MJK

Dr. Matthew-John Knights, DMA (they/them/fabulous), is a composer living and working in Ottawa, Canada. Their music has been described as "Varèse on cocaine" (Mark Takeshi McGregor, 2022), and been praised for their “militant gender fuckery” (Sarah Jo Kirsch, 2023) specifically regarding Jaded, Bitter, and Queer. They studied composition with Kelly-Marie Murphy and Dorothy Chang during their university education.

Matthew-John’s interest in music started at a young age. They took piano lessons beginning very early on and started writing notes on paper as soon as they learned how. However, it wasn’t until the end of their bachelor’s degree in piano performance that Matthew-John realized that they needed to pursue composition seriously, and subsequently began taking composition lessons with Kelly-Marie Murphy. 

After a year, Matthew-John returned to school for a master’s degree in composition at the University of Ottawa. Upon completion, Matthew-John began a doctorate at the University of British Columbia under supervision of Dorothy Chang. They have completed the program as of August 2024.

While Matthew-John loves composing for a wide array of genres under the contemporary classical umbrella, including solo and chamber works, as well as large orchestral works, they have a particular affinity towards creating works that combine music and theatre in non-traditional ways, those which create a more immersive experience for the audience of the 21st century. In the age of iPhones, what can classical music offer to capture the interests of the common concert goer? For Matthew-John, the answer lies in combining music and theatre.

Music plus theatre does need to create only opera or Broadway-style musical theatre. Matthew-John is working in a third space, referred to as music theatre, which combines elements of music and theatre into pieces that can’t be fit easily into the category of an opera or a Broadway-style musical theatre work. What if, for example, a performer was to act throughout a performance on their instrument, but never sang? In a work like this, deemed instrumental theatre, Matthew-John works with the performer to create a story or a character, of which the music is only one component. These works are not meant to be played without their prescribed actions, as these actions are placed on the same level as the music. One recent example can be viewed/heard in Matthew-John’s music video for a solo bass clarinet doubling as an actor, called Abstraction.

There are other composers who work within a similar realm. However, where Matthew-John differs is in the creation of the scores. Throughout the history of western classical music, scores have generally been getting more precise as we progress away from the Middle Ages, towards modern day. Matthew-John feels that the time is right to go a step further and add another layer to music notation. In their works of music theatre, Matthew-John plans the movement, expression, costuming, etc., and writes these details in the score. In a traditional opera, little to no direction is typically provided by the composer, but Matthew-John takes on another level of responsibility and goes beyond the role of mere composer, doing things that a dramaturge or director might ordinarily do.

In these works which reside around the fringes of concert music, opera, musical theatre, dance, and traditional theatre, Matthew-John often explores difficult topics such as mental illness. As someone living with an unfortunate cocktail of mental illness diagnoses, Matthew-John feels a certain amount of duty to open the dialogue in the concert hall around these issues because of having the privilege of an artistic voice.

Many of Matthew-John’s works, such as Shadow Figures, or Queen of Darkness depict very real events that Matthew-John has experienced because of their illnesses. Others, such as Abstraction, use that lived experience to tell a more general story. The hope is that by bringing these topics into the conservative, slow moving world of the classical concert hall, that Matthew-John will be able to play a part in breaking down the barriers and stigma that surround these issues.