Multi-instrumentalist Matthew Berrill leads a diverse career as a performer, improvisor, composer, arranger and curator.
Matthew is an integral member of numerous ensembles in the jazz, improvised and traditional Irish music spheres, including The Irish Memory Orchestra and Ensemble Ériu, with whom he has recorded three critically-acclaimed albums for Raelach Records, Ensemble Records and Diatribe Records, respectively.
He also works in trio partnership with Cormac McCarthy and Iarla Ó Lionáird, performing at festivals and venues around Ireland and further afield. In 2022, he graduated with Distinction from the Master’s in Arts course at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he was awarded the Benjamin Doniger Jazz Scholarship.
Recent highlights include world premieres at Boyle Arts Festival and at the National Concert Hall as part of New Music Dublin, and designing a soundscape for the award-winning spectacle theatre company Macnas for their production of Con Mór.
Photo: Ibana Matsuo
Hailing from Headford, County Galway, Matthew grew up surrounded by music, playing alongside his siblings and acquiring a rich and varied education in jazz, traditional music and classical music from his parents, who are both music teachers.
As a clarinetist, he was a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland, the National Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and winner of the Senior Clarinet Competition at Feis Ceoil, Dublin. He continues to play Irish traditional music on the guitar and violin, having travelled to perform in such diverse locations as North America, Kenya and The Czech Republic, and at festivals including West Cork Music’s Masters of Tradition.
Following his secondary education, Matthew completed a course in composition, funded by IMRO and run by Ronan Guilfoyle, at Newpark Music Centre, Dublin, and was awarded a Licentiate Diploma in Jazz Performance on saxophone and clarinet from the Guildhall School of Music, London. Subsequently, Matthew studied clarinet and saxophone at undergraduate level with John Ruocco at the Royal Conservatoire, Den Haag, The Netherlands, graduating with a BMus. (Hons.) Degree in Jazz Performance in 2008, and a Master’s Degree in 2010, with a focus on jazz composition.
During his studies, he was a member of the Christian Mendoza Group who won the “Grand Prix” in the Tremplin Jazz Competition in Avignon, France, and was twice awarded a place in the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music in Canada, which lead to a collaborative tour with the international ensemble Sound Circus.
Photo: Alina Pullen www.alinapullenphoto.com
Matthew has worked with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, The Kai Big Band and Northern Ireland Opera. One of three Directors of The Galway Jazz Festival for eight years, he has performed at all of the jazz festivals in Ireland, and further afield at Cadogan Hall and The Vortex Jazz Club, London, The North Sea Jazz Festival, Holland, the Avignon Jazz Festival, France, the Sori Festival, South Korea and the High Notes Festival, Italy, which is curated by his sister Naomi. As a session musician and arranger, he has worked with numerous acclaimed Irish artists including Mick Flannery, John Blek, Pauline Scanlon, Inni-K and The Whileaways, and has recorded on albums for artists including Mick Flannery, John Blek, Inni-K, The Whileaways, Dave Clancy, Niamh Regan, Cormac McCarthy, Naomi Berrill, Jimmy Higgins and Geraldine Cotter, among others.
Matthew curated Galway Music Residency’s 3 Saturdays: 3 Kinds of Music Series for four years from 2018 until 2021, and in partnership with GMR and ConTempo String Quartet he instigated the JazzTempo project, which will see its third iteration programmed as part of The Galway International Arts Festival in 2023 in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Galway Music Residency. Matthew is grateful for the generous support of The Arts Council.
“The band is also blessed with an exceptional player in Berrill, whose clarinet solos on A Child Is Born and No Fehr were so logical and so well-sited within the pieces that they could almost have been written out.”
Ray Comiskey, The Irish Times
“… Ronan Guilfoyle’s exploration of the Brazilian tradition in Jazz with wunderkind reed player Matthew Berrill.”
Cormac Larkin, The Irish Sunday Tribune
Photo: Alina Pullen www.alinapullenphoto.com