About

On Saturday June 1st at 2 PM, Musique Royale welcomes composer and violinist/violist Matthias McIntire to perform a Cookie Concert at the Lunenburg School of the Arts. The hourlong concert will include hearing his dazzling piece for violin and electronics, a handful of his other original works for violin and viola, fiddling music, Brazilian choro music, and unaccompanied Bach.

About Matthias McIntire

Canadian composer, performer, and educator Matthias McIntire has followed a unique path through music-making and his compositions reflect his eclectic background in performance (violin, viola, voice, and electronics), Western classical and new music, as well as jazz, fiddle, free improvisation, field recording, foley art, and electronic music.

Matthias creates varied work for acoustic instruments, with and without electronics. His music has found inspiration from a variety of sources including personal expression, reflections on the complexity of the human psyche and emotions, connection and collaboration with others, a love of nature, the act of making and using his own field recordings, birds, the urgency of climate change, a love of all things colourful, the spaces between musical genres he has studied, feelings of mystery and magic in the world, and his time spent time traveling, to name a few.

Matthias is the recipient of numerous awards and grants: the 2021 Karen Kieser Prize in Canadian Music (University of Toronto); 10+ grants from the Toronto, Ontario, and Canada Councils for the Arts, and others from the University of Toronto, U of T Scarborough, and Ontario Graduate Scholarships; he was selected as 2020-21 Composer Fellow for the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra; he was the 2016 Winner of the Lyra Society (Philadelphia) Costello Composition Competition at the Curtis Institute, to name a few.

His compositions have been presented in Canada, the United States, and Europe by performers/venues including the Verona Quartet, self-accompanied soprano/pianist Rachel Fenlon, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, New Music Concerts (Toronto), the Canadian Music Centre (Toronto), Fall for Dance North, TEDx U of T, The University of Toronto, Array Space (Toronto), the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, the Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance (Nova Scotia), New Art/New Media (Ottawa), Ottawa Chamberfest, the Center for New Music (San Francisco), One Found Sound (San Francisco), the Curtis Institute of Music (Philadelphia), the University of Seattle (Washington), New Music for Strings (Iceland), among others.

Matthias holds a DMA in Composition from the University of Toronto under the supervision of Christos Hatzis and Eliot Britton. He also holds Masters and Bachelors degrees in Violin Performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Glenn Gould School (Toronto), respectively.

Matthias’ performance highlights include appearing as guest second violin with the St. Lawrence String Quartet for TEDx Stanford and chamber music appearances alongside other leading musicians including Annalee Patipatanakoon, Christina Quilico, the Miro Quartet, and members of the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra, Quebec Symphony, and Vancouver Symphony. He has appeared as section violinist and violist with the National Ballet Orchestra of Canada, Tapestry Opera, and New Music Concerts Toronto. Additionally, from 2013-2017, he was a core member of the SF Bay Area’s Real Vocal String Quartet as violist and vocalist. He has also performed with jazz greats Vijay Iyer, Dave Douglas, and Uri Caine, as well as with Nova Scotia jazz pianist Glenn Patscha.

Matthias has been the Composer-in-Residence at the Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance (Lamp) in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia since September 2022 where he has composed his first string quartet for the Verona Quartet, new songs inspired by Mi’kmaq poet/artist Michelle Sylliboy’s Komqwejwi’kasikl hieroglyphic poetry, a trio for dynamic ensemble F-Plus, and has begun new works for pianist Tong Wang and Bang-on-a-Can cellist Arlen Hlusko. He also co-organized Lamp’s successful 2023 Composition Academy and appeared as a core faculty member.