Matthew Aucoin

Matthew Aucoin is an American composer, conductor, and writer, and a 2018 MacArthur Fellow. He is a co-founder of the pathbreaking American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*).

Aucoin’s orchestral and chamber music has been performed, commissioned, and recorded by such leading artists and ensembles as Yo-Yo Ma, the Chicago Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Roomful of Teeth, and the Brentano Quartet. In the summer of 2023, the MET Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, featured Aucoin’s orchestral work Heath on its first European tour in several decades.

His newest music-theater work, Music for New Bodies, is a “vocal symphony” created in collaboration with the director Peter Sellars, based on poetry by Jorie Graham. In 2025, Aucoin conducted Sellars’s production of Music for New Bodiesat Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall, the Tanglewood Music Festival, and Seattle’s Meany Center. The work was originally commissioned by the Los Angeles Opera, AMOC*, the Aspen Music Festival and School, DACAMERA of Houston, and the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University.

Aucoin is also well-known for his operas, which include Eurydice, Crossing, and Second Nature. These works have been produced at the Metropolitan Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Boston Lyric Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Canadian Opera Company, among others. The Metropolitan Opera’s recording of Eurydice was nominated for a Grammy in 2023. Aucoin served as the Los Angeles Opera’s Artist in Residence from 2016 to 2020.

In the 2025-26 season, the Chicago Symphony orchestra played the world premiere of Aucoin's Song of the Reappeared, which featured the soprano Julia Bullock and the conductor Petr Popelka; the Aspen Music Festival presented the world premiere of Aucoin’s Two Thresholds (Symphony) conducted by Cristian Macelaru and featuring vocalists Christine Goerke and Chea Kang; and Aucoin played the world premiere of his song cycle The Inner Core with bass-baritone William Socolof at Lincoln Center. His future projects include an opera based on Dostoevsky’s novelDemons, commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera.

Aucoin’s recent conducting engagements include appearances at Tanglewood, Lincoln Center, the Los Angeles Opera, the Chicago Symphony, the Santa Fe Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, the San Diego Symphony, Salzburg’s Mozarteum Orchestra, the Ojai Music Festival, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Rome Opera Orchestra, and many other ensembles. Throughout the 2026-27 season, he serves as Featured Composer and Creative Partner with Dortmund Philharmonic in Dortmund, Germany.

Aucoin’s book about opera, The Impossible Art: Adventures in Opera, was published in 2021 by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. He is currently Visiting Professor of Composition and Conducting at Boston University; he is also regularly writes essays on music for leading publications such as The New York Review of Books and The Atlantic. His music is published by Wise Music Classical.