Profiles

Matthew Whiteside is currently studying for a masters in composition at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. He recently graduated with a Bachelor of Music from Queen’s University Belfast where he studied composition under Prof. Piers Hellawell. He is also the director of the Quangle Ensemble, a new contemporary music ensemble based in Belfast. While at Queen’s Matthew has organised three Queen’s Composers’ Concerts at which he has had performances of Quartet No. 1 for string quartet, Untitled for piano trio and The Space Within for septet, which he conducted. He has also had works performed in the National Concert Hall in Dublin as part of the Irish Composers’ Collective concert series. The pieces performed were Prevalence for percussion ensemble, The Wavering Gorge for violin and cello, Imagined Notes for two-channel tape, Youth, for four-channel tape and Laya for piano quartet. He has also had a performance of Puddle Wonderful in Belfast, a chamber opera commissioned by Spark Opera Company, and during the summer of 2010 he attended the soundSCAPE composer/performer exchange in Maccagno, Italy where he had a performance of Wondering, Wavering, Willing for violin and guitar by Duo 46.Wondering, Wavering, Willing also recieved and honourable mention in the 2010 International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition.