MATT RAY is an Obie Award winning theater-maker, composer, pianist, singer, songwriter, arranger, and music director. His arrangements have been called “wizardly” (Time Out NY) and “ingenious” (NY Times), and his piano playing referred to as “classic, well-oiled swing” (NY Times) and “to cry for” (Ebony). For his work on Taylor Mac’s show A 24-Decade History of Popular Music he and Mac shared the 2017 Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired By American History. He and Mac’s jazz-based theater piece The Hang opened to rave reviews in January of 2022, and won Matt a 2023 Obie Award for Music Direction and Composition. The show also received 4 Drama Desk and 2 Drama League nominations including a Drama Desk nomination for Matt Ray for Best Music.

Matt’s latest collaboration with Taylor Mac, the rock opera Bark of Millions, premiered at the Sydney Opera House in October 2023 to great acclaim. For this 4 hour and 20 minute ensemble driven rock opera, Matt is composer, music directer, and performer in the show. The U.S. East Coast premiere of the show was at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater in February of 2024, and the West Coast premiere was at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, also in February of 2024. The European premiere will be at the Berliner Festspiele in Berlin, Germany in October of 2024.

Notable live performances include playing at Carnegie Hall with Kat Edmonson, playing the Hollywood Bowl with reggae legend Burning Spear, and touring the Caribbean and Central America with his piano trio as a US Department of State Jazz Ambassador. His show Matt Ray Plays Hoagy Carmichael featuring Kat Edmonson premiered at Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series in 2018. Other work includes music directing Queen Esther’s The Billie Holiday Project at the Apollo Theater’s Music Cafe in Harlem (2012), Lincoln Center with Joey Arias (2015), Edinburgh Fringe with Lady Rizo (2012), music directing Taylor Mac’s Obie award winning play The Lily’s Revenge at the HERE Arts Center in New York (2009), and co-writing songs for and performing in Bridget Everett’s one-hour Comedy Central special Gynecological Wonder (2015) as well as Everett’s hit show Rock Bottom (2014).

Matt has done musical arrangements for a number of TV shows and films including Somebody Somewhere (2021), Nurse Jackie (2014), Blue Night (2018), and the Oscar nominated Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018).

Matt has released two jazz albums as a leader: We Got It! (2001) and Lost In New York (2006); and one album of original pop/folk material called Songs For the Anonymous (2013). We Got It! reached #12 on the jazz radio charts and Lost In New York! reached #27. His instrumental cover of Curtis Mayfield’s The Makings of You has over 4 million spins on Pandora.

“The kind of theater that feeds you…a celebration of theater itself — a paean to collaboration and company, to rampant beauty and to the necessary balm of gathering together.” — New York Times on The Hang

The 100-minute show sweeps you up in its exuberant, joyous anarchy, propelled by the infectious, toe-tapping abandon of composer and music director Matt Ray’s jazz songs and interludes. — The Wall Street Journal on The Hang

“Thrilling music by Matt Ray” — Vulture

★★★★ “Ray’s music (is) by turns lush and cool, eerie and exuberant” — NY Stage Review on the Hang

“The jazz score, with detours into blues and gospel, is always arresting and often beguiling in its textured beauty, not to mention its variety.” — The Wrap on The Hang

“A radical cry for gaiety in an oppressively serious world” — TheatreMania on The Hang

“One exhilarating number follows another” — Theatrescene.net on the Hang

“In overall impact, the closest comparison to The Hang I can think of is the iconic renegade musical Hair, both of which possess free form structures and an uncontainable life force that bursts through the fourth wall and engulfs the audience.” — The Hangover Report

“A talented pianist” — Billboard

“Ingenious musical arranger” — New York Times

“A pianist whose plaintive playing was to cry for” — Ebony

“Classic, well-oiled swing” — New York Times

“Wizardly song arrangements” — Time Out NY

“Superb musical director and pianist” — The Guardian

“Magnificent pianist” — Artburst Miami

“Virtuosic” — Village Voice

“Evocative musical arrangement” — Broadwayworld.com

“Musicianship is top-notch” — womanaroundtown.com

“Wonderful—so instinctive” — Across the Arts UK.

“Matt Ray’s creative song arrangements make old tunes sound like like they were written just in time for this year’s Grammys.” — Chloe Veltman, KQED

“Music director Matt Ray drew out the best in the superb orchestra.” — Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times

“A 24-Decade History of Popular Music is markedly enhanced by the lush musical arrangements created and conducted by Matt Ray (I’m not gushing, these orchestrations are a genuine class act).” — George Heymont, Huffington Post

“The arrangements by Matt Ray are often spellbinding” — Jesse Green, Vulture

“Ray smoothly led the troupe through paces that fused virtuosity and nuance, deftly navigating uptempo tracks…and somber musical landscapes.” — Ernest Hardy, Crave