Colin Matthews

Colin Matthews was born in London in 1946. He studied at the Universities of Nottingham and Sussex, and subsequently worked as assistant to Benjamin Britten, and with Imogen Holst. He collaborated with Deryck Cooke from 1963 until 1975 on the performing version of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony. Over five decades his music has ranged from solo piano music through six string quartets and many ensemble and orchestral works. From 1992-9 he was Associate Composer with the London Symphony Orchestra, writing amongst other works a Cello Concerto for Rostropovich. In 1997 his choral/orchestral Renewal, commissioned for the 50th anniversary of BBC Radio 3, was given a Royal Philharmonic Society Award. Other orchestral works include Reflected Images for the San Francisco SO, Berceuse for Dresden for the New York Philharmonic and Turning Point for the Concertgebouw Orchestra. He was Composer-in-Association with the Hallé from 2001-10, now Composer Emeritus, making for them his orchestrations of Debussy’s 24 Preludes. His Violin Concerto for Leila Josefowicz and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra was premiered in October 2009, No Man’s Land at the BBC Proms in 2011, and in the same year Grand Barcarolle by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly. Works since 2012 include Traces Remain for the BBCSO, Spiralling for Spira Mirabilis, and a 5th String Quartet composed for the 75th anniversary of Tanglewood, where he has been visiting composer many times. More recently Matthews has focused on works for voice and ensemble – A Land of Rain (2017), As Time Returns (2018) and Seascapes (2020). Mosaics, written during lockdown, was performed by the LSO in May 2023. He is currently working on an opera in collaboration with William Boyd, A Visit to Friends, for the 2025 Aldeburgh Festival.

He is Founder and Executive Producer of NMC Recordings, Administrator of the Holst Foundation and Joint President of Britten-Pears Arts. He co-founded the Aldeburgh Composition Course with Oliver Knussen in 1992, and has been composition director of the LSO’s Panufnik Scheme since 2005. He was presented with the RPS/PRS Leslie Boosey Award in 2005, honouring an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the furtherance of contemporary music in Britain; and the Gramophone 2017 Special Achievement Award in recognition of his work for NMC. He was made OBE for services to music in 2011. He holds honorary posts with several universities and is Prince Consort Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music.