Matthew Thompson, DMA— collaborative piano, is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Michigan. There he works as a vocal coach and diction teacher for Voice department in addition to teaching large interdisciplinary classes. As a pianist, Dr. Thompson has played with operatic celebrities like Thomas Hampson, Golden Mask winner, Vince Yi, and musical theatre gurus like Tony Award winner, Gavin Creel. Equally comfortable collaborating with large ensembles and instrumentalists, Thompson is Artistic Director for the Carolyn Mawby Chorale, recently featured in the Netflix series Flint Town and released a disc of Japanese composed oboe/piano duets, Japonica, with U-M alumnus and WMU oboe faculty, Dr. Alex Hayashi.



In addition to his work as a pianist, Dr. Thompson’s interests in game audio have become a major component of his teaching and research profile. In 2013, Thompson became one of the first collegiate pedagogues to use video game music as a teaching tool when he created his infamous Video Game Music class, which will surpass 1000 graduates next semester. Thompson has presented multiple times at the North American Conference on Video Game Music (NACVGM), the only scholarly conference on video game music in North America, and was lead organizer and host for the 2018 NACVGM, held at the University of Michigan. During the 2018-2019 school year, Thompson won a grant allowing him to create and teach the first ever collegiate studio of pianists studying video game piano transcriptions. He has performed video game duets with Video Game Pianist, Dr. Martin Leung, and in late 2019 will release the world premiere recording of “For the Piano,” a solo piano work composed by Marty O’Donnell. He maintains a blog about game audio at videogamemusicnerd.blogspot.com and has written proactively commissioned book reviews published in the American Journal of Play. Thompson is delighted to have been invited to serve in his second year on the advisory board for GameSoundCon.