Matthew Aucoin is an American composer, conductor, writer, and pianist. He is currently Artist-in-Residence at Los Angeles Opera, fusing his work as composer and conductor; he leads mainstage productions of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten and Verdi’s Rigoletto while at work on a new full-length work with playwright Sarah Ruhl, to be premiered in the 2019-20 season. Additionally he serves as the company’s advisor on new music and works regularly with members of its opera studio. In the 2017-18 season the Brentano Quartet will premiere Aucoin’s first string quartet, and the vocal ensemble Chanticleer will introduce his Treating Shadows as Solid Things. Aucoin has written two operas: Crossing, commissioned by Boston’s American Repertory Theater and later produced at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Second Nature for Lyric Opera of Chicago. Other recent premieres include a Piano Concerto, commissioned by The Gilmore Foundation and premiered by Conor Hannick; Evidence, commissioned by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; a song cycle set to texts by James Merrill premiered by tenor Paul Appleby at Carnegie Hall, which co-commissioned the work along with Wigmore Hall, London; and the dramatic cantata The Orphic Moment, written for countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, which received its European premiere at the Salzburg Landestheater, with the composer conducting.

As a conductor Aucoin has also worked the Chicago Symphony, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, as well as leading opera productions for Music Academy of the West (The Bartered Bride), Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, Italy (Le nozze di Figaro) and Juilliard Opera (Eugene Onegin).Aucoin is a founding member and co-artistic director of AMOC, the American Modern Opera Company, which makes its New York debut at the Park Avenue Armory in March 2018.