Professor Matthew King BA(Hons) LTCL
Described by Judith Weir, Master of the Queen’s Music, as “one of Britain's most adventurous composers, utterly skilled, imaginative and resourceful”, Matthew King is a Kent-based composer and pianist with an international reputation.
Graduating from University of York in 1989 Matthew was a founder member of the ensemble ‘Jane’s Minstrels’. The same year he was piano soloist in Messiaen’s Oiseaux Exotiques at the Huddersfield Festival. His chamber opera The Snow Queen was premiered with Jane Manning in the title role at the South Bank in 1994: his opera Jonah (1995) was premiered in Canterbury Cathedral, and his cantata Gethsemane was premiered by Florilegium at the Spitalfields Festival in 1998, and was described as “music of distinctive beauty with disarming theatre sense” (independent).
Matthew’s two string quartets have both been premiered by the Fitzwilliam quartet. His community opera, On London Fields, was performed at the Hackney Empire in 2004. Stephen Pettit (Evening Standard) wrote that “some of the clashing rhythms and textural layerings are mind-boggling” Robert Thicknesse in The Times described the project as “something extraordinary.” On London Fields received the Royal Philharmonic Society Education Award in 2005.
In 2005 Matthew’s collaboration with Nye Parry, on a work about Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was the subject of a BBC Radio 4 documentary ‘Setting Brunel to Music’. In 2006 Hear our Voice (a collaboration with Jonathan Dove) was premiered in London, Nuremburg and Prague and nominated for a British Composer Award in 2007.
In 2007 Matthew wrote a miniature and a symphony: his Sonatas (compressing Beethoven’s 32 sonatas into one minute of solo piano music) was recorded for the ‘One Minute Wonders’ CD by Clive Williamson. By contrast, King’s Wood Symphony, premiered in 2007 over a very large forest space, involves massed horns, percussion, 12 gramophones and electronics. Two reworkings of the material were premiered in the Wigmore Hall: the first for a nonet of horns, and the second for horn. violin and piano (performed by Richard Watkins, David Alberman and Huw Watkins).
In 2008 Matthew’s Robert Schumann in Three Movements was recorded by the ‘Avenue A’ ensemble for their ‘Rocking Horses’ CD (Weave Records). The same year Matthew’s opera Das Babylon Experiment was premiered in Nuremberg. In 2010 the LSO commissioned and premiered Matthew’s Totentango in the Barbican Hall. In 2011 the savant pianist Derek Paravicini premiered Matthew’s Blue, a piano concerto, with the Orchestra of St. John’s on the South Bank; and the Aurora Orchestra premiered Matthew’s tone poem, Velocity in 2012. Una Piccolo Sinfonia for 9 piccolos was premiered by Guildhall Flute Department in 2011 with the US premiere in Las Vegas in 2012.
Recent works include Fix This, a tirade against the memory of Jimmy Savile, premiered by David Horne and Vulgar Display at the RNCM in 2012. Schoenberg in Hollywood, composed for the Guildhall Vocal Department and the soprano Jane Manning, was premiered at Milton Court with the composer directing from the piano in 2015. The same year Matthew’s cantata, Il Pastorale, l’Urbano e il Suburbano, was premiered at Aldeburgh by the Brook Street Band, and the chamber opera The Pied Piper was premiered at Stour Music with Michael Chance in the title role. The Pied Piper will receive two new productions in 2018, in Salzburg and Nuremberg.
Matthew King continues to perform regularly as a pianist. He has also taught composition at the Yehudi Menuhin School and has presented several programmes for BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. He has taught composition at Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London since 1996.