Playing a Ruckers harpsichord at the Flint Collection, Wilmington, DE

Matthew Hall studied music and linguistics at Harvard, and completed his master’s degree in musicology at the University of Leeds (UK) on a Fulbright Scholarship with a dissertation on the keyboard music of Charles Dieupart. While in England he was Organ Scholar at Leeds Cathedral and performed with Leeds Baroque Orchestra. Now in Boston, he is organist at Church of Our Saviour, Brookline, and is pursuing doctoral studies in harpsichord at Boston University under Peter Sykes. He performs with the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra and Musical Offering, and appears frequently in and around Boston as a solo harpsichord and organ recitalist. As a director of early opera, he served three seasons as artistic director of the Harvard Early Music Society and maintains an advisory relationship with that organization. He is now in his third season as assistant conductor of the Amherst Early Music Festival Opera. He has received praise for “show[ing] wonderful understanding of the subtlety and expressive potential of the French style,” (Arts Boston) and for his “lively…and adventurous” playing (Boston Musical Intelligencer).

In addition to his performing activities, Matthew is an editorial assistant at the Packard Humanities Institute, Cambridge, publishers of C.P.E. Bach: The Complete Works. He also teaches courses on music history and repertoire at The Cambridge Center for Adult Education. He contributes to Harpsichord & Fortepiano magazine and Early Music Performer, and has published research in peer-reviewed journals. His research focuses on 17th- and 18th-century French language, rhetoric and declamatory style, especially as these inform musical interpretation. His recitations of Classic French texts have been called “luscious” (Boston Musical Intelligencer).