Matthew received a first class honours degree in Music from St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where he was a Joan Conway scholar and held the Anna Haxworth Prize for Music. Having started the flute with Jon Cherry and Dana Morgan, in 2006 he was offered a place at the Royal Northern College of Music Junior Department in Manchester to study with Helen Rimmer where he participated in classes with internationally renowned flautists such as Philippa Davies, Wissam Boustany, Peter Lloyd, and Michael Cox and studied with Kate Hill while at Oxford (flute professor at the Royal Academy of Music). Matthew now works regularly as both an orchestral and chamber musician in and around Dresden, most notably with the Mid-Saxony Philharmonic Orchestra in Freiberg, Germany. When he joined the Junior RNCM Matthew began studying with Matthew Wood and Ewa Strusinska and started conducting the Junior RNCM flute choir. He later founded the Leicestershire Sinfonia, an amateur orchestra based in Leicester, which is now in its eighth season and continues to put on several critically acclaimed concerts each year under their new musical director. While studying at Oxford, Matthew conducted some of the University’s finest ensembles including the Oxford String Ensemble and the Oxford University Philharmonia. He also worked as president and musical director for Oxford Opera in productions of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, as well as conducting a production of two rarely performed Holst operas, Savitri and The Wandering Scholar with Lighthouse Productions and Handel’s Acis and Galatea with St Peter’s College Opera. Matthew completed his Master’s degree in orchestral conducting with Georg Christoph Sandmann at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden in 2014 and now studies privately with Neil Thomson in Paris. He has worked regularly as associate conductor with the Vacations Chamber Orchestra and as assistant conductor of the Ingolstadt Youth Chamber Choir, which has included conducting at the Audi Summer Concerts and the Audi Youth Choirs Festival. He has been musical director of the Orchester Lausitzer Braunkohle, Hoyerswerda, since March 2013, Artistic Director of the Werkstattorchester Dresden since September 2014, and Musical Director of Szene12 since March 2015.