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Matthew Ricketts


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Matthew Ricketts


Photo credit: Michael Kuhn

Photo credit: Michael Kuhn

Matthew Ricketts (b. 1986, British Columbia) is a Canadian composer based in New York City. His music moves from extremes of presence and absence, from clamor to quietude, at once reticent and flamboyant. Matthew’s music has been called “lyrical, contrapuntal, rhythmically complex and highly nuanced” (The American Academy of Arts and Letters) and is noted for his “effervescent and at times prickly sounds,” “hypnotically churning exploration of melody” (ICareIfYouListen) as well as its “tart harmonies and perky sputterings” (The New York Times). He is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow.

His works have been performed internationally by JACK Quartet, Mivos Quartet, Flux Quartet, the Fromm Players, Quatuor Bozzini, the Chiara String Quartet; vocalists Tony Arnold, Sharon Harms, Lauren Worsham, Karim Sulayman and Ekmeles; Collage New Music, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, Ensemble Paramirabo, Argento and Talea Ensemble; soloists Jean-Willy Kunz, Nathaniel LaNasa, Sara Laimon and Julia Den Boer; and orchestras including the Aspen Philharmonic (Robert Spano, cond.), Esprit Orchestra (Alex Pauk, cond.), the Minnesota Orchestra (Osmo Vänskä, cond.), the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (Kent Nagano, cond.), the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg. Matthew was Composer-Collaborator-In-Residence at East Carolina University from 2016-2018.

In 2018 Ricketts’ multilingual opera Chaakapesh: The Trickster’s Quest (written with renowned Cree playwright Tomson Highway) opened the Montreal Symphony’s 84th season to great critical acclaim and went on to tour Indigenous communities throughout Québec. Recent and upcoming performances include the US premiere of Unruly Sun, written with Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell for Grammy Award-winning Karim Sulayman (Bay Chamber Concerts, Maine), an operatic adaptation of The Cremation of Sam McGee with Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist/lyricist Royce Vavrek (Vancouver Opera) and a new nativity oratorio for contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (in collaboration with celebrated Québecois author Alain Farah). Other recent premieres include works for Dominik Belavy (Brooklyn Art Song Society), Daniel McGrew (The Morgan Library) and Brett Polegato (Canadian Art Song Project through Calgary Opera, October 2024).

Matthew is the recipient of fellowships from Bogliasco Foundation (2023), Millay Arts (2022), Civitella Ranieri (2021), The American Academy of Arts and Letters (2020), MacDowell (2022; 2019), the Tanglewood Music Center (2018 Elliott Carter Memorial Fellowship) and the Aspen Music Festival (2017), in addition to the 2016 Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Prize, the 2016 Jacob Druckman Prize (Aspen Music Festival), the 2016 Mivos/Kanter Prize, the 2015 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award, a 2013 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and eight prizes in the SOCAN Foundation’s Awards for Young Composers.

Active as a writer as well as a composer, Matthew has published articles, reviews, poetry and libretti, and has worked closely with authors and poets Lauren J. Rogener, Paul Legault, Christian Schlegel, Mark Campbell, Mark Wunderlich, Royce Vavrek, Klara du Plessis and Tomson Highway on multiple collaborative projects. Other collaborative endeavors include scoring the feature-length film Glob Lessons (Tribeca Film Festival premiere, 2021) and recent projects with dancer-choreographers Brendan Drake and Jennifer Nichols.

Matthew’s principal mentors include Brian Cherney, John Rea and Chris Paul Harman at McGill University, and George Lewis and Fred Lerdahl at Columbia University, where he also served as a Core Lecturer from 2017-2020. Also active as a performing musician, Matthew sings with Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, works as a vocal accompanist and occasionally performs cabaret at venues around New York City.

©Marco Giugliarelli for the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, 2021

©Brent Calis for l’Orchestre classique de Montréal, 2022

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