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.

Aucoin’s orchestral and chamber music has been performed, commissioned, and recorded by such leading artists and ensembles as Yo-Yo Ma, the Chicago Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, Salzburg’s Mozarteum Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Roomful of Teeth, and the Brentano Quartet. In the summer of 2023, the MET Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, featured Aucoin’s orchestral work “Heath” on its first European tour in several decades.

His newest music-theater work, “Music for New Bodies,” is a vocal symphony created in collaboration with the director Peter Sellars, based on poetry by Jorie Graham. Aucoin has conducted Sellars’s production of “Music for New Bodies,” featuring AMOC, at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall, the Tanglewood Music Festival, Seattle’s Meany Center, and elsewhere. The work was originally commissioned by the Los Angeles Opera, the American Modern Opera Company, the Aspen Music Festival and School, and the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University.

Aucoin is also well-known for his operas, which include “Eurydice,” “Crossing,” and “Second Nature.” These works 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 in 2023.

His recent projects include his new orchestral work Two Thresholds, premiered in the summer of 2026 at the Aspen Music Festival and School; the orchestral song cycle “Song of the Reappeared,” composed for the soprano Julia Bullock and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and premiered in December 2025; a new song cycle for Roomful of Teeth, commissioned by Little Island; and an opera based on Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons,” commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera.

Aucoin’s recent conducting engagements include appearances with the Los Angeles Opera, the Chicago Symphony, the Santa Fe Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, the San Diego Symphony, Salzburg’s Mozarteum Orchestra, the Ojai Music Festival, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Rome Opera Orchestra, and many other ensembles. Throughout the 2026-27 season, he will be Featured Composer and Creative Partner with the Dortmund Philharmonic in Dortmund, Germany.

Aucoin’s book about opera, “The Impossible Art: Adventures in Opera,” was published in 2021 by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. He is a regular contributor to leading publications such as The New York Review of Books and The Atlantic.