Matthew Hindson AM is one of Australia’s most dynamic and successful composers. His invigorating soundworld is both immediate and direct, and his innate sense for drama, wit and spontaneous joie de vivre has resulted in many of his scores being adapted for ballet by some of the world’s major dance companies such as the Birmingham Royal Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, National Ballet of Japan, The Australian Ballet and the Queensland Ballet. His concert works, too, are regularly performed by leading ensembles and orchestras including every Australian orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra amongst many others. 

 

He has enjoyed residencies with the Sydney SO (1999), Queensland Orchestra (2003-4), was Featured Composer with Musica Viva Australia (2002) and at Vale of Glamorgan Festival (2003).  His music is ideally suited for dance – Sydney Dance Company toured a 90-minute Hindson production, ‘Ellipse’, in 2002, breaking box-office records, and later toured it widely in the USA.  In 2004, the Germany company Ballett Schindowski presented a full-evening ballet to his existing concert works, with live orchestra.  There was widespread media interest in 2007 when he co-wrote Kalkadungu with William Barton, for orchestra plus Barton on didjeridu, electric guitar and voice (2012 ARIA Award for Best Classical Recording). He has written three ballets for Sir David Bintley including E=mc2, commissioned by Birmingham Royal Ballet and widely acclaimed following its 2009 premiere, described as “one of the best pieces of new dance music this side of Stravinsky.”  It won the prestigious South Bank Show Award for Dance in 2010.  The second Bintley/BRB commission, Faster, premiered to similar plaudits in 2012 and was also later toured to Japan. The most recent Bintley collaboration was a full-evening orchestral ballet, A Comedy of Errors, commissioned and premiered by Sarasota Ballet in 2022. 

 

Other recent works include My Brilliant Career (Queensland Ballet, choreographer Cathy Marston), Soprano Saxophone Concerto (for Amy Dickson and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra), Violin Sonata No 1 ‘Dark Matter’ for Ray Chen (commissioned by Musica Viva Australia), Dancing with Dinosaurs (Sydney Symphony Orchestra) and an ongoing series of ‘Sad Piano’ albums for soloist, Andrea Lam.

 

He studied with Peter Sculthorpe, Eric Gross, Brenton Broadstock and Ross Edwards at Universities of Sydney and Melbourne.  In 2006 he was appointed member of the Order of Australia for work as composer/educator and was Chair of the Music Board of the Australia Council.  2010 saw the Sydney-based Aurora Festival stage the ISCM World Music Days, the first time this event had been held in the southern hemisphere – Hindson was artistic director for this event, and founder and artistic director of the festival from 2004-2010.  He has been the Deputy Dean and Associate Dean (Education) at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, part of the University of Sydney, since 2015.