About Matthew Saunders
Matthew C. Saunders (born 1976) has taught music from kindergarten to college in styles from madrigal to mariachi, and strives to make beautiful music for and with captivating people. He has climbed mountains, saved someone’s life, and watched the moon rise over the prairie. He has loved, lost, and loved again; helped friends find salvation, and found it for himself as well; taught genius students and learned from genius teachers. On the day his son Noah was born, he gave him his first shampoo, and looks forward to teaching him to catch a baseball and ride a bicycle sometime around 2015. His dreams are to walk on Mars, hear a grand piano fall into an orchestra pit, make more people laugh than cry, and love his wife Becky passionately and forever. He plays trombone and is always getting better at playing piano, and in the course of a long, love-filled, productive life, he wants to compose the Great American Symphony, ride the rails, hike the trails, read all of the good books, finally watch The Godfather, and storm the castles in the air. He will never write unlistenable music, stop stargazing or lose money in Vegas. He doesn’t call his mother often enough, but he still tries to do a good turn daily. He is always up for a few hands of euchre or a good game of chess, likely winning the former and losing the latter.
Dr. Saunders is Associate Professor of Music at Oklahoma Panhandle State University, where he teaches music theory, composition and instrumental music. He received degrees in music from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and The Ohio State University, where his teachers included Donald Harris, Jan Radzynski, Thomas Wells and Joseph Duchi. His music has been performed across the country, and he has presented his research on rhythm at conferences of the College Music Society and the Society of Composers. He received the 2007 Ruth Friscoe Prize for composition and is the Oklahoma Music Teachers Association 2011 Commissioned Composer, and his one-minute orchestral piece What It’s Like will be included in Vox Novus’ first 60×60 Orchestra project. His works include music for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, voices, band and orchestra, and his upcoming projects include concerti for guitarist Petar Jankovic and clarinetist Magie Smith, a song-cycle for soprano Rachel Ware, and a suite for string orchestra, and another suite for laptop computer. He is on the web at www.martiandances.com, but the physical Dr. Saunders lives in Goodwell, Oklahoma with his wife Becky and their son Noah.