Matt Ray
MATT RAY is an Obie Award winning theater-maker, composer, pianist, singer, songwriter, arranger, and music director. His arrangements have been called “wizardly” (Time Out NY) and “ingenious” (NY Times), and his piano playing referred to as “classic, well-oiled swing” (NY Times) and “to cry for” (Ebony). For his work on Taylor Mac’s show A 24-Decade History of Popular Music he and Mac shared the 2017 Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired By American History. He and Mac’s jazz-based theater piece The Hang opened to rave reviews in January of 2022, and won Matt a 2023 Obie Award for Music Direction and Composition. The show also received 4 Drama Desk and 2 Drama League nominations including a Drama Desk nomination for Matt Ray for Best Music.
Matt’s latest collaboration with Taylor Mac, the rock opera Bark of Millions, premiered at the Sydney Opera House in October 2023 to great acclaim. For this 4 hour and 20 minute ensemble driven rock opera, Matt is composer, music directer, and performer in the show. The U.S. East Coast premiere of the show was at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater in February of 2024, and the West Coast premiere was at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, also in February of 2024. The European premiere will be at the Berliner Festspiele in Berlin, Germany in October of 2024.
Notable live performances include playing at Carnegie Hall with Kat Edmonson, playing the Hollywood Bowl with reggae legend Burning Spear, and touring the Caribbean and Central America with his piano trio as a US Department of State Jazz Ambassador. His show Matt Ray Plays Hoagy Carmichael featuring Kat Edmonson premiered at Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series in 2018. Other work includes music directing Queen Esther’s The Billie Holiday Project at the Apollo Theater’s Music Cafe in Harlem (2012), Lincoln Center with Joey Arias (2015), Edinburgh Fringe with Lady Rizo (2012), music directing Taylor Mac’s Obie award winning play The Lily’s Revenge at the HERE Arts Center in New York (2009), and co-writing songs for and performing in Bridget Everett’s one-hour Comedy Central special Gynecological Wonder (2015) as well as Everett’s hit show Rock Bottom (2014).Matt has done musical arrangements for a number of TV shows and films including Somebody Somewhere (2021), Nurse Jackie (2014), Blue Night (2018), and the Oscar nominated Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018).
Matt has released two jazz albums as a leader: We Got It! (2001) and Lost In New York (2006); and one album of original pop/folk material called Songs For the Anonymous (2013). We Got It! reached #12 on the jazz radio charts and Lost In New York! reached #27. His instrumental cover of Curtis Mayfield’s The Makings of You has over 4 million spins on Pandora.
Agenda
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12 Jun 202619:00Schwarzman Centre, OxfordSohmen Concert Hall
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13 Jun 202619:00Schwarzman Centre, OxfordSohmen Concert Hall
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