Composer Matt Aucoin Talks About Life After MHS Jazz Band

Medfield High School Alumnus and composer/conductor Matt Aucoin will hold a discussion in the MHS auditorium on Wednesday, March 13 from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Aucoin, a 2008 MHS graduate, will meet with the MHS Jazz Band before practice to talk about his musical career as a pianist, composer and conductor. 

The public is invited and welcome to attend.

After graduating from Medfield High School (with an Ellington soloist award for piano to kick-start his resume), Aucoin attended Harvard, and studied at Tanglewood, Rome Opera and Julliard. He is a composer and conductor affiliated with Metropolitan Opera and, most recently, the American Repertory Theater.

His presentation will explore how jazz training is deeply applicable for life beyond MHS jazz band.

In addition to providing personal perspectives, he will talk about the growing intersection of jazz, especially jazz's rhythmic mindset, and many other forms of music showing examples from the Met opera he just worked on, and Thomas Adès's The Tempest, both at the piano and (if possible) via video/audio recordings.

In a story in the Boston Globe last week, Aucoin said he "grew up in a house stuffed with books and records [and] credits his enthusiasm for classical music and opera to an early introduction, followed by a self-imposed period of discovery during which he turned toward a different course of inquiry."