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ABOUT

I’m a composer, performer and organiser originally from Yorkshire (UK), currently living and working in Copenhagen (DK). I often work at an intersection between music for instruments and voices; electronic sound; text; video; and performance. My music regularly engages with a re-contextualisation of everyday sounds, objects, and automatic, repetitive behaviours to reveal the latently musical in the familiar or even mundane.

 

Recent pieces have involved, amongst other things, documentary techniques; audience participation; repetition; music-theatre; hold-music; gamification and quotation.

 

Recent commissions have come from Gaudeamus Festival (for NADAR); KLANG Festival; SPOR Festival (for Duo Van Vliet); Aarhus Kammerorkester; Riot Ensemble / Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (for percussionist Sam Wilson); The Night With… (for The Hermes Experiment); Hebrides Ensemble / Edinburgh Book Festival; The Cumnock Tryst; and Cryptic Glasgow.

 

I was awarded the Gaudeamus Award 2025. In 2024, the evening-length music theatre work Calls to this number are being diverted was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award in the Best Stage Works category. In 2023, Silberblau for guitar and electronics was nominated / shortlisted for both an Ivor Novello Award and a Scottish Award for New Music. In 2018, 10 Seconds, written for 9 players and 4-channel audio was awarded the Dorico Award at The Scottish Awards for New Music. During the same year I was Composer-in-Residence with Scotland's former Street Orchestra, Nevis Ensemble and was one of 12 composers involved with Yaron Deutsch’s Electric Guitar Etude Project at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse.

 

My music has been programmed at festivals such as: SPOR Festival (DK); Darmstädter Ferienkurse (DE); Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK); Gaudeamus (NL); Warsaw Autumn (PL); TRANSIT (BE); Matera Intermedia (IT); New Music Dublin (IE); MINU_festival_for_expanded_music (DK); Ung Nordisk Musik 2022 (IS); The Cumnock Tryst (UK); Visiones Sonoras (MX); SPOT Festival (DK), and at venues such as Newcastle's Sage Gateshead; Edinburgh's Usher Hall; London's Southbank Centre and St John's, Smith Square; Aarhus’ Musikhuset; and Mexico City's Ex Teresa Arte Actual.

I've had the opportunity to work on my music with, or have scheduled engagements with, artists and ensembles such as: SWR Symphony Orchestra; BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra; ensemble mosaik; Curious Chamber Players; NADAR; Athelas Sinfonietta; Aarhus Sinfonietta; Hebrides Ensemble; Red Note Ensemble; The Hermes Experiment; K!ART; Duo Van Vliet; percussionist Sam Wilson (Riot Ensemble); accordionist Andreas Borregaard; violinist Anna Jalving; and guitarists Frederik Munk Larsen and Sasha Savaloni.

My debut electroacoustic EP Palettes was released on the now defunct New York based label Not Art Records, and Daily Rituals for amplified quartet and playback, performed by The Hermes Experiment was released on TNW Music’s ‘Live Vol. 1’. 2024 saw the release of COLD CALLS, a short collection of pieces released on Don't Look Back Records (DK).

My music has been written about and reviewed in various publications including Positionen (DE), Seismograf (DK), The Guardian (UK), TEMPO New Music Journal (UK), I CARE IF YOU LISTEN (US), Glissando (PL) and Bachtrack (UK).

 

I graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2018, where I studied composition with David Fennessy and Dr. Linda Buckley, electroacoustic composition with Dr. Alistair MacDonald, and jazz guitar with Kevin Mackenzie. Having completed a Master's degree at the Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus (Det Jyske Musikkonservatorium) in 2021, where I studied with Niels Rønsholdt, Juliana Hodkinson, Simon Steen-Andersen and Marcela Lucatelli, I went on to complete a Soloist Programme (Advanced Post-graduate Diploma). My 'debut concert' was held in February 2024 at Teater Refleksion, Aarhus.

Alongside Joss Smith, I am the co-artistic leader of the new, Copenhagen-based ensemble Ear Transplant, which launches in January 2026. I was a member of composer-performer group Current Resonance, regularly contributing to meticulously curated intermedial events between 2021 and 2025. As a performer, I have played music by artists such as Jessie Marino, Maya Verlaak, Peter Ablinger, Louis d'Heudieres, James Saunders, Joss Smith, Lil Lacy, Simon Løffler, Caitlin Rowley, Nina Fukuoka, John Zorn, Heather Frasche, Michael Hope, Mikołaj Laskowski, Timothy Cape and Monika Szpyrka, as well as regularly performing in my own work. Recent engagements for Current Resonance came from SPOR Festival (DK), Radikal Jung (DE), and MINU_festival_for_expanded_music (DK).

As of 2024, I teach composition at Sankt Annæ Gymnasium (MGK) in Copenhagen. I am the chairperson for Aarhus Unge Tonekunstnere and was formerly a board member and subsequently the treasurer of Ung Nordisk Musik Danmark between 2022-2024.

PRESS AND QUOTES:

"Matthew Grouse's music is bursting with inner life and technical surplus. With a sharp analytical and perhaps satirical outlook, he introduces everyday technologies, google-searches read aloud and banal actions placed on an equal footing with traditional instruments, in works that manage to engage and retain the listener." - Dansk Komponist Forening NYE VEJE committee (translated from Danish)

"There is too much good to say about Matthew Grouse's new work of music theatre CALLS TO THIS NUMBER ARE BEING DIVERTED. [...] Structurally, musically, technically and comedically the work is a super coherent piece that carefully earns the trust it needs to take the audience on a descent into hellish absurdity. [...] Grouse has made a horror story we can’t pretend is not real." - Macon Holt, independent critic (regular contributor to Seismograf and Passive/agggressive)

"Matthew Grouse’s artistic identity is grounded in the transformation of the everyday and mundane into material for composition, with both precision and wit. His music moves between the absurd and the fragile with great conviction, combining humour, irony, and intellectual engagement in impressive compositional forms. (He) revealed a remarkable technical command across all media, while offering sharp social commentary on the realities of digital communication today. (Matthew) demonstrated striking control of large-scale form, inventing his own musical materials and instruments in the process. Between what one can call soft and hard concept driven work, Matthew creates a truly contemporary voice.” - The jury's statement when awarding Matthew the Gaudeamus Award 2025 (the jury consisted of Isabel Mundry, Yannis Kyriakides and Moritz Eggert)

"[...] the performance has particularly sent Grouse in the direction of the grotesque, even the grotesquely funny." - Henrik Marstal, Seismograf

"...contemporary music that recognised no boundaries whatsoever." - Keith Bruce, The Herald

"...The most striking (piece was) Matthew Grouse’s Left Right, Left Right, performed by percussionist Sam Wilson." - Andrew Clements, The Guardian

"...a quirky electro-acoustic melange of mundane ritual." - Ken Walton, The Scotsman

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