Composer James Matheson has rapidly emerged as one of the most distinctive, vital, and creative musical voices of his generation. A 2000 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship recipient, Matheson's music has been programmed by such organizations as the Chicago, Seattle and Albany Symphony Orchestras, American Composers Orchestra, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Orchestra 2001 (Philadelphia), LA's Monday Evening Concerts Series, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and at music festivals including Aspen, Spoleto, Santa Fe, Eleazar de Carvalho, Token Creek, Norfolk, Bowling Green and Hartwick. Matheson is currently Composer in Residence at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA.
In December 2007, the Los Angeles Philharmonic will present the West Coast Premiere of Matheson's Songs of Desire, Love and Loss, which was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and premiered in October, 2004 as part of Dawn Upshaw's Perspectives series. The piece is a setting of seven poems by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Alan Dugan that highlight Dugan's paradoxical aims of emotional directness and complexity. Upcoming projects include a piano quintet commissioned by the Cheswatyr Foundation for the Borromeo String Quartet and pianist Judith Gordon, a multimedia chamber opera for Sequitur, a new work for Antares, and a set of etudes for 12 of the nation's preeminent violinists.
The 2006-07 season featured the NYC premiere of Colonnade on the 2007 MATA Festival, the World Premiere of Violin Sonata, commissioned by Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music, west coast performances of Falling, by Xtet on LA's Monday Evening Concerts series and by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and the Midwest Premiere of Buzz by the Orion Ensemble. April 2004 saw the premiere of Umbras and Illuminations by the Albany Symphony Orchestra, the second commission awarded to Matheson by that ensemble (Colonnade premiered in 2002-03; a third commission, La Seine for English horn, premiered in March of 2007). Buzz, for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano was extensively performed worldwide by Antares and Ensemble X, and Pull was recently released by The Ambassador Duo on the Equilibrium label. Orchestra 2001 premiered The Paces for piano and large ensemble at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in 2002-03. In previous seasons, Ensemble X featured three Matheson works in a Merkin Hall (NYC) performance, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra chamber series featured the world premiere of Falling and the local premiere of Spin, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago world premiered the CSO-commissioned orchestral work River, River, River, and the MATA Festival programmed Pound.
In addition to the Guggenheim, Matheson has received fellowships from the Bogliasco and Sage Foundations, as well as awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, American Music Center and ASCAP, and the Robbins Prize. From 2005-2007, Matheson was Executive Director of the MATA Festival of New Music in New York, which commissions and performs the work of young composers who are making their entry into professional musical life. Matheson was a 2000 participant in American Composers Orchestra's Whitaker New Music Readings with Gliss, and pianist Xak Bjerken recently recorded Pound for his CD entitled High Rise (CRI). Matheson has held residencies at Yaddo and the Liguria Study Center, and has been a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. He holds degrees from Cornell University (DMA 2001, MFA 1997) where he studied composition with Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra, and Swarthmore College (BA 1992) where he majored in music and philosophy, studying composition with Gerald Levinson.
[November, 2007]