
Matt Laing
Photo: Cameron Jamieson
Matt is a freelance composer and viola player currently based in Melbourne, Australia. His music, “described as thought provoking and unusually beautiful”, is fundamentally driven by an interest in story telling through sound, typically around themes of social connection and environment.
Matt has been writing music since he started university, sketching ideas whilst training to be a viola player. Following a successful participation in the Flinders Quartet’s 2017 composer workshop, his first big commission Out of Hibernation was premiered by the Quartet in 2019 through which he was awarded an Ian Potter Cultural Trust grant to work on the quartet with mentoring from Brett Dean in London and Berlin.
Matt’s first work premiered overseas, Portrait of Blood, was performed in London on a tour by Affinity Quartet and Lotte Betts-Dean in February 2020. Other compositional engagements have included works for the Australian String Quartet, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, Melbourne Chamber Players, ANAM and Wattleseed Ensemble, with current commissions including the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Affinity Quartet and Z.E.N. Trio through Musica Viva. Matt is a Musica Viva FutureMaker for 2021-23.