Winnipeg – GroundSwell)
- Away, tear away (Mexico City – Mexico City Woodwind Quintet)
Recent world premiers:
- Two Movements for String Sextet (Winnipeg – GroundSwell)
- Bloody Jack (Winnipeg – GroundSwell)
- it is raining gently with light (Winnipeg – GroundSwell)
- till our bodies into the night slip (San Antonio – SOLI Chamber Ensemble)
- A Star of Solitude (Winnipeg – GroundSwell)
- Septet (Calgary and Winnipeg – ensemble mosaik)
- Sólo queda el desierto (Montréal – Montréal Chamber Orchestra)
- Out in the Dark/Silva Myrtea (Winnipeg – Phoenix Collective)
- Into Its Own Shadow (Morelia – Ensamble 3)
- Altas Piedras (Morelia – Wendy Holdaway, Bassoon)
- and the sky caught (Winnipeg – Trio ’86)
- Flute Concerto (Mexico City – National Symphony Orchestra)
- The bench of shadow (Winnipeg – The Quasar Quartet)
- Night Music (Winnipeg – John Racaru and Carol Pollard)
- Las Blancas Sombras (Winnipeg – Charlene Pauls and Ian Hodges, GroundSwell)
- The Language of Water (Winnipeg – Manitoba Chamber Orchestra)
- The Skin of Night (Ljubljana – World Saxophone Congress)
- Violin/Viola Duos (Winnipeg – Oleg and Mikhail Pokhanovski)
- Preludes (Winnipeg – Peter Vinograde)
Recordings
Works available on CD include: Bloody Jack, recorded by Dawn Bruch-Wiens and Laura Loewen; String Quartets Nos. 2 and 3, Miniatures (recorded by the Clearwater Quartet); Preludes and Bagatelles (recorded by Daan Vandewalle); Symphony No. 1 and Out of the Earth (recorded by Virko Baley and the Kiev Camerata for TNC Records); In Emptiness, Over Emptiness (recorded by Therese Costes for the CDCM series on Centaur Records); Scattered Mirrors (recorded by Shirley Sawatzky on Adventures of Piano Woman); Of Time and Sky (recorded by Peter Vinograde on Two Canadian Masterworks for Piano); Fantasy (recorded by Victor Schultz on Jeté); Songs of the Masked Dancers (recorded by Thira on Passage Through Time); The First Sea (recorded by Lori Freedman for the CDCM series on Centaur Records); and Between the Wings of the Earth (recorded by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra for BIS Records).
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