Matt Young is a multi-award winning drummer, composer, creator, and educator based out of Denton, TX.
Matt spent his formative years growing up in Marietta, GA, a town just outside of Atlanta. It was there he met many influential people in his life, two of which being Justin Varnes and Dr. Gordon Vernick. Atlanta’s vibrant scene and landscape turned Matt’s love of music into a life-long path of discovery. After high school, he moved to Texas to further his studies with Ed Soph at the University of North Texas.
Upon arriving at The University of North Texas for undergraduate studies, Matt was asked to join Grammy-Winning Artist Bob Belden’s, Animation, with Tim Hagans. Animation released Transparent Heart and Machine Language (feat. Bill Laswell and Kurt Elling) on RareNoise Records based in the UK. Both records received acclaim from publications such as JazzTimes, Jazzwise, and Downbeat Magazine. Back at UNT, Matt had the pleasure of playing with the 7x Grammy Nominated ensemble, The One O’Clock Lab Band, under the direction of Steve Wiest. He can be heard on Lab 2013 as a part of The One O’Clock’s long-standing annual recording tradition. In the Summer of 2014, Matt was invited to be a part of the Ravinia Steans Music Institute for Jazz in Chicago where he studied composition (with Rufus Reid, Curtis Fuller, David Baker, and Nathan Davis) and performed original music with a handful of his peers from around the world. In the Spring of 2015, Matt was a participant of Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead 2015 residency program. The two-week-long residency was held at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., where he worked with Program Director Jason Moran, and faculty members: Eric Harland, Carmen Lundy, Andre Hayward, Cyrus Chestnut, Eric Revis, and J.D. Allen. Matt has performed internationally including recent performances at the 30th Annual Fajr Int’l Music Festival in Tehran, Iran, the Voll-Damm Jazz Festival in Barcelona and XXIII Festival Internacional de Jazz Ciudad de Almeria in Almeria, Spain, UK, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and all around the US.
In 2010, Matt was the winner of the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC) Drum Set Competition in the idiom of Jazz.
In January of 2017, Matt released his debut solo record entitled, Headspace, on which Matt played all the instruments, recorded, programmed, and mixed all of the music. Editor-in-Chief of Nextbop, Anthony Dean-Harris , had this to say on the release, “It’s as much a jazz album as it is a drum & bass release, which can appease some folks’ wider ears. It’s a neat little five song collection that’s straddling the lines of all sorts of genres in the best of ways”. http://nextbop.com/blog/mattyoungheadspace
In March of 2017, along with two of his most frequent collaborators, Addison Frei and Perrin Grace, the aptly coined group, AMP Trio, released their third record, aptly titled, Three. SomethingElse! had this to say of a pre-released composition by Perrin, “it’s intuitive and forthright, performed with first-rate rapport. Ranging from hip-hop to straight jazz to free-form improv, it looks both back and ahead with equal reverence. — In short, “N.T. Bag” isn’t played by a trio where one player dominates over the others. With the AMP Trio, everyone dominates.” http://somethingelsereviews.com/2017/02/27/amp-trio-n-t-bag-three-2017-something-else-exclusive-premiere/
In June of 2017, AMP Trio featuring Tahira Clayton won 1st place in the international jazz competition hosted by the Washington D.C. Jazz Festival, DC Jazz Prix. The group was awarded with $15,000 and a year-long partnership with the D.C. Jazz Festival. They look forward to returning to the D.C. Jazz Festival in 2018 for a main stage performance and a follow up performance at next year’s DC Jazz Prix.
Matt proudly plays Canopus Drums and Vic Firth Sticks.