For String Quartet, Piano, Harp and Percussion

Sturnidae is a piece inspired by the starling, exploring the bird’s habits of mimicry and murmuration through colour and motion.

Sturnidae - Chamber Ensemble [2016]

B|O|R|D|E|R|S
For two guitars in quartertone tuning and electronics

Inspired by Alejandro Cartagena's photgraphic portrait 'Mother at the US/Mexico Border' as part of the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize 2017.

The electronics for this piece are a collection of field recordings from a salvage scrap yard, consisting of my hands hitting/scraping/tapping rusted metal objects (sheets, fences, WWII helmet...). This was to mirror the imagery of Cartagena’s portraits touching the metal fence in the photographs.

Guitarists - Hope Cramsie and Eirian Lewis
Electronics - Matthew Lomax

National Portrait Gallery - 08.12.17

B|O|R|D|E|R|S - Classical Guitars and Electronics [2017]

Mesospherics
For Flute, Bass Clarinet, Tenor Saxophone, Guitar, Viola and Cello

Tracing the movement of volcanic ash from inside the Earth to the outer edges of the atmosphere, speciﬁcally on the constant ﬂuctuation of density and form, Mesospherics interweaves and merges musical material to create a mass of sound similar to a rising plume of smoke.

Pasha Mansurov - Flute
Alex Roberts - Bass Clarinet
Juan Antonio Garcia Illana - Tenor Saxophone
Petur Jonasson - Guitar
Jenny Alexander - Viola
Colin Alexander - Cello

Composers' Studio, Royal College of Music - 01.03.18

Mesospherics - Chamber Ensemble [2018]

Written in response to John Constable's Seascape Study: Boat and Storm Sky, 20 July 1828; as part of the Royal Academy of Arts' 'In Tune with the RA Collection'. 

Bass Clarinet - Jonathan Leeds
Bass Guitar - Matthew Lomax

'Drowning In The Din...' responds to how Constable's coastal scene balances areas of the naked canvas with raw, animated brushstrokes. 

The exposed framework of the painting is reflected in the subtle clicks, breathes, shakes and buzzes that reverberate from the frameworks of the bass clarinet and bass guitar; and the vibrant gesture of the brushstrokes influenced the live electronics which consist of brushstroke recordings, triggered and manipulated in response to how the two instruments move and interact.

Drowning In The Din... - Bass Clarinet, Bass Guitar and Live Electronics [2018]

Insectivorous grew from a fascination with the movement of carnivorous plants and the mechanisms that they have developed to capture and break down prey.

With each section of the piece following different stages of the plants' feeding processes, the ensemble itself becomes an organism that treats musical material like prey - dissolving, tearing and transferring it across different instrumental groups.

First performance, Conductors Podium Concert - Royal College of Music

Conductor -Vicente Chavarría

Insectivorous - Chamber Orchestra [2019]

Composed by Matthew Lomax and Connor D'Netto
Performed by Cats Cradle Collective

Premiered at the Royal College of Music, Britten Theatre - 26th April 2019

'Passer-by' was originally conceived as part of 'non-place', a four movement electroacoustic ballet by Matthew Lomax and Connor D'Netto, inspired by the writings of anthropologist Marc Auge. Non-place explores and examines experiences of familiar spaces, identity, disconnection and anonymity in modern society. Rich, intense, familiar yet surreal, non-place holds an otherworldly looking glass to the commonplace spaces of everyday life.

The final movement, Passer-by, is a work for chamber orchestra and tape delving into our varying interactions with urban spaces and strangers. It addresses our relationships with the everyday spaces of life, how they can adapt, tracing over the same ground and yet influenced by new experiences that pass in between.

Passer-by

Passer-by [Mvt. IV of non-place] - Chamber Orchestra And Tape Track [2019]

Inspired by the way colours refract and separate as light passes through glass, reflected in the slow movement and close harmonies of the four voices.  

Voices - Ffion Edwards, Ana Isabel Beard Fernandez, Alice Bell, Emma Roberts
Conductor - António Breitenfeld Sá Dantas

Performed in the Unheard Concert Series at Burley Fisher Books, 5th July 2019.

Shaded Glass - Four Voices [2019]

Words by spoken-word artist George Thomas Miaris.

A musical response to the archive collection of Anthony Burgess - a collection of keys that were left behind... each key has bundled up in it memories of a time, place and relationships.

The sound-world of the piece merges ragged breathing, brittle metallic textures and fragile compacted melodies that compliment and fight against Miaris' poetry; exploring the hazy recollections of an ex-lover.

Commissioned by the No Dice Collective. 

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Anthony's Keys (Live) - Spoken-word Poet and Chamber Ensemble [2019]

Inspired by an excerpt of George Miaris' poem Child Daze:

When your father was your hero
When your mother was your queen
When the world was waking wonder
Every careful step a dream

Voices - Julia Bokunewicz, Morayo Akande, Jess Huetteman, Chelsea Sardoni, Kristina Boerger, Tabes Bridges & Joseph Sandler.

Performed as part of zFestival 2020 online summer festival, 1 August 2020.

Child Daze - Mixed Vocal Ensemble [2020]

Matthew Lomax is a Sunderland-born contemporary classical and electroacoustic composer based in London. His music is noted for balancing fragile, unsettled timbres and melodic lines with sudden, dramatic shifts between densely layered and stark textures. Often inspired by field recordings and images that capture everyday life, his music finds states of disconnect and separation in these moments; exploring the boundaries between noise & silence, density & space, motion & stillness. Many compositions respond and incorporate other artistic mediums such as architecture, sculpture, speech and movement.

Matthew has written for ensembles across the UK including The Cats Cradle Collective and No Dice Collective, as well as collaborated on works with painters, video artists, photographers, dancers and spoken-word poets. In 2020, the audio-visual installation Through Fractured Mirrors was commissioned by the Royal College of Music to feature in the newly-developed RCM Museum building, co-created with Connor D’Netto. The work B|O|R|D|E|R|S for guitars and electronics was selected for performance in the National Portrait Gallery as a response to photography finalists of the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize 2017. The following year, Drowning in the Din… for Bass Clarinet, Bass Guitar and electronics was performed on a number of occasions in response to the Royal Academy of Arts’ collection of John Constable sketches in their permanent exhibition space. In 2019, Matthew collaborated with dancers and choreographers from the Central School of Ballet to create Non-place Ballet for chamber ensemble and electronics as part of the RCM Great Exhibitionist Series, alongside co-composer Connor D’Netto and the Cats Cradle Collective. Matthew was honoured to be selected to compose How The Great News Was Received for string quartet and harp as part of the RCM’s World War I centenary concert.

Matthew is a recent alumnus of the Royal College of Music, having studied composition with Haris Kittos and electroacoustic composition with Michael Oliva as a Clifton Parker award holder and previously as an RCM award holder supported by a Douglas and Hilda Simmonds scholarship. During his initial studies in composition close to home at the Sage Gateshead’s Centre for Advanced Training, and through the exploration of computer-based composition at the University of Manchester, Matthew developed a musical language that incorporates the physicality and sonic qualities of natural phenomena, visual arts, and architecture to create a tactile musical experience. 

Later in the year, the audio-visual Through Fractured Mirrors will be premiered in the Royal College of Music’s newly-developed museum building.

Matthew Lomax

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