Born in 1987 in Ulm (Germany), he grew up in Brussels and Trier, and studied music composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne, Columbia University in New York and IRCAM in Paris. He also studied French at the University of Cologne and the Sorbonne. He is currently a doctoral student at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, where he is researching hybrid composition between music, dance and theater. From September 2023 to April 2024, he is a graduate researcher at McGill University in Montreal.
Matthias Krüger has received numerous prizes and scholarships, notably from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service). He won the Mendelssohn Competition in Berlin in 2013, the B.A. Zimmermann Prize in Cologne in 2015, the Chevillion-Bonnaud Composition Prize (Orléans 2016) and a nomination for the Gaudeamus Prize 2018 (Utrecht).Residencies have taken him to Istanbul, the Cité internationale des arts in Paris and Venice (spring 2024), among other places.Thanks to support from the North Rhine-Westphalia Arts Foundation, in 2018 he traveled to Aotearoa/New Zealand on a two-month research grant to learn more about Māori kaupapa, kapa haka (Māori action songs) and taonga puoro (musical instruments).
His music has been performed by Klangforum Wien, WDR Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Recherche, Ensemble Aventure, Ensemble ascolta, Ensemble inverspace, Ensemble hand werk, Ensemble BRuCH, Ensemble Fukio, Ensemble IEMA, Slagwerk Den Haag and Oerknal, Ensemble Plural Madrid and Ensemble Meitar Tel Aviv.
He performs throughout Europe, the USA, Canada, China and Japan, at festivals such as ECLAT Stuttgart, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Warsaw Autumn, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Festival de Royaumont, Nuova Consonanza Rome, or Shanghai New Music Week, and in venues such as Konzerthaus Berlin, Palau de la Música Catalana Barcelona, Centre Pompidou Paris and Carnegie Hall New York.
His CD portrait ᴀɪɴ-ᴛ ɴᴜᴛʜɪɴ- ʙᴜᴛ ғᴀɪʀʏ ᴅᴜsᴛ, released in October 2021 on the WERGO label as part of the "Edition Zeitgenössische Musik/Podium Gegenwart" series, was nominated in January 2022 for the German Record Critics' Prize.