download CV

Matthew Malsky's (b. 1961) compositional style is characterized by its rhythmic vitality, dramatically crafted gestures, melodic angularity, and irony. His music has been described as economical and elegant in both its technical and intellectual rigor, and in the way cutting-edge electronics are fully integrated with live performance. Malsky's compositions speak with intensity, seriousness and an underlying inquisitiveness about the boundaries between a complex world and a searching interior voice.

His compositions have been performed and acclaimed internationally, most recently at the Ultima Festival in Oslo, Norway, the Bytes of Art Festival @ Ylem in San Francisco, the En red 0-2000 Festival in Barcelona, the iChamber performing series at Arizona State University, national Society for Electro Acoustic Music-US conferences, the Australasian Computer Music Conference in Wellington, New Zealand, the International Computer Music Festival in Kobe, Japan, and the Bowling Green New Music and Art Festival. His virtuosic compositions for acoustic instruments with live computer processing have attracted the interest of outstanding soloists including John Bruce Yeh (Chicago Symphony), Esther Lamneck (NYU), Frank Cox (c-squared), and Patti Monson (Sequitur). His second string quartet, Lacan, was premiered by the Penderecki String Quartet in the winter of 2007.

He has studied composition with Conrad Pope, Harold Shapero, Ralph Shapey, Shulamit Ran and Howard Sandroff. His work has been recognized with awards and grants from ASCAP, Brandeis University, Kurt Weill Gesellschaft, the Hillery Family Charitable Trust, NSF/Chicago Materials Research Center, Hultgren Solo Cello Works Biennial, American Composer's Forum, and others.

As a scholar, his research examines, from a psychoanalytic perspective, the intersections of American music, technology and culture in the post-World War II period. His articles are published in the areas of ethnomusicology, cultural studies and film studies by Wesleyan University Press, the online journal Reconstructions, and University of Illinois Press. He has participated in national meetings as diverse as Feminist Theory and Music, the Music/Image in Film and Media conference at NYU, the Society of Cinema and Media Studies, the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the US (SEAMUS), the International Computer Music Conference, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music-US and the Society of American Music. Most recently he presented in Dessau, Germany at an interdisciplinary symposium organized by the Kurt Weill Gesellschaft.

Matt Malsky is an Associate Director of Publications with the Electronic Music Foundation.