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photography by Brenda Ladd
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Always singing in one form or another, by age six Matthew Hinsley also read music on piano, violin and cello. He was ten when he began studying classical guitar. For him, the guitar held magical power and determined the direction of his life. As a high school sophomore, Matthew enrolled at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. This international school was populated not only by students and faculty but often by recruiters from all the major American music conservatories. He was a student at Interlochen for scarcely three months when the invitation to study at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music arrived, leading him to depart high school two years early.
A member of the guitar faculty of the University of Texas at San Antonio, Matthew obtained his Bachelor of Music from Oberlin at age 20, and his Master of Music two years later from the University of Texas at Austin, where he also completed his Doctor of Musical Arts in 2003. Matthew’s primary guitar instructors were Stephen Aron and Adam Holzman. A recipient of numerous performance-based awards, and an active performer, he regularly gives concerts throughout the United States. Dr. Hinsley has premiered many new works, most recently a collection of five songs written for him in 2002 by Jonathan Kulp on poetry of Emily Dickinson. In his program notes for the Dickinson songs the composer wrote: “Knowing Hinsley's considerable abilities as a guitarist/singer, I felt free to write fairly challenging parts for both guitar and voice with full confidence that he could pull it off, and he does so with an ease that takes one's breath away.”
Matthew has received many foundation grants and significant private donations to run concert series of international performing artists as well as extensive community outreach programs. In 2000 he won the Music Teacher’s National Association, Gibson Collegiate Artist Guitar Competition and won Second Prize in the American String Teacher’s Association National Solo String Competition. With a strong interest in art history and non-profit art organizations in America, he has published four articles in Soundboard, the international trade journal of the Guitar Foundation of America. His Doctoral treatise is the first in-depth study of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s ten-song cycle Vogelweide.
About his debut solo CD Live, in Austin, Michael Barnes of the Austin-American Statesman wrote, “Hinsley plays the classical guitar with rare clarity and composure.” Hinsley’s second CD release, Two Muses, was recorded with flutist Jennifer Rhyne. Passions Move, Hinsley’s third CD, is his debut recording as a singer and guitarist and contains the first commercially available recording of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Vogelweide. David and Maria Russell, upon hearing Passions Move wrote: “…wonderful recording. We heard the CD you gave us…and we love it. You have a very beautiful voice. We are sure you will be successful because what you do is pretty unique and you do it really well… Congratulations!”