MyMuso
matthewleeknowles
Biography
Matthew Lee Knowles was born in Scunthorpe on the 8th September 1985.
He has being involved with the theatre from a young age, playing piano and keyboards, working back stage and front of house, as musical director, composer and arranger.
Earlier in 2007 he finished an internship assisting Adrian Lee, composer at the Shakespeare Globe Theatre, where ‘The Merchant Of Venice’ played.
Now in his final term at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, Matthew is constantly changing and reassessing himself and beginning to focus his thoughts, of which he has many: about fifty new pieces were written in a recent six month period.
His solo saxophone composition ‘Monody for Alto Sax’ was workshopped in the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 2002 and in 2006 his ‘Tribute for Morton Feldman and Erik Satie’ was also workshopped as part of the Park Lane sessions. In 2003 ‘Space Dikhotomia’ was premiered at the Sounds New Festival by Nicholas Cleobury, along with works by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Paul Patterson.
A young composer award and further performance was the result of entering ‘Instances’ into a competition. Instances was given its world premiere in June 2006 (Matthew unfortunately missed this performance as he was mugged at knifepoint outside the university) ‘a little more than Nothing but not yet Something’ was chosen for performance after a call for scores by the London Wind Festival and was premiered in October 2007. ‘Post PH(Hong) creates purpose carries about art, neither abstract, only plane minutes then recently into music suggested’ for piano and saxophone was commissioned by Elen Le Foll and premiered at the beginning of May and premiered in Greenwich and repeated a week later at St Andrews in Holborn, with Haruka Shibuya at the piano. The piece was written after studying a painting by Paul Huxley (Hong)
He has taken part in a John Cage weekend at the Tate Modern, performing ‘Living Room Music’ over and over again.
Matthew studied firstly with Richard Baker and now studies with Paul Newland.
Laurence Crane, Morton Feldman, John Cage, Ligeti, Rothko, Pollock, Fleur Adcock and Federico Garcia Lorca are some important figures. Matthew also enjoys musicals and generally cheesy music.
Matthew is currently working on an opera, ‘A Catatonic Romance.’ (this opera has been about three years in the making so far…)
Last year he collaborated with Wigmore Hall and Birkbeck College on a celebration of song project and has wrote music for the James Turrell exhibition at the Louise T Blouin institute, a venue which he will be working in again in 2008. With his friend, Vikki Hoodless, Matthew commissioned the composer Adam de la Cour to write a piece for fake Siamese twins, a piano duet resulted called ‘Con-join’. Adam also designed the cover for Matthews Concerto for voice. Matthew also wrote a piece for the BBC singers entitled ‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’, where the singers perform their own names whilst walking around the performance space with brightly coloured card. Once again Matthew volunteered at the BMIC cutting edge series and has continued his ventures to Rational Rec, in Bethnal Green.
At the beginning of 2007 Matthew wrote the score for ‘Inherit the Wind’ at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. (Dir. Wyn Jones.) and later finished the score for his first Shakespeare play ‘The Winter’s Tale’ which ran in October. Matthew finished working on the music for ‘August’, a Welsh setting of Uncle Vanya, at the beginning of 2008.
Matthew wrote his concerto for voice, entitled ‘outrageously fulfilling & confused, hello to bizarre gay shit and whoosh! goes an illogical imagination’….in 2007 and it is a piece about communication, if the players don’t listen to the soloist, they simply can‘t play and the composition won‘t exist. The conductor holds up coloured cards telling the ensemble where they are in the piece. At the first performance the ensemble was made up of guildhall players, the soloist was Sarah Moule and the conductor was Laurence Crane.
‘Nothing Implied’, a string quartet written as part of Matthew’s course is a very important piece to him. The players are controlled by stopwatches and their scores consist of a number of newspaper quotations and an instruction, in each section, of how many notes to play and in what register. They instrumentally chant the lines very quietly with the aid of practise mutes.
“Activity I” and “Activity II” were written especially for the S’n’M (society of new music) in the pub and basement nights; these pieces were for any number of players and encouraged exploration of the performance space and acted as continued research into the blurred line between performer and audience.
If you read about Feldman, you may have come across the story concerning the descendent of Scriabin who spent her whole life writing music with the intention of it never being heard. “I have always envied this woman, I envy her insanity, her impracticality.” He took the words right out of my mouth.
In the 2007 Guildhall Contemporary Music Festivals he performed as composer and pianist in his own works and the works of others, including Jo Kondos’ Metaphonesis for solo piano. He wrote a happening, inspired by Cages Black mountain 1952 untitled event. 28 people on stage all carrying out different events and tasks.
Following on from the July Happening, Matthew thought about, planned, organised and executed a successful second happening at the Louise T Blouin institute on Tuesday 29th April 2008. A three hour, non-stop happening called ‘the nothing and the nothingness.’ Around 120 people contributed to the event with 94 people actually performing on the evening. Performers included ensembles, writers, filmmakers, performance artists, composers, philosophers, lecturers, sound/installation artists, photographers, bands, poets, artists, cooks, actors, opera singers and experimentalists. It was an exploration of ideas, writings and thoughts on nothingness and an attempt to present ‘nothing’ in its many forms. The happening was a demonstration of nothing and nothingness where the audience moved freely, experiencing and assimilating the presented ideas, finding their own meanings whilst constantly being challenged to consider this complex subject. The whole event took eight months to prepare and Matthew will start planning his third happening in about seven months time, which will be performed in Summer 2009.
The 21st-27th January 2008 saw Matthews' ‘six_events’ performed worldwide, 16 US states and 25 countries. ‘six_events’ was about looking and listening for the art constantly surrounding us and turning ordinary events into performances. six_events allowed us to reflect on what we do in our daily routine, looking for examples where there might be elements of ‘art’ in our own lives, rather than being the passive consumers of ‘art’ created by others. The project was hugely successful, raising many thoughtful points and connecting Matthew to lots of like minded people.
A commission by William Lane was completed last year, for viola, flute and a pack of cards, called ‘Nothing, Something, Everything, Anything.’
He is working on a set of piano pieces (1000_events for piano) for the lovely Yshani, who was also the dedicatee of ‘Lecture on Chopin’ for piano, speaker and two page turners, which will be performed this year at the Guildhall Contemporary Music Festival. For this piece Matthew cut up the entire etudes of Chopin and rearranged them on twenty A3 sheets and wrote a forty minute lecture to be spoken live against the pianist interpreting the pages.
A very enjoyable project with the Canadian dancer, Paul Andre Fortier, came to an end at the end of 2007; along with five other composers Matthew wrote a small piece for percussion ensemble (Sankorfa) to accompany Fortiers solo 30x30 dance.
Matthew worked with the artist Giorgio Sadotti on a project called ‘I am you’ for the opening of an exhibition and gallery in December.
Matthew hopes to work with the composer Jo Thomas, in the near future.
A new commission from the ensemble ‘Contrasts’ was finished in January. The piece, for saxophone, violin and piano is called ‘Recently my desire in sky left art to another young forgotten poem, but never in someone only recently suggested’ This piece will be premiered in London and performed twice in Hong Kong.
Matthew is currently writing a collection of 1000 events. Over a seven month period just under 600 events have been completed. It is hoped to complete the set in about five months time, then publish the events.
Matthew recently visited the Yehudi Menuhin School to talk about his music and the music and ideas of Cage and Feldman.
Matthew has recently had some of his works published on Venereal Kittens and had a selection of his scores exhibited at "Notations" which was held at the Slade in January, where he will also performed. "Notations" was an event celebrating Cages publication of the same name and was all about looking at new and interesting ways of notating music. Some more graphic scores will be exhibited in a gallery in Brighton.
A percussion and viola commission, for Catherine Ring and Jenny Edwards, is currently in the early stages.
A new piece for saxophone, piano and two desk bells is nearly completed, and will be dedicated to Elen and Haruka.
Matthew will be going to Spain at the end of May to perform in a dance piece by a choreographer at the London School of Contemporary Dance. He has worked closely with the composer Michael Picknett to create his own instruments and sounds.
He has being involved with the theatre from a young age, playing piano and keyboards, working back stage and front of house, as musical director, composer and arranger.
Earlier in 2007 he finished an internship assisting Adrian Lee, composer at the Shakespeare Globe Theatre, where ‘The Merchant Of Venice’ played.
Now in his final term at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, Matthew is constantly changing and reassessing himself and beginning to focus his thoughts, of which he has many: about fifty new pieces were written in a recent six month period.
His solo saxophone composition ‘Monody for Alto Sax’ was workshopped in the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 2002 and in 2006 his ‘Tribute for Morton Feldman and Erik Satie’ was also workshopped as part of the Park Lane sessions. In 2003 ‘Space Dikhotomia’ was premiered at the Sounds New Festival by Nicholas Cleobury, along with works by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Paul Patterson.
A young composer award and further performance was the result of entering ‘Instances’ into a competition. Instances was given its world premiere in June 2006 (Matthew unfortunately missed this performance as he was mugged at knifepoint outside the university) ‘a little more than Nothing but not yet Something’ was chosen for performance after a call for scores by the London Wind Festival and was premiered in October 2007. ‘Post PH(Hong) creates purpose carries about art, neither abstract, only plane minutes then recently into music suggested’ for piano and saxophone was commissioned by Elen Le Foll and premiered at the beginning of May and premiered in Greenwich and repeated a week later at St Andrews in Holborn, with Haruka Shibuya at the piano. The piece was written after studying a painting by Paul Huxley (Hong)
He has taken part in a John Cage weekend at the Tate Modern, performing ‘Living Room Music’ over and over again.
Matthew studied firstly with Richard Baker and now studies with Paul Newland.
Laurence Crane, Morton Feldman, John Cage, Ligeti, Rothko, Pollock, Fleur Adcock and Federico Garcia Lorca are some important figures. Matthew also enjoys musicals and generally cheesy music.
Matthew is currently working on an opera, ‘A Catatonic Romance.’ (this opera has been about three years in the making so far…)
Last year he collaborated with Wigmore Hall and Birkbeck College on a celebration of song project and has wrote music for the James Turrell exhibition at the Louise T Blouin institute, a venue which he will be working in again in 2008. With his friend, Vikki Hoodless, Matthew commissioned the composer Adam de la Cour to write a piece for fake Siamese twins, a piano duet resulted called ‘Con-join’. Adam also designed the cover for Matthews Concerto for voice. Matthew also wrote a piece for the BBC singers entitled ‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’, where the singers perform their own names whilst walking around the performance space with brightly coloured card. Once again Matthew volunteered at the BMIC cutting edge series and has continued his ventures to Rational Rec, in Bethnal Green.
At the beginning of 2007 Matthew wrote the score for ‘Inherit the Wind’ at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. (Dir. Wyn Jones.) and later finished the score for his first Shakespeare play ‘The Winter’s Tale’ which ran in October. Matthew finished working on the music for ‘August’, a Welsh setting of Uncle Vanya, at the beginning of 2008.
Matthew wrote his concerto for voice, entitled ‘outrageously fulfilling & confused, hello to bizarre gay shit and whoosh! goes an illogical imagination’….in 2007 and it is a piece about communication, if the players don’t listen to the soloist, they simply can‘t play and the composition won‘t exist. The conductor holds up coloured cards telling the ensemble where they are in the piece. At the first performance the ensemble was made up of guildhall players, the soloist was Sarah Moule and the conductor was Laurence Crane.
‘Nothing Implied’, a string quartet written as part of Matthew’s course is a very important piece to him. The players are controlled by stopwatches and their scores consist of a number of newspaper quotations and an instruction, in each section, of how many notes to play and in what register. They instrumentally chant the lines very quietly with the aid of practise mutes.
“Activity I” and “Activity II” were written especially for the S’n’M (society of new music) in the pub and basement nights; these pieces were for any number of players and encouraged exploration of the performance space and acted as continued research into the blurred line between performer and audience.
If you read about Feldman, you may have come across the story concerning the descendent of Scriabin who spent her whole life writing music with the intention of it never being heard. “I have always envied this woman, I envy her insanity, her impracticality.” He took the words right out of my mouth.
In the 2007 Guildhall Contemporary Music Festivals he performed as composer and pianist in his own works and the works of others, including Jo Kondos’ Metaphonesis for solo piano. He wrote a happening, inspired by Cages Black mountain 1952 untitled event. 28 people on stage all carrying out different events and tasks.
Following on from the July Happening, Matthew thought about, planned, organised and executed a successful second happening at the Louise T Blouin institute on Tuesday 29th April 2008. A three hour, non-stop happening called ‘the nothing and the nothingness.’ Around 120 people contributed to the event with 94 people actually performing on the evening. Performers included ensembles, writers, filmmakers, performance artists, composers, philosophers, lecturers, sound/installation artists, photographers, bands, poets, artists, cooks, actors, opera singers and experimentalists. It was an exploration of ideas, writings and thoughts on nothingness and an attempt to present ‘nothing’ in its many forms. The happening was a demonstration of nothing and nothingness where the audience moved freely, experiencing and assimilating the presented ideas, finding their own meanings whilst constantly being challenged to consider this complex subject. The whole event took eight months to prepare and Matthew will start planning his third happening in about seven months time, which will be performed in Summer 2009.
The 21st-27th January 2008 saw Matthews' ‘six_events’ performed worldwide, 16 US states and 25 countries. ‘six_events’ was about looking and listening for the art constantly surrounding us and turning ordinary events into performances. six_events allowed us to reflect on what we do in our daily routine, looking for examples where there might be elements of ‘art’ in our own lives, rather than being the passive consumers of ‘art’ created by others. The project was hugely successful, raising many thoughtful points and connecting Matthew to lots of like minded people.
A commission by William Lane was completed last year, for viola, flute and a pack of cards, called ‘Nothing, Something, Everything, Anything.’
He is working on a set of piano pieces (1000_events for piano) for the lovely Yshani, who was also the dedicatee of ‘Lecture on Chopin’ for piano, speaker and two page turners, which will be performed this year at the Guildhall Contemporary Music Festival. For this piece Matthew cut up the entire etudes of Chopin and rearranged them on twenty A3 sheets and wrote a forty minute lecture to be spoken live against the pianist interpreting the pages.
A very enjoyable project with the Canadian dancer, Paul Andre Fortier, came to an end at the end of 2007; along with five other composers Matthew wrote a small piece for percussion ensemble (Sankorfa) to accompany Fortiers solo 30x30 dance.
Matthew worked with the artist Giorgio Sadotti on a project called ‘I am you’ for the opening of an exhibition and gallery in December.
Matthew hopes to work with the composer Jo Thomas, in the near future.
A new commission from the ensemble ‘Contrasts’ was finished in January. The piece, for saxophone, violin and piano is called ‘Recently my desire in sky left art to another young forgotten poem, but never in someone only recently suggested’ This piece will be premiered in London and performed twice in Hong Kong.
Matthew is currently writing a collection of 1000 events. Over a seven month period just under 600 events have been completed. It is hoped to complete the set in about five months time, then publish the events.
Matthew recently visited the Yehudi Menuhin School to talk about his music and the music and ideas of Cage and Feldman.
Matthew has recently had some of his works published on Venereal Kittens and had a selection of his scores exhibited at "Notations" which was held at the Slade in January, where he will also performed. "Notations" was an event celebrating Cages publication of the same name and was all about looking at new and interesting ways of notating music. Some more graphic scores will be exhibited in a gallery in Brighton.
A percussion and viola commission, for Catherine Ring and Jenny Edwards, is currently in the early stages.
A new piece for saxophone, piano and two desk bells is nearly completed, and will be dedicated to Elen and Haruka.
Matthew will be going to Spain at the end of May to perform in a dance piece by a choreographer at the London School of Contemporary Dance. He has worked closely with the composer Michael Picknett to create his own instruments and sounds.
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PROFILE
piano.
used to play tenor horn...
Guildhall School of Music and Drama
2004 - 2008
[Photography by Ed Tang]
john cage and morton feldman
questioning, music, art, poetry, galleries, theatre
cheesy pop, indie, electro, musicals, conceptual/experimental, 80s and 90's
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