Matthew Hill

My interests in theology, monastic spirituality, and the role of silence in music, engage my teaching, scholarship, and performing with a unique perspective. As a teacher I act as a catalyst for the student to express the many subtleties of musical meaning. This entails technical refinement, an interpretation that is consistent and logical, as well as a sense of vision for any given work. Music reveals to us as individuals, and as communities, untapped potentials for understanding, beauty, and grace.

Dr. Matthew Hill, pianist and Goshen College professor of music, teaches piano, chamber music, music history, and is chair of the music department. He is an active recitalist, chamber musician, concerto performer, and master classes teacher. His interests in monasticism, theology, and the role of silence in music, engage his teaching, scholarship, and performing with a unique perspective and depth. He was on the piano faculty at the Schlern International Music Festival in northern Italy and has also taught at the Wausau Conservatory (WI), at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, and has also been a member of the piano faculty at the prestigious Interlochen Fine Arts Summer Camp.

Dr Hill was awarded a faculty renewal grant that entails creation of a recital program to illuminate the connections that exist between music, color, image, and faith (‘hearing’ and ‘seeing’). The French Catholic composer Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) said about his own music that it was intended as a type of “liturgy for the concert hall.” This resemblance to liturgy is due for several reasons: the use of descriptive titles and accompanying religious texts that reveal the religious intentionality of the music, and the unique relationship that exists between ‘hearing’ and ‘seeing’ in his music. Messiaen had a unique synaesthetic reaction to music in the internal “seeing” of colors, a type rainbow of colors, that was related to his experience of stained-glass windows as a church organist. Franz Liszt (1811-1886), wrote several important works that emphasize images of faith. The images are those of a fountain in Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este. In two other pieces, the images are those from the lives of Saint Francis of Assisi speaking to the birds, and Saint Francis of Padua walking on the waves. This program will be first performed at Benedictine University in Kansas in the fall of 2018 and again in March at the School of Music at Butler University in 2019.

For the 2016 Indiana Music Teacher’s Conference Matthew performed a world premiere of a Piano Trio (Goyescas XXI Homage to Enrique Granados) by Jorge Muñiz alongside his colleagues Solomia Soroka (violin) and Jose Rocha (cello). Dr. Hill was selected to present at the 2014 MTNA National Convention on his studies with Claude Frank (“Brushes with Greatness”). Other professional highlights include: a series of master classes and a recital performance at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music in Chengdu, China; contribution of a chapter to Silence, Music, Silent Music (Ashgate 2007), publication of articles for Clavier, and an invited presention at “Couleurs dans le vent: Celebrating the Music of Olivier Messiaen” held at the University of Kansas. Matthew Hill has performed with with the UW-Madison Symphony, the Goshen College Orchestra, on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Live from the Elvehjem and at the White House in Washington D.C. as accompanist for the Wausau Conservatory Choraliers Children’s Choir.

The Blue Griffin recording label released his CD recording, Silent Colors, containing works by Liszt, Debussy, Messiaen, and several Gershwin songs arranged as virtuoso etudes by Earl Wild. The American Record Guide commenting on this recording states: “Matthew Hill is a talented pianist who has definite ideas as to how this music should go. He has a respectable technique to accomplish his aims.”

He has a doctorate in piano performance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison under Howard Karp and has also studied with the renowned Beethoven performer Claude Frank, as well as with Dr. Richard Angeletti, and Dr. Garik Pedersen. His students have won various competitions – including a variety of concerto performances, and have also gone onto graduate study at the following universities and conservatories: Westminster Conservatory, University of Wisconsin-Madison. University of Oklahoma, Indiana University, University of Kansas, Bowling Green University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the University of Southern Florida, and at the Kansas City Conservatory of Music.

Matthew began piano lessons at the very late age of 12 because of a strong desire to learn “The Entertainer” by Scott Joplin. His music education increased rapidly when he learned of the music of Beethoven from reading Peanuts comic strips. His five much older sisters explained to the young boy that record albums of Beethoven Symphonies were owned by their parents, and Matthew then spent many happy hours listening to these as well as many other musical masterpieces. Another highlight of his youth was the discovery of the Hanon Piano Studies, and he gleefully played through all 60 exercises daily. He even expanded into Czerny, Pishna, and especially valued the School of Finger Independence by Isidore Phillipe. He credits his parents’ growth in patience and holiness as a direct result of his daily, and highly repetitive, technique regime.

DMA in Piano Performance, 1995
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Major Teacher: Howard Karp
Dissertation: “Messiaen’s Regard du Silence as an Expression of Catholic Faith.”

MM in Piano Performance, 1989
University of Kansas
Major Teacher: Dr. Richard Angeletti
Claude Frank Master Classes

BM in Piano Performance, 1987
Missouri State University
Major Teacher: Dr. Garik Pedersen
Graduated Summa cum laude

Indiana Music Teachers Association Conference Presentation, St. Mary’s College, 2024
Playing Etudes I Cannot Play: Musings on Technique, Continued Pianistic Development, and the Art of Practicing

Indiana Music Teachers Association Conference Presentation, University of Indianapolis
2019 Lecture Recital, “Hearing and Seeing in the Music of Liszt and Messiaen”

Music Teachers National Association Presentation, Chicago 2014
Brushes with Greatness – Studying with Claude Frank

Schlern International Music Festival (Italy), 2013

“Faith, Silence, and Darkness Entwined in Messiaen’s ‘Regard du silence,’” 2007
Chapter in Silence, Music, Silent Music, (Ashgate)

Sichuan Conservatory of Music, Chengdu China, 2006
Taught a week of master classes, solo recital performance

College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, InvitedLecture, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang, China, 2006
“”The Musical Narrative, Hermeneutics, and Context from Monteverdi to John Cage””

Coleurs dans le vent: A Celebration of the Music of Messiaen, Kansas University, 2002 “”Hearing and Seeing in Messiaen’s ‘Regard du Silence””