Matt A. Mason is a composer, pianist, and educator from Lincoln Illinois whose work has been described as "brooding, tense," "heartbreaking," and brimming with "constellations of pitch and rhythm in a densely complex mesh." Matt's work as a composer draws deeply from his rural midwestern background, telling stories about queer visibility, nostalgia, social responsibility, and trauma. Matt's latest projects explore using the piano as an intermediary device in Embodied Performances.
Matt is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Musicianship at Roosevelt University in Chicago, and holds a Bachelor's in Piano Performance and Pedagogy (Illinois Wesleyan), a Master's in Composition and Piano Performance (Butler University), and a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory (UIowa). Matt is a passionate educator, with practice teaching in the fields of Composition, Theory, Piano, Music Technology, and Music Production. Matt has presented his research on gender performance in popular music at the Universities of Chicago, Kentucky, Iowa, and Oregon.
Matt has worked with prestigious ensembles such as the JACK Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, Impulse Ensemble, Random Access Music, Hypercube, The Center for New Music, Out of the Box, and has participated in celebrated international projects such as 250 Piano Pieces for Beethoven, Songs from the Levant, Dances for Water, and Moments in this Time.