Matthew Aucoin
b. 1990
American
Summary
2018 MacArthur Fellow Matthew Aucoin
Recent works include String Quartet (commissioned by Union College Concert Series, Carnegie Hall, La Jolla Music Society and Da Camera of Houston) and Soft Power (commissioned by Union College Concert Series) for the Brentano Quartet, Merrill Songs, commissioned by Carnegie Hall and Wigmore Hall and premiered by tenor Paul Appleby and the composer in March 2016; Dual for cello and bass, commissioned by Symphony Center Presents and premiered by Yo-Yo Ma and Alexander Hanna, principal bass of the Chicago Symphony, in May 2015; and The Orphic Moment, featuring countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo and commissioned by the Peabody Essex Museum where Aucoin is composer-in-residence, which premiered in June 2014.
Critical Acclaim
"Extravagantly gifted...diverse elements merge into a personal voice, deployed with prodigious technical skills."Biography
Matthew Aucoin is an American composer, conductor, writer, and a 2018 MacArthur Fellow. He is a co-founder of the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), and was the Los Angeles Opera’s Artist in Residence from 2016 to 2020.
Eurydice, Aucoin’s most recent opera, had its premiere at the Los Angeles Opera in 2020 and went on to have a successful production at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in the fall of 2021. His previous operas, Crossing and Second Nature, have been produced at leading theaters across North America, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Canadian Opera Company, and the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.).
Aucoin’s orchestral and chamber music has been commissioned and performed by such artists as Yo-Yo Ma, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, pianist Kirill Gerstein, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Brentano Quartet. He has also received commissions from leading institutions including Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, The Gilmore Piano Festival, and the Ojai Music Festival.
As a conductor, Aucoin has appeared with the Los Angeles Opera, the Chicago Symphony, the Santa Fe Opera, the San Diego Symphony, Salzburg’s Mozarteum Orchestra, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Rome Opera Orchestra, and many other ensembles, in repertoire ranging from his own music to the operas of Verdi, Mozart, and John Adams.
Aucoin is the author of The Impossible Art: Adventures in Opera, a book of personal reflections on opera as an art form (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021). He is a regular contributor to leading publications such as The New York Review of Books and The Atlantic.
Aucoin is a 2012 graduate of Harvard College (summa cum laude), where he studied with the poet Jorie Graham, and a 2014 recipient of a Graduate Diploma in composition from The Juilliard School, where he studied with the composer Robert Beaser. Between 2012 and 2014, he served both as an Assistant Conductor at the Metropolitan Opera and as the Solti Conducting Apprentice at the Chicago Symphony, where he studied with Riccardo Muti.
--August 2022
News
Performances
31st January 2025
- PERFORMERS
- Opera Grand Rapids
- CONDUCTOR
- Tyson Deaton
- LOCATION
- The Betty Van Andel Opera Center, Grand Rapids, MI, United States of America
Features
- New Opera Highlights from Wise Music Classical
- Wise Music Classical invites you to explore new highlights from our opera catalogue. In these recent and upcoming premieres, new productions, and premiere recordings, our composers and their creative collaborators explore subjects ranging from the historical (Hadrian, X: The Life and Times of Malcom X, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) to the futuristic (Oryx and Crake), the fantastic (El Ultimo Sueño de Frida y Diego, Florencia en el Amazonas, Die Kinder des Sultans) to the thoroughly contemporary (Innocence, The Shell Trial). Threaded throughout these works are perennial themes of loss, longing, magic, art-making, and community.
- 2024 Opera Highlights
- Ahead of Opera America’s 2024 Opera Conference and the World Opera Forum, Wise Music Classical invites you to explore new highlights from our opera catalogue. Across major premieres, new productions, and first recordings, our composers and their collaborators explore both timely issues and the timeless themes of love, desire, and belonging.
- Recent Orchestral Highlights
- Discover our selection of new and recent orchestral work now available from the Wise Music Group.
- American Literature on the Opera Stage
- Discover some fantastic operas from our catalogue based on classic American literature.
- Opera en Plein Air
- As the winter weather gives way to warmer temperatures, Wise Music Classical is pleased to share a selection of ten 20th and 21st-century operas well-suited for outdoor performance.