Matthew King (composer, born 1967)
Matthew King (composer, born 1967)
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Matthew King (composer, born 1967)

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Matthew King (composer, born 1967)

Matthew King (born 1967) is a British composer, pianist, and educator. His works include opera, piano and chamber music, and choral and orchestral pieces. He has been 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 has a YouTube channel called 'The Music Professor'.

Several of King's pieces incorporate a community component, combining amateurs and young people with professionals.

King's first chamber opera, The Snow Queen, was composed for the British soprano Jane Manning and her virtuoso ensemble Jane's Minstrels. The Snow Queen was described by one reviewer as "music of distinctive beauty with disarming theater sense."

The opera Jonah, with a libretto by Michael Irwin (author), was commissioned by the Canterbury Festival and first produced in Canterbury Cathedral in 1996; the dramatic cantata Gethsemane was premiered by Florilegium at the Spitalfields Festival in 1998; the Brunel (opera project), featured on BBC Radio 4's Setting Brunel to Music in October 2003.

The community opera On London Fields (libretto by Alasdair Middleton), and winner of a Royal Philharmonic Society Award in 2005, was described by Stephen Pettitt in the Evening Standard as "unafraid of complexity, even when writing for very young performers. Some of the clashing rhythms and textural layerings are mind-boggling.".

The cantata Hear our Voice (co-written with the British composer Jonathan Dove) was premiered in London, Nuremberg and Prague in 2006.

The chamber opera Das Babylon Experiment (German libretto by Michael Kerstan) was produced in Nuremberg in 2008.

King's experimental cantata, Schoenberg in Hollywood (libretto by Alasdair Middleton), premiered in Guildhall School of Music and Drama's Milton Court concert hall in 2015. His comic faux-Baroque cantata Il Pastoral, urbanology e il Suburbano (libretto by Alasdair Middleton) was first performed at Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh in 2015. King's chamber opera The Pied Piper (libretto by Michael Irwin (author)) was first produced at Stour Music Festival in 2015, with the British countertenor Michael Chance in the title role. The Pied Piper was subsequently revived in a new revision with German translation (Was Bleibt) in productions in Salzburg and Nuremberg in 2018. Matthew King has also made chamber orchestra reorchestrations of several of Wagner's operas.

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