Avid vocal composer Matthew Recio is thrilled to be joining the Chicago Opera Theater as their Vanguard Emerging Opera Composer for the upcoming season. He currently holds the position as composer in residence at the Luzerne Music Center, one of the leading summer preparatory orchestral training programs for pre-collegiate musicians.

In addition to his work with COT and LMC he was selected as the first commissioned composer for the CincinnatiSong Initiative 2018-2019 season. He is a published artist under the Dale Warland Series under G.Schirmer/Hal Leonard. As the 2018 Georgina Joshi vocal prize commission winner, Recio received a premiere of his work “In the Desert” for mezzo-soprano and sinfonietta with the Indiana University New Music Ensemble. Recio was recently named the 2017 American Prize winner in choral composition and was a featured composer with Beth Morrison Projects as an operatic composer at the National Sawdust theatre in Brooklyn, New York. The New Voices Opera Company commissioned him for his one-act opera, “In Memoriam” in 2017 (Libretto: Molly Korroch).

Recio is a humble winner of the Cincinnati Camerata Competition, two-time winner of the NOTUS Composition Competition, finalist in the Young New Yorker’s Choral Competition, and a finalist in the Morton Gould Awards and BMI Awards. William Stowman's CD, A Timeless Place (Klavier Records Label) features Recio's song cycle Chronology of Storms, with poetry written by Jenna Lanzaro.

With equal passion for instrumental composition, Recio has been represented at the Midwest Composer Symposium, the UNK Music Festival and the Hammer and Nail Dance collaboration. His chamber works received recognition at the IMTA young artist composition competition and the Quartet Nouveau Competition. Recio is a proud alumnus of the IMANI Festival, the Atlantic Music Festival, Valencia International Performing Arts Program, Norfolk Chamber Series and Donald Nally’s Grammy award winning choir, “The Crossing”. 

A summa cum laude graduate and Charles F. Hockett Scholarship winner of Ithaca College (B.M. Composition), Recio is completing his Doctorate in music composition at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music as a Jacobs fellowship recipient and associate instructor in aural skills. His principal teachers include Dana Wilson, Claude Baker, Aaron Travers, Don Freund, David Dzubay, Eric Ewazen, P.Q. Phan and Sven-David Sandström.