Matthew F. Reese is an American conductor and musicologist. He serves as a Lecturer in Musicology at the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, where he has been on faculty since 2018. In addition to his academic work, he was most recently music director of the Washington Young Sinfonia and of the English chamber orchestra, Consortium Novum. In his three years with CN, the ensemble was active on both the concert platform and in the opera pit, with a repertory ranging from Mozart operas to Stravinsky and Strauss. He concluded his CN tenure with a charity performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 for homelessness relief. 

 

A recipient of Oxford’s conducting prize, Matthew has held the Music Directorships of the Oxford University Philharmonia, the Oxford University Wind Orchestra, and the Choir of Pusey House. In 2016, he was named the University’s inaugural Conducting Scholar, assistant-conducting the St. Anne’s Camerata.

 

Matthew holds degrees from the College of William & Mary (B.A., 2013) and the University of Oxford (M.Phil., 2016; D.Phil., 2019). In addition to his work at Peabody, he has held teaching or tutorial fellowships at Yale University and the University of Oxford. Recent conducting assistantships include the Georgetown University Symphony Orchestra, the Annapolis Symphony Academy, and the National Orchestral Institute.

Matthew is currently a Postulant for Holy Orders in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, pursuing an M.Div. at the Yale Divinity School and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. There, he is also resident in the Berkeley Divinity School, the Anglican/Episcopal seminary at Yale. His studies are jointly underwritten by YDS and the ISM, with additional support from Berkeley, the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, the Diocese of Maryland, and Grace & St. Peter’s.