Composer.
Songwriter.
Music Rights Advocate.
Music Producer.
Theatre Producer.
About
Matthew Dylan Rose is an award-winning composer, songwriter, music supervisor, orchestrator, music creator rights advocate, music producer, and theatre producer working at the cross-section of music, film, and theatre. His work is often characterized by his focus on interconnecting themes, leitmotifs, & compositional architecture that unify the songs within his scores and by his authentic utilization of pastiche, all well-beyond their typical uses in contemporary theatre and film. He is most well known for his work as the composer and orchestrator of the musical, The Oldenburg Suite (with playwright and lyricist James Feinberg, with whom he collaborates with on many theatrical projects), first presented as a musical theatre work staged in concert form at the final New York Musical Festival in 2019, where it won the distinguished award for Best Concert Presentation. From there, it was performed on stage with the Montclair Theatre Project at Montclair State University, later in a sold-out concert at the iconic Feinstein’s/54 Below in 2022 for which it received multiple BroadwayWorld Cabaret Award nominations, and was a finalist for the 2022 Richard Rodgers Award. Other work in development includes Doctor Glas: A Musical Play, which received a staged reading at New York University in 2022 and a subsequent reading with Broadway stars in 2023; Metropolitan, an adaptation of the 1990 Academy Award Nominee film in collaboration with Director/Screenwriter Whit Stillman; and another currently unannounced project. Over the course of his career, Matthew has had the honor of working with a number of incredible artists and performers such as Lizzy McAlpine, Ben Steinfeld, Robert Cuccioli, Jen Wineman, Morgan Higgins, Nina White, & more. In addition to his theatrical work, he composes concert works, for film & TV, and writes songs for performing artists.
Matthew graduated with a Bachelors of Music in Music Business from New York University’s Music Business Program (B.M. ‘20), where he was able to focus on both the creative and business sides of the entertainment industry. He was a Squarespace Maker Series honoree in 2020, listed as one of the ten most impressive college graduates of 2020 with the title “Most Likely to Give Music a Leading Role. He continued on to receive his Masters in Music Theory & Composition in Songwriting at New York University Steinhardt (M.M. ‘22), one of the top Masters programs of its kind, where he studied with Phil Galdston, Joseph Church, Justin Dello Joio, David Wolfert, Dana Calitri, and Maia Sharp.
Matthew is also passionate about his work on the business and advocacy sides of the entertainment industry. Besides producing all of his theatrical work, he has years of experience in the music industry, with previous roles in A&R at Chesky Records, a Grammy Award winning jazz, classical, world music, and singer-songwriter record label based in New York and The Audiophile Society, a new record label focusing on hi-resolution 3D audio releases from emerging artists, through which he’s worked with Grammy nominees and winners David Chesky, Priya Darshini, Ryland Angel, Kevin Hays, The Czech National Symphony Orchestra, & more. He serves on the Board of Directors of MusicAnswers, a music creator advocacy group that aims to educate music creators about their rights, as well as advocate on their behalf to unions, music organizations, and governmental bodies. He has also been featured as a guest lecturer on music copyright and publishing in conjunction with the U.S. State Department Cultural Exchange Program, a panelist at the Association for Popular Music Education 2022 Conference, and has worked with the U.S. Copyright Office on educational research and reform.
Matthew is a proud member of MusicAnswers, The Dramatists Guild, and ASCAP.
Matthew performing at 54 Below in his headline show, Feinberg & Rose: The Round Table
Select Work
The Oldenburg Suite
The Oldenburg Suite is the story of three Americans - immigrants all - who in their own unique ways made indelible contributions to modern art. In 1969, Claes Oldenburg, prominent sculptor and the intellectual father of Pop art, is feeling trapped and past his prime. His brother, Richard, is a publishing executive tempted by a once-in-a-lifetime offer from the Museum of Modern Art. And the Dutch art historian Coosje van Bruggen, destined to share a transformative connection with Claes, is desperate to become an artist in her own right. Over the following decade, Claes, Richard, and Coosje will explore and redefine what it means to be an artist - that slippery balance of control, connection, and reinvention that obsesses and consumes so many of us.
2022 Feinstein’s/54 Below Concert Series Highlights
Doctor Glas: A Musical Play
Based on the audacious 1905 novel by Swedish master Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas: A Musical Play tells the story of Tyko Gabriel Glas, a profoundly lonely physician (and thirty-three-year-old virgin) in 1900 Stockholm. Glas’s most prominent patient is Reverend Gregorius, a self-satisfied old parson whom Glas instinctually detests. Gregorius’s wife, Helga, is a beautiful young woman who fascinates Glas. When Helga comes to Glas and confides that Gregorius will not cease his rapacious sexual attentions, which are loathsome to Helga, Glas agrees to use his authority as a doctor to prevent the hypochondriac old man from engaging in sex. But this ruse only lasts so long, and Glas, who soon falls fully in love with Helga, is faced with the question of how far he is willing to go to “save” Helga from her husband – even if saving her drives her into the arms of her illicit suitor, the upwardly mobile civil servant Niklas Recke. Told through Glas’s frantic journal entries and the language of northern European early-modern classical music, Doctor Glas is a pitch-dark examination of the frozen and terrified people at the margins of the human race.
