Matthew Aucoin

Matthew Aucoin is an American composer, conductor, and writer, and a 2018 MacArthur Fellow. He is a co-founder of the pathbreaking American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*), and was the Los Angeles Opera’s Artist in Residence from 2016 to 2020.

As a composer, Aucoin is committed to expanding the possibilities of opera as a genre. His own operas, which include Eurydice and Crossing, have been produced at the Metropolitan Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Boston Lyric Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Canadian Opera Company, among others. The Metropolitan Opera’s recording of Eurydice was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2023.

Aucoin’s most recent work of music-theater, Music for New Bodies, is a collaboration with the legendary director Peter Sellars based on the poetry of Jorie Graham. In the summer of 2025, Aucoin conducted Music for New Bodies both at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall, as part of AMOC*’s Lincoln Center festival, and at Tanglewood. In the fall of 2025, Aucoin conducted the work’s West Coast premiere at Seattle’s Meany Center. Previously, the work was also presented in Houston (co-presented by DACAMERA and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music) and the Aspen Music Festival.

Aucoin’s orchestral and chamber music has been performed, commissioned, and recorded by such leading artists and ensembles as Yo-Yo Ma, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the BBC Scottish Symphony, Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, pianists Conor Hanick and Kirill Gerstein, the Brentano Quartet, and singers including Julia Bullock, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Erin Morley, Davóne Tines, Danielle de Niese, Paul Appleby.

In 2023, the MET Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, featured Aucoin’s orchestral work Heath on its first European tour in several decades. Aucoin has also received commissions from Carnegie Hall, the Ojai Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the La Jolla Chamber Music Society, Chicago’s Symphony Center, the Gilmore Keyboard Festival, and other leading musical organizations.

His recent conducting engagements include appearances with the Los Angeles Opera, the Chicago Symphony, the Santa Fe Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Salzburg’s Mozarteum Orchestra, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Rome Opera Orchestra, and many other acclaimed ensembles.

Aucoin’s book about opera, The Impossible Art: Adventures in Opera, was published in 2021 by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. He is currently Visiting Professor of Composition and Conducting at Boston University. Aucoin has also taught at Harvard University and the Juilliard School, and is a regular contributor to leading publications such as the New York Review of Books and The Atlantic.