My Background
John Matthias is an award-winning musician and composer. He has released eight albums via Accidental, Ninja Tune, Nonclassical, Village Green, Sony, Welfare State and Cognitive Shift and he has collaborated with many artists including Radiohead (The Bends) and Coldcut (Man in a Garage). His music has been remixed by many artists including Thom Yorke, Matthew Herbert and Jem Finer (The Pogues) and in 2008 he won the UK PRS for Music Foundation New Music Award (The ‘Turner Prize for Music’) with Jane Grant and Nick Ryan for ‘The Fragmented Orchestra’ which led to the development of The Neurogranular Sampler Audio Unit and the ‘Plasticity’ sound installation at the BFI and Google Campus Building, London. He has performed Internationally at many venues including The Royal Opera House London, The Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris) and Le Poisson Rouge (New York City), has contributed music to 12 feature film scores including composing the score with Jay Auborn to the feature film IN THE CLOUD starring Gabriel Byrne. John has also scored several contemporary dance-theatre works and has worked with Rambert Dance Company, Company Chameleon and Adam Benjamin. He is published by Faber Music.
As Associate Professor at The University of Plymouth UK for 15 years, he was one of 14 PI’s on the €4.1 million EU Marie Curie Project ‘Cognovo’, which explored Cognitive Innovation from an interdisciplinary perspective and he has also initiated funded projects with The Wellcome Trust, Arts Council England, EPSRC and The PRS for Music Foundation. He was recently lead composer on the £1.2 million Charismatic Project (2024-25) co-developing an emotionally adaptive music engine with the audio company, Sound Reactions and the AI Media company Charisma Entertainment. He is currently the Director of PhD studies at Academy of Music and Sound, leading a new International online PhD Programme in Music in partnership with the University of West London. He is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Sound Art (2021) and has a PhD in Theoretical Physics (Many body Quantum Field Theoretical effects at the surface of superfluid helium II) from The University of Exeter (UK).
