Matthew Bourne is a British avant-garde jazz musician, pianist and composer from Avebury, United Kingdom. Born in 1977, he comes to wider attention in 2001 as one of the winners of the Perrier Jazz Awards in London, the same year he graduates from Leeds College of Music.

Style and recognition

Bourne develops a distinctive piano style that combines strong visual imagery with spoken-word samples. This approach brings him the BBC Radio Jazz Awards Innovation Award in 2002. He also receives the IJFO International Jazz Award in 2005.

Projects and collaborations

He works internationally, performing at festivals across mainland Europe, Scandinavia, Canada and the United States. By this stage he is co-leader of The Electric Dr M, Distortion Trio and Bourne/Davis/Kane, and he also works with other jazz musicians and producers including Dan Berridge of Broadway Project.

With Dan Berridge, Bourne creates music for two albums, In Finite and One Divided Soul, and for three award-winning films: Indians, Here Is Always Somewhere Else and Flikan (The Girl).

Commissions and wider work

Bourne receives commissions from festivals and organisations for large-scale projects, including The Glenn Miller Project, Ending and Songs from a Lost Piano. He also writes music for dance, including Mekwae and The Dancical, classical works such as ...and I didn’t fall in love, again. Autumn 2004 and Written/Unwritten, and collaborative electronic pieces including Phone Book and Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals.

Recordings and teaching

He releases two solo albums, The Molde Concert and Montauk Variations, as well as several collaborative works. Bourne also spends a number of years teaching at Leeds College of Music, where he lectures in principal study piano, composition and composition analysis. He becomes Artist in Residence there in 2008 and leaves in 2010 to focus on his own projects.

Other collaborators

Bourne continues to work as a pianist and analogue synthesist, and records and performs with Sam Hobbs, Franck Vigroux, Laurent Dehors, Marc Ducret, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Andrea Centazzo, Seaming To, Peter Wareham, Barre Phillips, Roger Turner, Paul Dunmall, Tony Bevan, Annette Peacock and Nostalgia 77.