Matthew Whiteside

Matthew Whiteside is a Belfast based composer who has graduated from Queen’s University Belfast with a Bachelors in Music. At Queen’s he has studied composition under both Prof. Piers Hellawell and Dr. Simon Mawhinney. In September he is starting a Masters in Composition at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music in Glasgow.

While at Queen’s Matthew has organised three Queen’s Composers’ Concerts at which he has had performances of Quartet No. 1 for string quartet, Untitled for piano trio and The Space Within for septet. The latter was also conducted by the composer.

Matthew is the Director of The Quangle Ensemble. A newly formed composer/performer co-operative based in Belfast.

He is also Secretary of the Irish Composers’ Collective who organise monthly concerts in the National Concert Hall in Dublin. Through this organisation Matthew has had four works performed, Prevalence for percussion ensemble, The Wavering Gorge for violin and cello, Imagined Notes for two channel tape and Youth for four channel tap.

Outside both Queen’s and the ICC Matthew has had performances in The University of York, The University of Limerick and last year he was commissioned to write a short opera for Spark Opera Company called Puddle Wonderful. In 2010 he also attended the soundSCAPE composer/performer exchange where he had for Matt Mattera performed and Wondering, Wavering, Willing.

Matthew would like to extend his thanks to the Bliss/PRSF Composer Bursary Fund and to the Hamilton Harty Scholarship for funding his attendance at soundSCAPE. Matthew is also in receipt of The May Turtle Scholarship and RSAMD Trust award for postgraduate study.

There are a selection of recordings of his compositions on this site, along with information on works in progress.

If you are interested in following Matthew on twitter head here.