Matthew Thompson

Clinical Assistant Professor of Music

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Bio

Matthew Thompson – DMA (collaborative piano) is a pianist, vocal coach, conductor, educator, and scholar specializing in Korean art song and video game music. He joined the SMTD faculty in 2011, where he teaches in Voice & Opera and Music Studies. A former student described studying with him as “one of the most wholesome, nerdy, epic-but-modest unicorn professor experiences you’ll ever find at U-M.”

As a collaborative pianist, Dr. Thompson has performed with artists including Sumi Jo, Thomas Hampson, Golden Mask winner Vince Yi, Tony Award winner Gavin Creel, and video game vocalist Laura Intravia. At U-M, he coaches singers and teaches courses in vocal repertoire, lyric diction, art song, audition techniques, crossover repertoire, and Korean art song. Thompson’s favorite work with singers is behind the scenes as a vocal coach; in this role he’s helped prepare singers for performances both locally and for the major stages of the world including La Scala, The Metropolitan Opera, and the Bolshoi Theatre. He conducted U-M’s 2022 chamber-opera production of Die Zauberflöte.

Equally at home collaborating with instrumentalists, Thompson has appeared on the Ann Arbor Symphony Chamber Music Series, the Detroit Chamber Winds & Strings series, and the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival’s Vignette Series. His international performance and teaching activities include three recitals at the 2018 International Double Reed Society Conference in Granada, Spain, and in 2024, a performance at the Auditorio Santa Úrsula and a vocal masterclass at the Universidad Nacional de Música in Lima, Peru.

A lifelong gamer, Dr. Thompson has made video game music a central component of his work, particularly as it relates to pedagogy and piano performance. Thousands of students have enrolled in the pioneering Video Game Music class he created at U-M, and he also has taught ‘Bleep’ ‘Bloop’: Writing about Video Game Music and individual video game piano lessons. Since 2018, he has served on GameSoundCon’s advisory board and co-chaired its Ludomusicology/Sound Studies track. He also holds leadership roles with the North American Conference on Video Game Music. His game music performances include the world premiere of Thomas B. Yee’s Concerto Ludus for piano and Game Boy, sold-out solo-piano Candlelight Concerts featuring music from The Legend of Zelda, and collaborations with Laura Intravia. His first book, The Video Game Piano Phenomenon: Press Ab to Play will be published in 2027 by Intellect.

Thompson is the founder and editor of the Korean Art Song Resource, an open-access digital project containing more than 1,000 song records, lyric-diction materials, and an annotated bibliography. Since its 2022 launch, the resource has received more than 500,000 visits. The same year, Thompson organized and performed “K-ArtSong: a Korean Art Song Recital”; related media coverage accumulated more than 15 million views. In 2024, he traveled to South Korea to perform with U-M student Jack Morin on KBS World TV’s Korea Invites U. In 2026, he hosted the SeAH Korean Art Song Gala at U-M’s historic Hill Auditorium, drawing an audience of 1,500 and performing once again with Jack Morin as well as with Sumi Jo. The event raised nearly $25,000 for future Korean Performing Arts Initiative activities.

Thompson’s scholarship and creative practice have received support from the SeAH Corporation, the Michigan Arts and Culture Council, the Greater Flint Arts Council, U-M’s Nam Center for Korean Studies, the Center for Japanese Studies, ArtsEngine, the Arts Initiative, and other university programs.

Active as a musician in the southeast Michigan community, Dr. Thompson is Artistic Director and Conductor for the Carolyn Mawby Chorale, based in Flint Michigan, which was recently featured in the Netflix original series, Flint Town.

Thompson received masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan in collaborative piano, studying with his long time mentor, Martin Katz. Thompson’s summer training included prestigious young artist programs Song Fest, the Merola Opera Program, and Wolf Trap Opera. Summers are now typically spent researching, writing, and teaching music to students of all levels; most recently, at SMTD’s MPulse Vocal Arts Institute.