Matthew Peterson

Peterson's music has been performed at venues across Europe and North America such as the Kennedy Center, Stockholms Konserthuset, Minneapolis Orchestra Hall and Gothenburg Konserthuset by ensembles including the Minnesota Orchestra, Washington National Opera, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, VocalEssence, Malmö Symphony, Chanticleer, Vanemuine Symphony, Fort Worth Opera, Colorado Springs Philharmonic, and others. His works are regularly performed on St. Olaf College’s annual Christmas Fest concerts.

The courtroom opera Voir Dire is adapted from true-crime stories witnessed by librettist Jason Zencka while he was court reporter for the Stevens Point Journal. The 2017 world premiere production by Fort Worth Opera received national critical acclaim. Opera Now called Voir Dire “startlingly immediate and journalistic in feel, made memorable by the depth and texture of the music.” Heidi Waleson, in her review for The Wall Street Journal, wrote: “The opera drills unsentimentally into the tragedies of ordinary people...its power lies in how believable their emotions are.”

Lifeboat, an opera with libretto by Emily Roller, is inspired by the Syrian refugee crisis. A John F Kennedy Center Commission for Washington National Opera, it premiered January 14, 2017 at the Kennedy Center. Classical Voice America praised Peterson's “admirable mastery of both vocal writing and colorful orchestration,” and Anne Midgette of the Washington Post wrote “Lifeboat began dramatically with a storm scene, then moved onto the tranquility of the becalmed, focusing on three shipwreck survivors in a lifeboat, and culminating in a vocal trio that Peterson was able to make truly beautiful.”

In 2014 Peterson was awarded the ASCAP Rudolph Nissim Award for Hyperborea for orchestra. The same year he won both first prize and the audience/radio-listener's prize at the Uppsala composer competition for And all the trees of the field will clap their hands for chamber orchestra, and his true-crime opera Voir Dire was the winner of the Fort Worth Opera Frontiers showcase for new opera.

Peterson is a freelance composer based in Sweden, first arriving on a Fulbright Award in 2008. His Fulbright project was the true-crime chamber opera Voir Dire, a work that received critical-acclaim after its 2017 world premiere at Fort Worth Opera. He is a member of FST (the Association of Swedish Composers) and has been commissioned by Swedish musicians and ensembles including guitarist Mårten Falk, Gustaf Sjökvist Chamber Choir, Uppsala Vokalensemble, Sofia Vokalensemble, and Stockholm Saxophone Quartet. His music has been featured at international music festivals Svensk Musikvår, Purpur (South Africa), Ljudvågor, Jubilate and Sound of Stockholm.

Peterson's first opera, The Binding of Isaac, is a modern retelling of the Biblical story of Abraham, set in a religious-fundamentalist compound. This was Peterson's first collaboration with librettist and writer Jason Zencka. It premiered at St. Olaf College in 2006 and was awarded the 2007 BMI Student Composer Award.

Matthew Peterson (born July 22, 1984) is a composer of operas, choral works, orchestral and chamber music.