Dr Matt Wright

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Staff profile

staff list Dr Matt Wright

Job title: Senior Lecturer
Dept: Music and Performing Arts
Tel: 01843 609148
Campus: Broadstairs

Bmus (Hons) and MA (University of Huddersfield) MMus (The Royal Conservatory of The Netherlands), PhD (Goldsmiths College, University of London)

Matt is a Senior Lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University, where he leads the BA (Hons) Creative Music Technology degree, teaches modules related to composition and sonic art and runs the urban music ensemble CONTACT.

"Inspired by a trek through the Gobi Desert, Wright used a turntable, a laptop computer and other effects to blend the recorded chanting and growling of Mongolian singers, pealing and scraping bell sounds, vinyl crackle and electronic rumble, all played through speakers positioned around the room. Even with synthetic sounds in the mix, the piece evoked a wind-swept, spirit-haunted expanse, an effect bolstered by Gobi images projected and altered on two video screens."

(Steve Smith, New York Times)

Matt Wright works as a composer, improviser and sound artist at the edges of concert and club culture, his output stretching from scores for early music ensembles and contemporary chamber groups to digital improvisation, turntablism, website installations and large events combining DJs, new music performers and digital media. He is regularly commissioned by artists and festivals across Europe, and increasingly in the USA and Australia. He is also the artistic director of Splinter Cell, a seven-piece ensemble focussing on 21st century music.

He studied Composition with Richard Steinitz and with Chris Fox at the University of Huddersfield, with Louis Andriessen, Martijn Padding and Richard Ayres at The Royal Conservatory of the Netherlands, and with Roger Redgate at Goldsmiths College. He also had invaluable workshop experience with Steve Reich, Steve Martland, Howard Skempton and Wajahat Kahn.

He has presented his own work in venues as diverse as Abbey Road Studios, Cargo, The Vortex, Café OTO and Tate Modern (London), De Ijsebreker (Amsterdam), the Kaaitheatre (Brussels) and Le Poisson Rouge (New York).

Broadcasts include:

TV: Channel 4, Belgian National TV

Radio: BBC Radio 3, Resonance FM, WQXR FM (New York), ABC Classic FM (Australia)

and CDs include:

'Music at the Edge of Collapse' with Ensemble Klang

(Ensemble Klang Records 2010)

'Trance Map' with Evan Parker (psi Records 2011)

'English Landscape Painting' with Chris Redgate (Metier, 2011)

'MONSTA' (Sargasso Records 2010, commissioned by Boosey and Hawkes)

Commissioned pieces and performances include:

Huddersfield Festival, Sounds New Festival (UK)

Ars Musica (Belgium)