Featured Artists
Colin Matthews
Guest Composer
Colin Matthews was born in London in 1946. He studied with Arnold Whittall and Nicholas Maw. In the 1970s he was assistant to Benjamin Britten and worked for many years with Imogen Holst. His collaboration with Deryck Cooke on the performing version of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony lasted from 1963 until its publication in 1975.
Over five decades, his music has ranged from solo piano music through six string quartets and many ensemble and orchestral works. From 1992-1999, he was Associate Composer with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), writing amongst other works a Cello Concerto for Rostropovich. In 1997, his choral/orchestral Renewal, commissioned for the 50th anniversary of BBC Radio 3, was given a Royal Philharmonic Society Award. Orchestral works since 2000 include Reflected Images for the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Berceuse for Dresden for the New York Philharmonic, Turning Point for the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Traces Remain for the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Matthews was Composer-in-Association with The Hallé – for whom he completed his orchestrations of Debussy’s 24 Preludes in 2007 – from 2001-2010. He is now the orchestra’s Composer Emeritus.
Matthews’ Horn Concerto for Richard Watkins and the Philharmonia was first performed in 2001, the Violin Concerto for Leila Josefowicz and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra premiered in 2009. In 2011, he completed works for the London Sinfonietta, City of London Sinfonia, and Leipzig Gewandhaus. He wrote his 4th String Quartet for the Elias Quartet in 2012, and his 5th for the Tanglewood Music Center in 2015. Spiralling was written for Spira Mirabilis in 2014; The Pied Piper, a collaboration with Michael Morpurgo, was performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2015. Three recent major vocal works are Spleen: A Land of Rain for the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (2017), As time returns for the London Sinfonietta (2018), and Seascapes for the Nash Ensemble (2020). A large-scale orchestral work, Mosaics, was composed in 2020 and performed by the LSO in May 2023. He is currently working with William Boyd on an opera, A Visit to Friends, to be performed at the 2025 Aldeburgh Festival.
Matthews is founder and executive producer of NMC Recordings, executive administrator of the Holst Foundation, and music advisor and joint president of Britten-Pears Arts. With Oliver Knussen, he founded the Aldeburgh Composition Course in 1992, and he has been composition director of the LSO’s Panufnik Scheme since 2005. He holds honorary posts with the Universities of Nottingham and Manchester and is Prince Consort Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music.
Colin Matthews’ music is published by Faber Music.
Akropolis Reed Quintet
Guest Ensemble
Celebrating their 16th season as “a sonically daring ensemble who specializes in performing new works with charisma and integrity” (BBC Music Magazine), the Akropolis Reed Quintet comprises five reed players and entrepreneurs unbounded by limits or categorization. Described by The Wire as a “collective voice driven by real excitement and a sense of adventure,” Akropolis has graced the Classical Billboard Charts with each of their last three albums, including #2 in April 2024. Winner of seven national chamber music prizes including the 2014 Fischoff Gold Medal, Akropolis is known for performing “works that brilliantly exploit their unique instrumentation” (Gramophone). Composed of the same five members that brought about its founding in 2009, Akropolis delivers 120 concerts and educational events worldwide each year and has premiered and commissioned more than 150 works by living artists and composers.
Experimenters and creators at their core, the five artists of Akropolis are routinely lauded for their boldness and innovative spirit. As The Wire commented: “There’s nothing tentative in their approach, and that extends to their programming of multifariously challenging and imaginative new works.” Akropolis has collaborated with poets, a metal fabricator, dancers, small business owners, string quartets, pop vocalists, and others from all walks of life. The ensemble’s 6th album, Are We Dreaming the Same Dream?, with two-time GRAMMY-nominated composer/pianist Pascal Le Boeuf and drummer Christian Euman, was released in April 2024 on Bright Shiny Things.
The quintet is also known for powerful collaborations with youth and others within its Detroit community. Certified as a 510(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Akropolis is the recipient of the 2015 Fischoff Educator Award, as well as seven consecutive grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. The ensemble runs a Detroit-based summer festival called Together We Sound and holds annual, school year-long music composition residencies at Cass Tech, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Detroit School of Arts high schools. Akropolis also produces the Akropolis Chamber Music Institute, a 10-day artist training and mentorship program in Petoskey, Michigan.
Described as “pure gold” by the San Francisco Chronicle, Akropolis Reed Quintet performs worldwide and is represented exclusively by Ariel Artists.
Unheard-of Ensemble
Guest Ensemble
Unheard-of Ensemble is a Brooklyn-based clarinet, violin, cello, and piano quartet dedicated to connecting new music to communities in New York and across the United States through the development and performance of adventurous programs using technology and interactive multimedia. Unheard-of tours regularly, commissions large-scale multimedia projects, and runs its own summer workshop for emerging composers, the Collaborative Composition Initiative (CCI). Unheard-of’s Dialogues Series brings together composers, artists, and audiences to explore the creative process behind music creation. Their on the water Cultural Ecologies Series with the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club, invites audiences to the Gowanus for four multimedia concerts each year utilizing Brooklyn’s own Gowanus Canal as their stage.
The 2024-2025 season features the premiere of a new 40-minute multimedia commission Ginger Flavored Bubblegum by composer Vicki Leona Nguyen and video artist Phong Tran on Unheard-of’s Dialogues Series, a mini-portrait concert of Reiko Füting, partnership with San Antonio-based SOLI Chamber Ensemble, and a collaboration with the Association for the Promotion of New Music. The ensemble has residencies and guest artist visits on tour at University of Pittsburgh, Miami University (OH), Denison University, and University of Miami (FL). In past seasons, the ensemble has had residencies and performances at Oberlin, Northwestern, University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music, Manhattan School of Music, as well as New York venues National Sawdust, Roulette, Symphony Space, Carnegie, and Merkin Hall.