Wade Matthews
American improviser, composer and author, Wade Matthews, has
been living in Madrid, Spain, since 1989. Besides his solo concerts, he
performs in duo with Toulouse-based dancer Valérie Métivier and with
Norwegian percussionist, Ingar Zach, as well as one-offs with
innumerable improvisers in concerts and festivals throughout the world
(New York, Paris, Madrid, London, Berlin, Brussels, Buenos Aires,
Beirut, Montevideo, Los Angeles, Oslo, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh,
Toulouse, etc.). Recent activities include two performances at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York, at the Annual Festival of the
International Society for Computer Music, and at the Reina Sofía Museum
of Contemporary Art in Madrid.
Electronic music influences all of his work, including his purely
acoustic use of woodwinds, which he approaches as acoustic
synthesizers, emphasizing the nature of sound as matter unto itself
rather than as simply material from which to generate phrases. He is
especially interested in the permeability of sound and sonic discourse
to its surroundings and has extensively explored numerous aspects of
site-specific improvisation, both musically and in his essays. His
electronic work is generated purely through the use of synthesis, with
no recourse to sampling, a decision based not so much on aesthetic
criteria as on a particular sense of how he wants musical process to
interface with instrumental praxis.
Matthews earned his Doctor of Musical Arts from Columbia University in
New York, where he studied composition and electronic music with Mario
Davidovsky, writing his dissertation on improvisation guided by
electronic sounds. Previous studies include woodwinds with Joe Allard
at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. In 2003 he received
a commission from the French Government (Commande d'Etat) to create a
work exploring the possible relations between acoustic instruments and
various techniques of phonography. The work, titled Lieux, was
premiered at the festival Rencontres de Musique et Quotidien Sonor in
southern France in May, 2004.
Wade appears on the following SILLON-releases
- Wade Matthews «Absent Friends» (electronic synthesis)