Michael Matthews’ music has been performed in countries around the world. The Manitoba Chamber Orchestra premiered the newly commissioned work The Language of Water in September 2006. In July his work The Skin of Night was premiered at the World Saxophone Congress in Ljubljana, Slovenia. October 2005 saw the performance of Away, Tear Away at the prestigious Cervantino Festival in Mexico. In May of 2005 he oversaw the world premiere of his chamber opera Prince Kaspar, and also conducted the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra in the premiere of his Cello Concerto. In 2002 the world premiere recording of his Symphony No. 1 was released on TNC Records; Virko Baley conducted the Kiev Camerata Orchestra

Matthews has been the recipient of numerous commissions and awards; in 2000 he held a Rockefeller Foundation residency at the Bellagio Center in Italy. In the summer of 1999 he was a participant in the Composition and Computer Music Seminar of the Bartók Festival in Szombathely, Hungary. His orchestral work Two Interludes was awarded third prize in the 1997 du Maurier Arts Ltd. New Music Festival Canadian Composers Competition. In 1994 he became the first Canadian to receive a prestigious commission from the International Computer Music Association. He has also received Canada Council and Manitoba Arts Council grants, the Winnipeg Rh Institute award for interdisciplinary research, a residency at the EMS computer music studios in Stockholm, Sweden, and a prize in the Premio Musicale Cittá di Trieste, Italy for his orchestral piece The Wind Was There. He has worked at the Banff Centre, at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University and, most recently, at the Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras, in Morelia, Mexico, where he worked on a piece for piano and tape commissioned for pianist Duane Cochran.

Recent performances have included:

• Away, Tear Away­ (Mexico City – Foro Internacional de Música Neuva)
• String Quartet No. 2 (Belgrade – 14th International Review of Composers)
• Piano Quartet (Winnipeg – GroundSwell)
• Away, tear away (Mexico City – Mexico City Woodwind Quintet)
• Vertical Garden (Mexico City – Asako Arai)
• The European premier of String Quartet No. 2 (Amsterdam – The Mondriaan Quartet),
• Prelude to Macbeth (Michelle Mourre and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra)
• Ernst Toller: Requiem for an Idea (New York – Sequitur Ensemble)

Recent world premiers:

• Night Music (Winnipeg – John Racaru and Carol Pollard)
• Las Blancas Sombras (Winnipeg – Charlene Pauls and Ian Hodges, GroundSwell)
• The Language of Water (Winnipeg – Manitoba Chamber Orchestra)
• The Skin of Night (Ljubljana – World Saxophone Congress)
• Violin/Viola Duos (Winnipeg – Oleg and Mikhail Pokhanovski)
• Preludes (Winnipeg – Peter Vinograde)
• Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra,Michael Matthews, conductor;  Paul Marleyn, cello)
• Prince Kaspar (Winnipeg – Michelle Mourre conducting, with Mireille Lebel in the title role)
• Piano Quartet (Winnipeg – Agassiz Music Festival)
• Particles of One (Bergen – BIT 20 Ensemble, Trond Korsgård, conductor; David Stewart, violin)

The composer has recently completed a work for the Meduse Ensemble, to be premiered in 2007.  Upcoming projects include the world premier of his Symphony No. 3 (Douglas Sanford and the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra), a CD recordings of Vertical Garden and Away, tear away, a third string quartet, and new works for violinist Judy Kang, the Onix Ensemble (Mexico City) and Trio Neos (Mexico City).

Commissions have come from such organizations as The Harrington/Loewen Duo, Meduse, the Onix Ensemble, Agassiz Music Festival and Agassiz Chamber Music Series, the Mexico City Woodwind Quintet, BIT 20 Ensemble, the Mondriaan Quartet, the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra, the Carlos Chavez Orchestra, the Kiev Camerata Orchestra, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Hilliard Ensemble, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, the Molinari String Quartet, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Ensemble Resonance, the Thira Ensemble, Vancouver New Music Society, the Roseberry Orchestra (U.K.), Prairie Theatre Exchange, CBC Radio, Aurora Musicale, Music Inter Alia, and the Korean chapter of the International Society for Contemporary Music. Matthews has also written works for performers Therese Costes, Alejandro Escuer, Lori Freedman, Corey Hamm, Beverly Johnston, Sara Laimon, Paul Marleyn, Poul Rosenbaum, Shirley Sawatzky, Harry Sparnaay and Peter Vinograde

Matthews is a conductor, a founding member of the chamber ensemble Thira and a founder and artistic director of the GroundSwell new music series. From 2002-2004 he was Composer-in-Residence with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra. Works available on CD are: Symphony No. 1 and Out of the Earth (recorded by Virko Baley and the Kiev Camerata for TNC Records); In Emptiness, Over Emptiness (recorded by Therese Costes for the CDCM series on Centaur Records); Scattered Mirrors (recorded by Shirley Sawatzky on Adventures of Piano Woman); Of Time and Sky (recorded by Peter Vinograde on Two Canadian Masterworks for Piano); Fantasy (recorded by Victor Schultz on Jeté); Songs of the Masked Dancers (recorded by Thira on Passage Through Time); The First Sea (recorded by Lori Freedman for the CDCM series on Centaur Records); and Between the Wings of the Earth (recorded by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra for BIS Records). He has lived and traveled extensively in Asia, Europe, Central America and the Caribbean. Matthews holds a Ph.D. in composition from the University of North Texas, where he studied with Larry Austin. He is currently Professor of composition and Director of the Computer Music Studio at the University of Manitoba.

List of Commissions