Matthew Ricketts is a Canadian composer. A graduate of McGill University’s Schulich School of Music, Matthew has studied under renowned composers Brian Cherney, John Rea and Chris Paul Harman. His music has been performed across Canada and in the United States of America, at festivals and concerts in Montréal, Toronto, Nebraska, Whately, Winnipeg, New York, Texas and Boston, where his Double Concerto shared for first prize at the ALEA III International Composition Competition (2007). Matthew is a the recipient of 3 prizes in the SOCAN Foundation’s Awards for Young Composers and a 2013 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award.
Matthew’s music has been performed by McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble, Quartet 441, The Chiara String Quartet, soprano Margot Rood, Trio 86, Quatuor Bozzini, Yarn/Wire, the Esprit Orchestra, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM), Wet Ink, Pazzia Collective and many talented performers of his own generation.
Matthew currently resides in New York City and is studying composition at Columbia University with George Lewis and Fred Lerdahl. Recent and upcoming engagements include the Columbia Composers series, being featured at Cluster New Music Festival as both a composer and librettist (Winnipeg, 2012), attending the Quatuor Bozzini’s Composer’s Kitchen (Montréal, 2011), the Esprit Orchestra’s New Wave Young Composers Festival (Toronto, 2011), the Boston New Music Initiative concert series, Domaine Forget New Music Session (2011; 2012, invited return) and the American School at Fontainebleau, France (2013).
In addition to composing, Matthew maintains an avid interest in poetry and prose and has contributed original text for multiple librettos, spoken word works, choral music and song cycles, including the opera Less Truth More Telling with music by Thierry Tidrow (Den Haag and Amsterdam, 2013) produced through the Dutch National Opera and the Royal Conservatory.
