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Matthew Shlomowitz (born 7 February 1975) is a composer of contemporary classical music and Associate Professor in Composition at the University of Southampton.
He was raised in Adelaide, Australia, and studied with Božidar Kos at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and with Brian Ferneyhough at Stanford University. He also studied privately with Michael Finnissy in the United Kingdom.
Since 2002 he has lived in London[1] where he lectured at the Royal College of Music and for the Syracuse University London Program. He taught composition at Durham University during the 2008/09 academic year and was a Programme Collaborator for the Borealis Festival in Norway.
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He is co-director of Plus minus ensemble and the performance series Rational Rec and is a member of InterInterInter, a group that creates events mixing performance and audience activity. He was also a co-founder of Ensemble Offspring.[2] He has been represented by the New Voices scheme at the British Music Information Centre and by the Australian Music Centre.
The bulk of his compositions are for chamber ensembles and often involve unusual instrumental combinations. Free Square Jazz, for instance, is for recorder, electric guitar, double bass and drum kit and Line and Length[3] is scored for soprano saxophone, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet & bassoon.
A number of his works are interdisciplinary such as the music-video pieces Train Travel[4] and Six Aspects of the Body in Image and Sound (co-created with Rees Archibald) and an ongoing series of works for visual performer and musician called Letter Pieces. Certain works fall more comfortably into the genre of "performance pieces" such as Northern Cities and When is a Door Not a Door? Other works blur the boundaries between concert music and performance piece such as Five Monuments of Our Time, an orchestral work that requires the conductor to perform a series of choreographed gestures often ludicrously unrelated to the music being played. Such apparent absurdity and humor is not unintended; it has been said that,[5]
... he seems to have a special feeling for those inadvertently comical situations in which we all sometimes find ourselves: a peculiar kind of miscommunication where we don’t so much get our wires crossed ... as get entangled in them
— musicuratum.com
Some of his music shows the structural constraints analogous to the rules of Oulipo;[5] familiar sounds from popular and everyday culture are also a regular feature of his music palette.[6]
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He has described his own music as being "something like the bastard love child of Brian Ferneyhough and Philip Glass."[7]
Selected musical works, including commissions and major works, are:[8]
| Category | Title | Year | Orchestration | Commissioned by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vocal music | Instrumental Music | 2011 | 8 voices | EXAUDI |
| Performance pieces | Letter Pieces | 2007+ | Open-score pieces for performer and musician | - |
| Orchestra | Music and Actions for strings, keyboard and conductor | 2015 | Conductor, keyboard and string orchestra | Nederlands Strijkers Gilde |
| " | Listening Styles | 2013 | orchestra with drum kit | The Adelaide Festival |
| 7+ players | Popular Contexts, Volume 3: The Music of Theatre Making | 2011 | Conductor, flute, oboe, bass clarinet, drum-kit (with glockenspiel), guitar, mandolin, violin, viola, cello, double bass and sampler keyboard | Nieuw Ensemble |
| " | Avant Muzak | 2010 | Flute, soprano saxophone, drum kit, electric guitar, harp, violin, cello and sampler | Centre Henri Pousseur for Ensemble bESIdES |
| " | Joy Time Ride for Ives | 2009 | Flute, oboe, bass clarinet, bassoon, drum-kit, electric organ, 2 violins, cello and double bass | Ives Ensemble |
| 2–6 players | Popular Contexts, Volume 7: Public domain music | 2014 | Clarinet, electric guitar, synthesizer and sampler, drum-kit and cello | asamisimasa |
| " | The Major Sevenths Medley | 2014 | 4 electric guitars | TRANSIT Festival for Zwerm |
| " | Popular Contexts, Volume 6 | 2013 | Trio for vibraphone, drum-kit and sampler keyboard | MaerzMusik, Speak Percussion with support from Julian Burnside |
| " | Logic Rock | 2013 | Guitar and drum kit | bESIdES |
| " | Songs about words and about the pleasure of misery | 2012 | Soprano and piano | The Britten-Pears Foundation |
| " | Popular Contexts, Volume 4: Rhythm Section | 2012 | midi guitar and 3 drum kits | Drumming Grupo da percussao |
| " | Theme Street Parade | 2009 | String quartet | BBC for Quatuor Diotima |
| " | Earth Breeze Smoke | 2008 | 2 recorders | The Bruges Concertgebouw |
| " | Line and Length | 2007 | Soprano saxophone, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet & bassoon | The 2007 Spitalfields Festival for Calefax |
| " | Slow Flipping Harmony | 2006 | Four melodic instruments and one auxiliary player | The Australia Council for the Arts for Ensemble Offspring |
| " | Free Square Jazz | 2005 | Soprano/tenor recorder, electric guitar, double bass and drum kit | The Orpheus Institute for Champ D'Action |
| Solos | Popular Contexts, Volume 2 | 2010 | For piano, sampler, voice and physical actions (one person) | Centre Henri Pousseur for Stephane Ginsburgh |
| " | Serious and Sincere Sentiments About Something (or "Thought Rhythms") | 1999 | Guitar | The Australia Council for the Arts |
| Works with video | A Documentary Saga of the OULIPO | 2006–7 | Video work with Rees Archibald & Andrew Infanti | - |
| " | Six Aspects of the Body in Image and Sound | 2004 | Clarinet, piano, violin, viola, cello and video (by Rees Archibald) | The Bath International Festival of Music for The Tate Ensemble |
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- Electric Dreams (2017)[9]
- 7th Johann-Joseph-Fux Competition for Opera Composition[10]
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