It’s been a busy year for Matthew Browne. Even before coming to Columbia as one of the eight resident composers for the Mizzou International Composers Festival, he’s already been one of seven young composers attending the 13th annual Composer Institute sponsored by the Minnesota Orchestra in conjunction with the American Composers Forum. Not only that, just before his visit to Missouri, he’ll be taking part in the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra’s 2016 Edward T. Cone Composition Institute at Princeton University.
Born in Burlington, Vermont and raised in Colorado, Browne (pictured) currently is working on a doctoral degree in composition at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. He previously earned his master’s degree in composition from UM-AA and a bachelor of music degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Praised as “compelling” by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and “beautifully crafted and considered” by What’s On London, Browne’s music is influenced by a diverse and evolving range of composers and musicians, from György Ligeti, Alfred Schnittke, and Igor Stravinsky to the Beatles, Frank Zappa and Buddy Rich.
His recent honors include winning a BMI Student Composer award in 2015, both an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers award and the New England Philharmonic Call for Scores in 2014, and more. He has collaborated with ensembles such as the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Villiers Quartet, the Donald Sinta Quartet, the Tesla Quartet, and the Albany Symphony, which last year read one his works as part of a “Composer To Center Stage Reading Session.”
Browne’s new work composed for Alarm Will Sound to premiere at 2016 MICF is called “Writers’ Room”. While that piece can’t be heard until the festival’s grand finale on Saturday, July 30 at the Missouri Theatre, you can hear more of his music on his SoundCloud page, and see and hear performances of three of his compositions in the embedded windows below.
“Cabinet of Curiosities for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra,” performed by Dan Graser (soprano sax), Zach Stern (alto sax), Eddie Goodman (tenor sax), Danny Hawthorne-Foss (baritone sax) and an orchestra of students from the University of Michigan conducted by Thomas Gamboa.
The Villiers Quartet performs Browne’s 2014 work, String Quartet no. 1 “A Penumbral Eclipse.”
“Exit, Pursued by a Bear” is a work for solo viola, performed here in February, 2013 by Jarita Ng at Rice University.