Music

Matthew Brown

Matthew Michael Brown was appointed Director of Music at St. Luke’s in February, 2020. At St. Luke’s, he oversees a comprehensive sacred music program and is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Music at St. Luke’s series.

He has concertized throughout the USA and abroad, and several performances have been heard in radio broadcasts of American Public Media’s Pipe Dreams and the nationally syndicated program, With Heart and Voice. As a concert artist, he has performed in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral, London; Barcelona Cathedral, Spain; Grace Cathedral, San Francisco; Washington National Cathedral; Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, New York; Princeton University Chapel; Assembly Hall of the Mormon Tabernacle; Trinity Church on Copley Square, Boston; Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta; Cathedral Church of the Advent, Birmingham; Grace Church Cathedral, Charleston; and Christ Church Cathedral, Nashville. He has premiered works by prominent North Carolina composers, Kenneth Frazelle and Dan Locklair, and has facilitated commissions of new music by Barlow Bradford, David Hurd, Simon Lole, Ned Rorem, and Richard Webster. In 2023, under Matthew's leadership, St. Luke's will endeavor to become a national leader in annually commissioning music by underrepresented composers for traditional liturgies of the Episcopal Church.

He earned degrees in organ performance from the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Eastman School of Music. He also holds the Sacred Music Diploma from Eastman's Institute of Music Leadership. As a grant recipient from the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and The Robert Carwithen Foundation, he pursued two years of post-graduate organ studies with Dame Gillian Weir. Other major teachers included David Higgs, Jack Mitchener, and Wayne Leupold. Earlier in his career, he benefited from master classes with Marie-Claire Alain, Michel Bouvard, David Craighead, and Ewald Kooiman.

He is professionally affiliated with the Association of Anglican Musicians, American Guild of Organists, American Choral Director’s Association, and the Maurice and Marie-Madeleine Duruflé Association. He currently serves on the boards of The Leupold Foundation, Atlanta's Taylor National Organ Playing Competition, and chairs the Nominating Committee for the Southeast region of the American Guild of Organists. Each summer, he manages the Royal School of Church Music in America’s Carolina Summer Choral Residency at Duke University.

Colleen Kingston