Matt Schumaker, Assistant Professor, UC Santa Cruz

Matt Schumaker (UCB Ph.D. 2015) joins the Arts Division of UC Santa Cruz as Assistant

Professor in Music, continuing his artistic research and teaching in the areas of computer

music and music technology.

Website: https://mattschumaker.com/

Schumaker composes concept-driven music arising from computer-assisted composition

and interactive computer music research, a practice that often joins musicians with

bespoke computer technologies in live performance. His work emerges from a parametric

viewpoint, building artistic solutions from a continuous dialogue between algorithm and

intuition, and forging interdisciplinary connections between music and the sciences and

visual arts.

Among his recent work, at the Virtual SICPP 2020, clarinetist Rane Moore performed

Stream_l__i___n____e_____s (after Robert Lawrence), a piece for clarinet and real-time

computer accompaniment inspired by the first African-American pilot selected for a

space mission. The piece utilizes a method to derive music from measurements of

aerodynamic streamlines. In March, 2020, the Radius Ensemble premiered Mehretu

trace, in which the vibrant curved gestures and slashed markings of painter Julie Mehretu

determine the trajectory of the musical lines. As a recipient of the UC Berkeley’s Prix de

Paris, Schumaker collaborated with poet Cathy Park Hong and composed As I ride the

late night freeways, a work for singer and orchestra. Taking cues from Hong’s poetic

imagery, a freeway drive became the guiding idea for the piece and the analysis of a

recorded Formula One racecar became the basis to explore timbral and harmonic

evolution and the morphing of musical gestures using interpolation techniques in

instrumental writing. An article about the research for this piece was later published in

The OM Composer’s Book 3.

Schumaker received a doctorate in Music Composition from UC Berkeley, where he

studied with composers Edmund Campion, Cindy Cox, Franck Bedrossian, Ken Ueno

and David Wessel. In separate year-long studies abroad, he also studied with Louis

Andriessen in Amsterdam and with Martin Matalon in Paris. From 2015-17, Schumaker

was a Lecturer at UCB, teaching courses in computer music and music perception and

cognition. Preceding his current appointment at UC Santa Cruz, Schumaker was an MLK

Visiting Scholar at MIT from 2018-20 and taught there for three years, through spring

2021.