Matthew King BA(Hons) LTCL

Matthew King

Matthew King (born 1967) graduated in Music (1st class hons.) University of York, 1989.   At University, he was a founder member of Jane’s Minstrels.  In 1989, he performed as Piano Soloist in Messiaen’s Oiseaux Exotiques at the Huddersfield Festival. His Nocturne for chamber orchestra was performed the same year. From 1990 – 1992 he worked at the Caldecott Community therapeutic school.  During this period, he won the London Brass Composers’ Award with his piece Recitative from the Book of Job and the Friends of the Earth Composition Prize for Dead Wood, a trio for Pan Pipes.

Matthew King has written extensively for extremely diverse and often unorthodox ensembles. In 1992 his Chamber Opera The Snow Queen was premiered with Jane Manning in the title role.  After it’s London premiere at the Q.E.H. in 1994, it was described as “clever, sharp and fresh, bursting with memorable melody…it signals the emergence of a composer who writes not only credibly and well but with immediate, engaging charm” (The Independent).  Matthew King’s festival opera Jonah (1995) was performed in Canterbury Cathedral, throughout the 1996 festival.  In 1998 his oratorio Gethsemane was premiered by Florilegium at the Spitalfields Festival (where Matthew King was a featured composer for that year). Gethsemane has been described as “music of distinctive beauty with disarming theatre sense” (Independent on Sunday), “Passion music in the great tradition” (Roderick Swanston - The Church Times), “exhilarating” (The Sunday Times) and “teeming with ideas…with a Reich-like jauntiness of rhythm and texture” (The Times).  In January 2000, the orchestral piece …And Dream of London… was commissioned for the London Millennial celebration in St. Pauls Cathedral. Quartet 2001, written for the Fitzwilliam String Quartet and premiered in Canterbury Cathedral Crypt in October 2002, is currently being toured in the U.K.  His second Quartet was premiered at the Swaledale Featival in June 2004. His new opera, On London Fields, written in association with The Academy of St. Martins in the Fields and Hackney Music Development Trust was premiered to considerable acclaim at the Hackney Empire in November 2004.  Stephen Pettit (Evening Standard) wrote that “King’s music is eminently approachable…some of the clashing rhythms and textural layerings are mind-boggling..a considerable achievement.” Robert Thicknesse in The Times described the project as “something extraordinary.” On London Fields received the Royal Philharmonic Society Education Award in 2005

Matthew King’s works have been broadcast on the BBC and internationally. His analysis of the relationship between music and politics, Democracy in Action was broadcast on Radio 3 in June 2003, and his collaborative work (with electroacoustic composer Nye Parry) on an innovative new Opera project about Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Martin Hoyle in the Financial times described the music as “immediately attractive, richer and more varied than the long littleness of Adams's Nixon in China”.

Matthew King is a composition professor at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and has taught composition at the Yehudi Menuhin School. With Nye Parry, he has been awarded a Guildhall School Research Grant for his collaborative work on Brunel (the results of which were published in July 2005). Matthew King’s ongoing work in association with the Wigmore Hall continued in 2006 with a major new work called Kings Wood Symphony. Matthew King also collaborated with Jonathan Dove on a new cantata about the Holocaust, performed in July 2006. Matthew King’s works are published by Cadenza Music.

Greg Allen Photography