Matt Sargent is a musician based in Buffalo, NY. He holds a Presidential Fellowship at SUNY Buffalo, where he is working on a PhD in Music Composition. He is also a graduate of the Hartt School of Music (MM in Music Composition, 2008) and St. Mary's College of Maryland (BA in Music and English, 2006). His principal composition teachers include David Felder, Robert Carl, Ingram Marshall, Cort Lippe, Ken Steen, and David Froom.His music has been described as "so simple and so natural, and yet sets up a complex set of interactions." (Sound Expanse) A Chesapeake Bay native, his interests are often focused on the movement of bodies of water, tides, and possible musical analogues to these natural processes, often involving digital modeling of such processes as a tool for musical structures. In addition to the documented spaces and environmental recordings heard in much of his electroacoustic work, natural materials also enter his acoustic music in tangible ways: pine sap drops as melodic material in his Soft Song (for solo cello); river stones lightly scraped on wood in his solo percussion work, Riverbed.
Matt frequently collaborates with musicians, choreographers, filmmakers, and visual artists. Since 2007, he has directed the Hartford Sound Alliance, CT-based performer/composer ensemble that presents concerts, installations, improvisations, and workshops at universities and art spaces across New England. Along with collaborator Bill Solomon, he organized the Hartford New Music Festival, a contemporary music series now in its second year, at the Studio at Billings Forge art space.
Recent highlights of his performance schedule include sound installations and generative works at the Goldwell Open Air Museum (Rhyolite, NV), the Machine Project (Los Angeles, CA), and Yale University's Haskins Auditory Labs, solo concerts and featured works presented at the Wulf (Los Angeles, CA), SEAMUS National Conference (Appleton, WI), IBEAM (Brooklyn, NY), Full Force Dance Theatre and the Charter Oak Cultural Center (Hartford, CT), and the Neighborhood Music School (New Haven, CT), residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Goldwell Open Air Museum & Nevada Arts Council, June in Buffalo, as well as the University of Nevada Las Vegas (composer-in-residence, Spring 2011).
Matt also maintains a busy schedule as a guitarist, recording engineer, and educator. In addition to performing and premiering new music for the guitar, he has received critical acclaim for his guitar work with the band Sunspots and the experimental trio Oxbow Lake. He has recently held teaching positions at Capital Community College (music technology and composition), where he designed and directed the college's music technology studio, Hartford Conservatory (recording arts), Hebrew High School of New England (instrumental music), and Middlesex Academy for the Performing Arts (guitar).