As a composer
A short biography
© Matt Geer
© Matt Geer
Dr Matt Geer is a British composer, researcher, educator, and organist-conductor whose work explores time, consciousness, ritual, sacred space, and experimental musical process. In 2026, he was awarded Gold in the Mozart International Competition, associated with the University of Salzburg, and won First Prize in the composition category of the World’s Best Musician Competition, an international competition based in Warsaw, Poland.
His music has been performed, recorded, or workshopped by artists and ensembles including the BBC Singers, EXAUDI, Line Upon Line, Hard Rain Soloist Ensemble, Carson Cooman, Heather Roche, Satoko Inoue, and musicians from the London Philharmonic Orchestra. His work has been presented at the Barbican Centre, Museum of London, Grimeborn Opera Festival, Royal College of Music, Harvard University, and cathedrals including St Paul’s, Southwark, Belfast, Brussels, and Rochester.
Matt studied composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and completed a PhD in Music Composition at Queen’s University Belfast, where his research examined the philosophical and temporal implications of composition through creative practice. His work spans concert, choral, organ, stage, research-led, and screen composition, with a particular interest in music shaped by time, memory, repetition, ritual, and altered attention.
His music has been performed, recorded, or workshopped by artists and ensembles including the BBC Singers, EXAUDI, Line Upon Line, Hard Rain Soloist Ensemble, Carson Cooman, Heather Roche, Satoko Inoue, and musicians from the London Philharmonic Orchestra. His work has been presented at the Barbican Centre, Museum of London, Grimeborn Opera Festival, Royal College of Music, Harvard University, and cathedrals including St Paul’s, Southwark, Belfast, Brussels, and Rochester.
Matt studied composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and completed a PhD in Music Composition at Queen’s University Belfast, where his research examined the philosophical and temporal implications of composition through creative practice. His work spans concert, choral, organ, stage, research-led, and screen composition, with a particular interest in music shaped by time, memory, repetition, ritual, and altered attention.
191 words
© Matt Geer, www.mattgeer.co.uk
© Matt Geer, www.mattgeer.co.uk
Longer Biography
Matt Geer
Matt Geer
Dr Matt Geer is a British composer, researcher, educator and organist-conductor working across concert music, choral and organ music, stage works, creative practice research, sacred music, and emerging screen/documentary composition. His work explores time, consciousness, ritual, memory, sacred space, and experimental musical process, often through repetition, systems, stillness, permutation, and altered states of attention.
In 2025, Matt completed a PhD in Music Composition at Queen’s University Belfast, supervised by Dr Simon Mawhinney. His doctoral research, Counting over Time: Approaching the Enumeration of Maximal Combinatorial Systems through the Phenomenology of Temporal Consciousness, examined the temporal implications of systems-based composition for the listener, both in relation to his own creative practice and in the wider context of experimental and minimalist music. His PhD thesis and portfolio, The Narrative of Awareness in the Listener’s Fluctuating Experience, are available through Queen’s University Belfast’s research portal.
Matt previously studied composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama on scholarship, working principally with Laurence Crane and previously with Dr James Weeks. He was Composer-in-Association with the City Chamber Choir, and his music has been performed, recorded, or workshopped by artists and ensembles including the BBC Singers, EXAUDI, Line Upon Line, Lakeside Brass, Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble, clarinettist Heather Roche, organist Carson Cooman, pianist Satoko Inoue, musicians from the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and performers connected with Harvard University.
His work has been presented in venues and contexts including the Barbican Centre, Museum of London, Grimeborn Opera Festival, Royal College of Music, Harvard University, and cathedrals including St Paul’s, Southwark, Belfast, Brussels, and Rochester. Current and recent projects include Leaves of London, an independent documentary project exploring London’s trees, streets, squares, memory, and urban life, for which Matt is developing original music, alongside recent choral, organ, chamber, and screen-related works.
Alongside composition, Matt has an extensive background as an organist and conductor. He studied organ through the Royal College of Organists at the University of Sussex with James Lloyd Thomas, and with Simon Williams at St George’s, Hanover Square. He has performed or conducted at many major churches and cathedrals, including Westminster Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Southwark Cathedral, St Paul’s Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral, Peterborough Cathedral, Liverpool Cathedral, St Albans Cathedral, Rochester Cathedral, Guildford Cathedral, Winchester Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, Belfast Cathedral, Oxford college chapels, Hereford Cathedral, and venues in Paris and Belgium.
Matt has held a number of choral and church music roles. He was Director of Music at St Agnes Church, Kennington Park, from 2015 to 2021, and has worked with ensembles including Queen’s Consort, the Mossgrove Singers, Guildhall Schola Cantorum, London Conservatoire Singers, and St Agnes Liturgical Choir. He is currently Director of Music at the historic Old Town Parish in Hastings, East Sussex, where he directs the adult and junior choirs and leads training through the RSCM Voice for Life scheme. He is a Fellow of the Society of Crematorium Organists, a member of the Incorporated Society of Musicians, and a member of the Royal College of Organists.
Matt has also worked across arts management, fundraising, learning, and community engagement. He has served as Executive Producer of the Southern Cathedrals Festival, based around Winchester, Salisbury, and Chichester Cathedrals, and has worked with the English Music Festival. In Belfast, he worked with the Ulster Orchestra in both the fundraising team and the Learning and Community Engagement department.
Beyond composition and performance, Matt has experience in broadcasting, public speaking, and artistic presentation. He was selected for BBC Radio 3’s Next Generation Voices, a scheme seeking new presenters and speech contributors for broadcast, and previously worked in local radio in London. He also managed and hosted the Kennington Park Recital Series at St Agnes Church, Kennington. In 2021, he was invited to give a TEDx talk on schizophrenia and music, reflecting his wider interest in the relationship between music, consciousness, mental health, and lived experience.
Matt’s past projects include operas, a substantial monodrama, a setting of the Passion of Christ for orchestra and chorus, choral and organ music, chamber works, solo pieces, and practice-research compositions developed through his PhD portfolio. His current work increasingly brings together composition, research, sacred music, teaching, and screen composition, with particular interest in documentary, place, memory, ritual, and reflective musical forms.
He lives in Hastings, East Sussex. Outside music, he is interested in philosophy, churches and sacred spaces, photography, language learning, and Franciscan spirituality, and is in formation as a tertiary in the Third Order of the Society of St Francis. His early musical development was shaped by his first teacher, Ann Hohenkerk ALCM, with whom he studied church music, electronic keyboard, and theory in Fairlight, East Sussex.
In 2025, Matt completed a PhD in Music Composition at Queen’s University Belfast, supervised by Dr Simon Mawhinney. His doctoral research, Counting over Time: Approaching the Enumeration of Maximal Combinatorial Systems through the Phenomenology of Temporal Consciousness, examined the temporal implications of systems-based composition for the listener, both in relation to his own creative practice and in the wider context of experimental and minimalist music. His PhD thesis and portfolio, The Narrative of Awareness in the Listener’s Fluctuating Experience, are available through Queen’s University Belfast’s research portal.
Matt previously studied composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama on scholarship, working principally with Laurence Crane and previously with Dr James Weeks. He was Composer-in-Association with the City Chamber Choir, and his music has been performed, recorded, or workshopped by artists and ensembles including the BBC Singers, EXAUDI, Line Upon Line, Lakeside Brass, Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble, clarinettist Heather Roche, organist Carson Cooman, pianist Satoko Inoue, musicians from the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and performers connected with Harvard University.
His work has been presented in venues and contexts including the Barbican Centre, Museum of London, Grimeborn Opera Festival, Royal College of Music, Harvard University, and cathedrals including St Paul’s, Southwark, Belfast, Brussels, and Rochester. Current and recent projects include Leaves of London, an independent documentary project exploring London’s trees, streets, squares, memory, and urban life, for which Matt is developing original music, alongside recent choral, organ, chamber, and screen-related works.
Alongside composition, Matt has an extensive background as an organist and conductor. He studied organ through the Royal College of Organists at the University of Sussex with James Lloyd Thomas, and with Simon Williams at St George’s, Hanover Square. He has performed or conducted at many major churches and cathedrals, including Westminster Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Southwark Cathedral, St Paul’s Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral, Peterborough Cathedral, Liverpool Cathedral, St Albans Cathedral, Rochester Cathedral, Guildford Cathedral, Winchester Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, Belfast Cathedral, Oxford college chapels, Hereford Cathedral, and venues in Paris and Belgium.
Matt has held a number of choral and church music roles. He was Director of Music at St Agnes Church, Kennington Park, from 2015 to 2021, and has worked with ensembles including Queen’s Consort, the Mossgrove Singers, Guildhall Schola Cantorum, London Conservatoire Singers, and St Agnes Liturgical Choir. He is currently Director of Music at the historic Old Town Parish in Hastings, East Sussex, where he directs the adult and junior choirs and leads training through the RSCM Voice for Life scheme. He is a Fellow of the Society of Crematorium Organists, a member of the Incorporated Society of Musicians, and a member of the Royal College of Organists.
Matt has also worked across arts management, fundraising, learning, and community engagement. He has served as Executive Producer of the Southern Cathedrals Festival, based around Winchester, Salisbury, and Chichester Cathedrals, and has worked with the English Music Festival. In Belfast, he worked with the Ulster Orchestra in both the fundraising team and the Learning and Community Engagement department.
Beyond composition and performance, Matt has experience in broadcasting, public speaking, and artistic presentation. He was selected for BBC Radio 3’s Next Generation Voices, a scheme seeking new presenters and speech contributors for broadcast, and previously worked in local radio in London. He also managed and hosted the Kennington Park Recital Series at St Agnes Church, Kennington. In 2021, he was invited to give a TEDx talk on schizophrenia and music, reflecting his wider interest in the relationship between music, consciousness, mental health, and lived experience.
Matt’s past projects include operas, a substantial monodrama, a setting of the Passion of Christ for orchestra and chorus, choral and organ music, chamber works, solo pieces, and practice-research compositions developed through his PhD portfolio. His current work increasingly brings together composition, research, sacred music, teaching, and screen composition, with particular interest in documentary, place, memory, ritual, and reflective musical forms.
He lives in Hastings, East Sussex. Outside music, he is interested in philosophy, churches and sacred spaces, photography, language learning, and Franciscan spirituality, and is in formation as a tertiary in the Third Order of the Society of St Francis. His early musical development was shaped by his first teacher, Ann Hohenkerk ALCM, with whom he studied church music, electronic keyboard, and theory in Fairlight, East Sussex.
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Awards include: Gold award - Mozart International Competition 2026 (University of Salzburg) First Prize - World's Best Musician Competition (Warsaw, Poland) Recital awards in Bournemouth and St Albans awarded by Oundle for Organists 2nd place in the Blackburn Cathedral Composition Competition Accepted onto BBC Radio 3 Next Generation Voices Scholarship to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama Most promising musician at the Hastings Music Festival Composer-In-Association with the City Chamber Choir Royal College of Music / BBC Proms Inspire scheme |
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