About this Artist
MATT MARKS is a composer/performer of innovative opera and music-theater works, as well as unique and exciting instrumental and electronic music. A founding member of Alarm Will Sound, he also performs as a French hornist, vocalist, and keyboardist with such acclaimed new music ensembles as the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Signal, and ACME. He has recorded for Warp Records, Nonesuch, Cantaloupe Music, as well as many other independent labels. As a composer and arranger, Matt’s work has been called “staggeringly creative” by The New York Times, “obsessively detailed” by New York Magazine, and “stunning” by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Lincoln Center, The Barbican Center, The Bang on a Can Marathon, and live on WNYC radio. Matt’s first album, his post-Christian nihilist pop opera, The Little Death: Vol. 1, released on New Amsterdam Records, was described as “cheerily seductive” by the NY Times and “unabashedly boppy, baroquely multireferential, then suddenly sentimental” by Time Out NY. TLDV1 was also one of Time Out NY’s Top Ten Classical albums of 2010 and it contained one of Huffington Post’s Top Ten Alternative Art Songs of the Decade.
Other recent projects include his mini-opera Strip Mall for the L.A. Philharmonic, a sold-out run of his “pop horror fashion show” The House of Von Macramé at the Bushwick Starr, his short operatic work Bluetooth Islands for the Brooklyn Philharmonic, a remix for Meredith Monk’s latest album, and a live realization of The Dirty Projectors’ album/opera The Getty Address. Upcoming projects include his opera Mata Hari: The Great Imitator for the HERE Arts Center in NYC; a piece for the D.C.-based Great Noise Ensemble; and his follow-up to TLDV1, The Little Death: Vol. 2.