Biography
Matthew Hardy is a versatile and enterprising musician based in London. He is the musical director of three community ensembles and has a busy schedule of conducting and teaching.
Matthew is the Artistic Director of East London Music Group (ELMG), which he co-founded in 2015. With ELMG he has commissioned and premiered a variety of new works including Strange Joy and Antigone by Edward Nesbit; 1936: An East London Uprising by Robin Haigh; : Insert Expletive Here : by Ella Jarman-Pinto, FRIDA by Paul Edlin, and A Fair Field by Jonathan Pease. ELMG is active in community and educational work and has led several large scale projects in East London, exploring local history and contemporary issues.
He is particularly interested in new music and has given many premieres of works by composers such as Sungji Hong, Edward Nesbit, Robin Haigh, Kate Whitley, Leo Geyer, Uri Agnon, Ella Jarman-Pinto, Joanna Bailie, Héloïse Werner, Oliver Leith, Blasio Kavuma, and Lloyd Coleman. He recently appeared on BBC Radio 3 discussing Barricades by Lee Westwood, which was commissioned by Making Music’s Adopt a Composer scheme.
In recent years Matthew has been heavily involved in higher education music making and from 2019-2022 was Musical Director of Southampton University Symphony Orchestra, leading the orchestra in range of large-scale symphonic works including The Planets by Gustav Holst, Richard Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie, and Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. He has also held musical director positions with orchestras, choirs, and bands at University College London, Imperial College London, University of the Arts London, and Queen Mary University of London.
Matthew is the Musical Director of CoMA London Ensemble (Contemporary Music for All), an ensemble existing specifically for amateur players, which aims to bring contemporary classical music to a wider audience. CoMA commissions works from leading composers and Matthew has recently conducted the ensemble in works by artists such as Michael Finnissy, Judith Weir, Howard Skempton, Jonathan Harvey, Kate Whitley, Diana Burrell, Stephen Montague, Oliver Leith, Zoe Martlew, and Colin Riley. Recent activities have included open composer workshops, a collaborative project with the Royal Academy of Music composition department, and a series of workshops with composers from Junior Trinity Laban.
He is passionate about community music-making, and has been Director of Music at East London Community Band for the last eight years, a Friday-evening music community centre in Tower Hamlets. In that time the organisation has seen its membership more than quadruple, with several new ensembles launched. The centre caters for children and adults, beginners of any age, and more experienced players, and has an ambitious programme of performances and community engagement each year.
His community work also includes leading St Albans Rehearsal Orchestra in a termly programme of repertoire, regularly engaging with composers and soloists. He has many years’ experience working with choirs, having been musical director of Bowes Park Community Choir, Bart’s Medical School Choir, Imperial College Medics Choir, and Pinsent Masons London Office Choir. He has also regularly worked as a guest with a variety of other choral societies and community choirs in London and the south east.
He has particularly enjoyed seeing these different ensembles ensembles grow and flourish under his leadership, engaging with their communities, promoting music-making as an important community activity, and for many providing a weekly point of contact during the UK lockdowns of 2020 and 2021.
As a guest orchestral conductor he has also worked with Imperial College Symphony Orchestra, University of London Symphony Orchestra, Stockport Symphony Orchestra, London Moonlight Symphony Orchestra, National Schools Symphony Orchestra, Croydon Youth Orchestra, Minehead and Exmoor Music Festival Orchestra, London City Orchestra, Dulwich Symphony Orchestra, Stoneleigh Youth Orchestra, Hale Barns Festival Orchestra, and Pigotts Music Camp.
Matthew studied orchestral conducting at the Royal College of Music with Peter Stark and Howard Williams, at Dartington International Summer School with Sian Edwards, and on the BBC National Orchestra of Wales Cardiff Conducting Days course with Martyn Brabbins. During his time at the RCM he assisted conductors Bernard Haitink, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Martyn Brabbins, and Jac van Steen.