Dr. Matthew Thompson

Artistic Director

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Matthew Thompson is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Michigan School of Music Theatre & Dance.  There his duties include teaching classes as varied as Introduction to Lyric Diction and the IPA to his notorious and massively popular Video Game Music course.  He also serves as a vocal coach for both graduate and undergraduate Voice students.  

 

As a pianist, Dr. Thompson has appeared with operatic celebrities like Thomas Hampson, Golden Mask award winner Vince Yi, and Tony Award winner Gavin Creel.  Equally comfortable collaborating with instrumentalists, Thompson has performed on the Ann Arbor Symphony Chamber Music Series, the Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings series and the Great Lakes Chamber Music Vignette series.  He has played with the Flint Symphony and Michigan Philharmonic, and was the pianist for the Carolyn Mawby Chorale for over a decade.  He recently released a recording, Japonica  of all Japanese composed oboe/piano duos with long time collaborator, Dr. Alex Hayashi.  

 

Thompson’s research interests in video game music have garnered international attention.  From 2018-2019, he became the first collegiate teacher to have a studio of pianists studying video game piano transcriptions.  He serves on the advisory board and is chair of the sound studies/ ludomusicology track for GameSoundCon and is a program committee member for the North American Conference on Video Game Music.  In late 2019, Dr. Thompson will release the world premiere recording of Marty O’Donnell’s For the Piano.  

 

Dr. Thompson is delighted to be Artistic Director for the Carolyn Mawby Chorale!