Matt McBane (b.1979) has been described as “a natural composer, a fresh voice and, from the evidence of his festival, a first-rate organizer with a broad range of musical interests” by Mark Swed in the Los Angeles Timesand as having  “a fantastic intuitive sense that is backed up by a serious amount of compositional craft” by Sequenza21.

Matt is the violinist and composer for his Brooklyn-based indie-classical band, Build, which Steve Smith described in Time Out New York as “a new quintet that straddles the increasingly permeable line between chamber music and instrumental rock.” Build released its debut album on New Amsterdam Records in the summer of 2008 to widespread critical acclaim and regular play on NPR’s All Things Considered. In October 2009 the album was re-released with distribution from Naxos.

Matt is the Founder and Director of the Carlsbad Music Festival, an alternative classical music festival praised by the Los Angeles Times as “marvelously enlightening” and the winner of the 2010 CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. The Festival has commissioned 12 works to date and features master artists and the next generation of world-class musicians performing cutting-edge new music since 2004.

Matt has been commissioned by many ensembles including the Calder Quartet, NOW Ensemble, Real Quiet and the California EAR Unit, and has appeared at venues including Carnegie Hall, the Bang on a Can Marathon (NYC), Disney Hall’s REDCAT (LA), the Whitney Museum of Art, Joe’s Pub (NYC), and many others. He has also collaborated extensively with choreographers and video artists and has scored several independent films. Matt and his projects have been the recipients of numerous grants, awards, and prizes from organizations including: the American Music Center; ASCAP, Meet the Composer, the Copland Fund, and the American Composer’s Forum. Matt studied composition at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music with Donald Crockett.