Music

Acclaimed Composer and Conductor Matthew Aucoin Prepares a New Generation of Musicians at Boston University

One of opera and classical music’s brightest stars has joined CFA’s School of Music as a visiting professor

This article was originally published in BU Today on March 17, 2026. By John O’Rourke. Photos by Jackie Ricciardi

A 2018 MacArthur Fellow and a Grammy-nominated composer, Aucoin joined  the College of Fine Arts School of Music faculty in September as a visiting professor of composition and conducting. His work has been performed on stages across the globe, including at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. While one of the most in-demand composers working today, with commissions years out, Aucoin spends two days a week on campus, shuttling from a small office at CFA, where he leads one-on-one lessons with composition students, to a windowless classroom at 808 Comm Ave, where he is teaching graduate voice and conducting students in his opera performance workshop. 

Throughout the year, he has been working with his voice students on three Mozart operas, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan tutte. The students are asked to select a role and then explore it in-depth. Over the next 90 minutes, Aucoin listens intently while occasionally interrupting to talk to the singers about what’s happening in the quartet and to offer suggestions.

Aucoin is balancing his weekly opera performance workshops and work with student composers with his own demanding schedule composing and rehearsing new works across the country. He sees teaching as a natural extension of his journey as a musician. 

“Until now, I’ve never taught composition in a sustained way. I’d do workshops or visit a festival like Aspen or Tanglewood for two days and work with students,” Aucoin says. “And I always felt, this is great, but when you do it for just a couple of days, you don’t get a chance to build a deep connection. You can give someone an idea, but you can’t help them develop it.”

…

Composing over Conducting

As his career blossomed, Aucoin began focusing more on composing than conducting. His first professional opera, Crossing, a fictional reimagining of poet Walt Whitman’s work as a nurse during the Civil War, was staged by the American Repertory Theater in 2015. That and other early works received such ecstatic notices that a New York Times profile that year was headlined “Matthew Aucoin, Opera’s Great 25-Year-Old Hope.” As the profile’s writer, Carlo Rotella, put it: “If contemporary opera has a rising wunderkind, then Aucoin has to be it—although his promise as a composer, conductor, pianist, poet, and critic extends well beyond opera or any other single form.”

Two years later, Aucoin went on to cofound the American Modern Opera Company, known for producing new works. In 2020, his opera Eurydice, a retelling of the Orpheus myth, had its world premiere at the Los Angeles Opera before traveling the following year to the Metropolitan Opera. The work, with a libretto by Sara Ruhl, and adapted fromher play of the same title, earned them a Grammy nomination. More recently, his acclaimed vocal symphony Music for New Bodies, based on poems written by Jorie Graham about her experience being treated for cancer, received ecstatic notices when it debuted in Houston and was later performed at Tanglewood and Lincoln Center. 

…

Preparing a new generation of singers and composers

Aucoin is unabashed about the joy he gets from teaching. In his opera workshop classes, students pick a role and are asked to learn it as deeply as possible. Each week, he selects a few scenes to work on with them. “It’s so exciting to see the moment when something clicks for a singer,” he says. He tries to impart to his singers the importance of gaining a sense of authority and ownership over their art.

Working with Aucoin “has provided our students with an amazing experience,” says William Lumpkin, BU Opera Institute artistic director and conductor and a CFA associate professor of music. 

Aucoin’s students agree.

read the full feature in bu today