Matthew Shorten

Australian-born tenor and composer Matthew Shorten has been internationally recognized as a leading emerging artist. He is a passionate interpreter of a diverse body of repertoire, with keen interests in the Baroque canon, oratorio, art song, and ensemble works. Matthew is also active in new music circles, both as a performer and composer. An experienced choral singer, Matthew is on the artist roster of the acclaimed ensemble Chorosynthesis, and was a VOCES8 US Scholar for the 2019/20 Season, also serving as the Choral Scholar at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Nashville, TN. Next concert season will feature Matthew’s debut at the esteemed Victoria Bach Festival, as one of two Emerging Artists for 2020 & 2021.

As a tenor, Matthew has been a featured soloist in several gems of the concert repertoire, including Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy and Elegischer gesang, Mozart’s Coronation Mass in C major and Requiem, Telemann’s Deutsches magnificat, Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music, and Dove’s The Passing of the Year, among others. Matthew has performed countless treasures from the art song oeuvre, most notably cycles and works by Samuel Barber, Benjamin Britten, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, and Roger Quilter. Matthew’s singing earned him accolades at the 5th, 6th, and 7th Annual James Toland Vocal Arts (JTVA) Competitions, where he was thrice named an International Semi-Finalist, and was the 2019 recipient of the General Director’s Award. In 2017, he was awarded 2nd place among all first-year men at the National Association for Teachers of Singing (NATS) Competition.

Matthew received his B.Mus, summa cum laude from the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University, graduating as the 2020 Founder’s Medalist, Vanderbilt’s highest student honor. He was a Blair Dean’s Honor Scholar and Linde B. Wilson Scholar, and earned Pi Kappa Lambda Honors. In 2017, Matthew was awarded the Margaret Branscomb Prize, given to the Blair student judged by the faculty to have the musical and personal qualities that best exemplify the spirit and standards of the school, and in 2019 was awarded the S.S. and I.M.F. Marsden Award for Musical Scholarship for his junior honors thesis on Samuel Barber’s song cycle, Mélodies passagères. He was also named a Rhodes Scholarship National Finalist in 2020.