Matthew Aucoin

Composer Matthew Aucoin received commissions from and had his works performed at major U.S. opera houses while he was still in his 20s. He received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2018. Aucoin (oh-COIN) was born in Boston in 1990. His father was the drama critic of the Boston Globe. He attended Medfield High School, where he played in an alternative rock band called Elephantom. Aucoin attended Harvard, studying poetry with Jorie Graham and graduating summa cum laude in 2012. Switching to music (he had already conducted opera productions as an undergraduate), he went on to the Juilliard School, where he studied composition with Robert Beaser, and at the same time, held an apprentice conducting post with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and an assistant conductorship with the Metropolitan Opera. As a student, he had written two operas, From Sandover (2010) and Hart Crane (2012), as well as a set of Whitman Songs (2013) and various chamber works. His breakthrough came in 2015 when he composed Crossing, a work for which he also wrote the libretto. The work, dealing with poet Walt Whitman's experiences as a nurse during the American Civil War, was commissioned by the prestigious American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. That year, he also wrote the chamber opera Second Nature. Crossing attracted wide notice, including a feature on Aucoin in The New York Times, and in 2016, Aucoin was named the first-ever Artist-in-Residence at the Los Angeles Opera. He was active there both as a conductor of such operas as Verdi's Rigoletto as well as Crossing, and as a composer. He founded a new concert series called "AfterHours" and then founded his own American Modern Opera Company. Aucoin won a MacArthur Fellowship (popularly known as a "genius grant") in 2018. He has also appeared as a conductor with other opera companies, leading the Santa Fe Opera's production of John Adams' Doctor Atomic, and with the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Rome Opera Orchestra, among other instrumental groups. In 2020, came the first fruits of the MacArthur grant: in February, Aucoin conducted the premiere of his new opera, Eurydice, at the Los Angeles Opera. The opera, co-commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera and with a libretto by Sarah Ruhl, retold the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice from Eurydice's point of view. ~ James Manheim