French composer and pianist born in 1988 in Paris.
A pianist by training and pupil of Valery Sigalevitch, Jules Matton has an autodidactic relationship to creativity and he obtained in parallel a degree in philosophy at the Institut Catholique in Paris. He then studied at the Juilliard School of Music and Dance in New York, notably with Philip Lasser, Christopher Rouse and John Corigliano.
A iconoclastic composer, inspired by literature, Matton freely places himself in a lineage of French composers that extends from the Renaissance to the present day (Guillaume de Machaut, Josquin des Prez, François Couperin, Hector Berlioz, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Olivier Messiaen…). He is also interested in Russian composers such as Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergey Prokofiev, Alfred Schnittke as well as the Pole Witold Lutoslawski, and he also appreciates rock, jazz and minimalist music.
Within a certain polystylism, Jules Matton develops a precise harmonic world, using clusters, textures that are at times thick at times transparent, and expressive melodic lines. He composes for all groupings, concert works yet also music for the cinema and the theatre. His works include Ballade for lute, first performed by Thomas Dunford at the Festival de Radio France in Montpellier (2012); Trio for violin, cello and piano, first performed by the Suyana Trio at the Temple de l’Oratoire in the Louvre, Paris (2014), a work for which he won the Grand Prix Lycéen for composers 2019; Cinq chansons sur des poèmes de Michel Houellebecq for soprano, violin, two cellos, double bass and Tibetan bowl, first performed by Roula Safar, Yaoré Talibart, Yan Levionnois, Charlotte Kaslin and Rémy Yulzari at the Théâtre de l’Alliance Française in Paris (2015); Concerto baroque for amplified harpsichord and chamber orchestra, first performed by Vladislav Boguinia and the Æon Ensemble at the Carnegie Hall in New York (2015); L’Odyssée, opera for 12 landscapes, soloists, string quartet and orphans, first performed by Jeanne Crousaud, Laurent Deleuil, Fabien Hyon, the Debussy Quartet, the children’s choruses of the Compiègne Conservatory and the Atelier Musical de l’Oise, at the Théâtre Impérial in Compiègne (2018); Diptyque for a cappella voices, first performed by La Chapelle Harmonique conducted by Valentin Tournet at the Festival d’Auvers-sur-Oise (2019); Concerto for orchestra, commissioned by Musique Nouvelle en Liberté for the Grand Prix Lycéen for composers, first performed by the Orchestre National de Lyon conducted by Victor Jacob (2020).