Thank you for coming back for another episode of the Composer Happy Hour. My guest for episode 11 is Matthew Lyon Hazzard. Matt and I had previously only met in passing - he remembers this a bit more clearly than I do - but it was at a bar in Kansas City where I was sitting at a table of other choral conductors enthusiastically discussing the merits of a solo we had just heard in a performance. Needless to say, I am happy to finally have a proper conversation with him. Matt is a writing some really wonderful stuff - rhythmically vibrant, and filled with lush soundscapes. He is also, I have a discovered, a very kind and genuine guy. Our conversation covers craft cocktails, driving through the dessert, and books about sword-fighting rodents (seriously).

Matthew Lyon Hazzard is an award-winning Filipino-American composer, conductor, singer, and educator. Praised for his “exquisite text-setting” and for creating “stunning landscapes of sound,” Hazzard’s music has garnered numerous accolades. He was named the winner of the 2017 American Choral Directors Association Raymond W. Brock Student Composition Competition, a prize winner of the International Choral Composition Competition Japan 2016, and the inaugural winner of True Concord’s Stephen Paulus Emerging Composers Competition. His music is increasingly performed by collegiate and professional ensembles around the world, including the Metropolitan Chorus of Tokyo, KC VITAs, the Vancouver Chamber Choir, the Bob Cole Chamber Choir, and others.

Hazzard earned his M.M. in Choral Conducting with honors from the Bob Cole Conservatory at California State University Long Beach, and his M.A.T. and B.M. in Music Composition from East Carolina University. Before pursuing his graduate studies, Hazzard taught at Greene Central High School (NC) for four years. His choirs received numerous awards, consistent superior ratings, and were invited to perform on the stage of Carnegie Hall under his leadership. He is now pursuing his D.M.A. Choral Conducting at the University of Houston Moores School of Music, where he continues to write for voices.

All Recordings Used By Permission of the Composer:

"There is No Sea" (2018)
i. The Prow
ii. The Ocean Between Us
iii. So Much To Seek
CSULB Bob Cole Conservatory Chamber Choir

"Flight" (2020
Portland State Chamber Choir

This episode is sponsored by Four Fires Meadery