Matthew John Hindson AM (born 12 September 1968) [1] is an Australian composer.
Matthew Hindson was born in Wollongong, New South Wales, in 1968. He studied composition at the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne with composers including Peter Sculthorpe, Eric Gross, Brenton Broadstock and Ross Edwards.
Hindson's works have been performed by ensembles and orchestras throughout his native Australia, including most of its professional symphony orchestras and chamber groups. Overseas, his compositions have been presented in New Zealand, Germany, France, Austria, the UK, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United States, Japan, Malaysia, Canada and Thailand, and have been featured at such key events as the 1994 and 2000 Gaudeamus Music Weeks [2] in Amsterdam, the 1997 ISCM Festival in Copenhagen and the 1998 Paris Composers Rostrum.
His music often displays influences of popular music styles within a classical music context, and, as a result, musical elements such as driving repeated rhythms and high dynamic levels are typically found in his works. Indeed, directness and immediacy are common features in much of his music. One of his most notable works, Speed (1996), was thought by some to be inspired by the 1994 hit film Speed ; however, Hindson has denied this connection.
In 1999 Hindson was the attached composer to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Works written during this attachment include Boom-Box and In Memoriam: Amplified Cello Concerto (the latter was subsequently nominated for an APRA-AMC award for Best Orchestral Work of 2001). He was also the attached composer with the Sydney Youth Orchestra in the same year, for which he was commissioned to write a violin concerto. In 2002 he was the featured composer with Musica Viva Australia for which he has written a number of new commissions for Kristjan Järvi's Absolute Ensemble, baroque violinist Andrew Manze, the Australian oboist Diana Doherty and the Belcea String Quartet, and Duo Sol.
In May 2002, the Sydney Dance Company toured Australia to much acclaim with a new 90-minute production, Ellipse, choreographed by their Artistic Director, Graeme Murphy, and danced entirely to Hindson's music. Playing to packed houses, it broke box-office records for the SDC. They toured it to the US in 2004.
In September 2003, Hindson was a featured composer at the Vale of Glamorgan Festival in Wales, during which fourteen of his works were performed by a variety of ensembles. He was the attached composer to The Queensland Orchestra in 2003/2004, one result of which was his Percussion Concerto, written for Dame Evelyn Glennie and premiered in Brisbane in 2006. In addition, his music was set to a full-evening dance presentation by Ballett Schindowski in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, in January 2004.
Other compositions include two works for the Orchestras of Australia Network, a flute concerto entitled House Music for American flautist Marina Piccinini, premiered with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in December 2006, a Concerto for Two Pianos written for Pascal and Ami Rogé, three ballets written for David Bintley - two commissioned by Birmingham Royal Ballet and one by Sarasota Ballet, and a Soprano Saxophone Concerto - written for Amy Dickson. Matthew Hindson's music is published by Faber Music (UK). A disc of three of his orchestral pieces was recorded by Trust Records with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and released in August 2008.
As well as working as a composer, Hindson lectures in the Arts Music Unit and is Associate Professor and Chair of Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He has recently co-authored a book entitled "Music Composition Toolbox", published by Science Press. Hindson was from 2004 to 2010 the artistic director of the Aurora Festival, a new festival of contemporary music based in Western Sydney. [3]
Matthew Hindson was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2006, for "service to the arts as a leading Australian composer and teacher of music, and through the wide promotion of musical works to new audiences". [4]
Mark-Anthony Turnage is an English composer of contemporary classical music.
Erkki-Sven Tüür is an Estonian composer.
John Harris Harbison is an American composer and academic.
Richard Danielpour is an American composer and academic, currently affiliated with the Curtis Institute of Music and the University of California, Los Angeles.
Philip Cashian is an English composer. He is the head of composition at the Royal Academy of Music.
Ulrich Leyendecker was a German composer of classical music. His output consisted mainly of symphonies, concertos, chamber and instrumental music.
Chen Yi is a Chinese-American composer of contemporary classical music and violinist. She was the first Chinese woman to receive a Master of Arts (M.A.) in music composition from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Chen was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition Si Ji, and has received awards from the Koussevistky Music Foundation and American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2010, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New School and in 2012, she was awarded the Brock Commission from the American Choral Directors Association. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019.
Donald Henry Kay AM is an Australian classical composer.
David Frederick Stock was an American composer and conductor.
Hanna Kulenty is a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. Since 1992, she has worked and lived both in Warsaw (Poland) and in Arnhem (Netherlands).
Gary Alan Kulesha is a Canadian composer, pianist, conductor, and educator. Since 1995, he has been Composer Advisor to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He has been Composer-in-Residence with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (1988–1992) and the Canadian Opera Company (1993–1995). He was awarded the National Arts Centre Orchestra Composer Award in 2002.
Matthew Taylor is an English composer and conductor.
Eduard Hayrapetyan is an Armenian composer of contemporary classical music and educator.
David Serkin Ludwig is an American composer, teacher, and Dean of Music at The Juilliard School. His uncle was pianist Peter Serkin, his grandfather was the pianist Rudolf Serkin, and his great-grandfather was the violinist Adolf Busch. He holds positions and residencies with nearly two dozen orchestras and music festivals in the US and abroad. His choral work, The New Colossus, was performed at the 2013 presidential inauguration of Barack Obama.
Marcel Wengler is a Luxembourg composer and conductor. From 1972–1997, he headed the Conservatoire de Luxembourg. Since 2000, he has been director of the Luxembourg Music Information Centre. His compositions include symphonies, concertos, chamber music and musicals.
Anna Clyne is an English composer resident in the USA. She has worked in both acoustic music and electroacoustic music.
Guillaume Connesson is a French composer born in 1970 in Boulogne-Billancourt.
Sebastian Fagerlund is a Finnish composer. He is described as “a post-modern impressionist whose sound landscapes can be heard as ecstatic nature images which, however, are always inner images, landscapes of the mind”. Echoes of Western culture, Asian musical traditions, and heavy metal have all been detected in his music.