Matthew Ricketts, composer

Matthew Ricketts (b. 1986, British Columbia) is a Canadian
composer currently 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 2020 Gaudeamus Finalist and a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow. 
   


In 2018 Ricketts’ multilingual opera Chaakapesh: The Trickster’s
Quest (written in collaboration 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. 


Matthew is the recipient of fellowships from Civitella Ranieri
(2020/2021), The American Academy of Arts and Letters (2020),
MacDowell (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.


Matthew holds degrees in music composition and theory from McGill
University’s Schulich School of Music (B.Mus. 2009) and Columbia
University (DMA 2017). Matthew’s principal mentors include Brian
Cherney, John Rea, Chris Paul Harman, George Lewis and Fred
Lerdahl. He was a Core Lecturer at Columbia University from
2017-2020.

Musical excerpt:
Adrift (2020), concerto for clarinet and orchestra
Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg
Rupert Wachter, clarinet
Kent Nagano, conductor

More about Matthew Ricketts


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EPISODE CREDITS
Podcast artwork photograph 2019 Philippe Stirnweiss


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