Matt Young
Matt Young is a multi-award winning drummer, producer, and educator based out of Denton, TX.
Since 2022, Matt has been a recording and touring member of White Denim, a Los Angeles based outfit which is due to release their next recordings on Bella Union (UK) in the near future. White Denim has been on and off of the road the last two years including performances at such theatres as the hallowed Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, CA, Bob Weir’s Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley, CA, all Brooklyn Bowls, as well as special events for Fender Musical Instruments for the release of their new series of guitars, American Vintage II.
Also in 2022, Matt took home a Golden Melody Award for Best Producer of an Instrumental Album for his work on Between Now and Never by Invisible Architecture. The album received four nominations in total for Best Album (Instrumental), Best Recording (Instrumental), Best Producer, and Best Composition (for Pulse, written by Jordan Gheen). Between Now and Never, to which Matt wrote the title track, is a collage-like album of sonic worlds occupied by improvisers co-produced with collaborators Alan Kwan (Hong Kong) and Jordan Gheen (Sky Window/ USA).
Upon arriving at The University of North Texas in 2010 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 7-time 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.
In June of 2017, piano trio, AMP Trio (Addison Frei, Perrin Grace, and Matt Young) 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.
Matt is thankful to have performed internationally at the 30th Annual Fajr International Music Festival in Tehran, Iran, being one of the first of American artists to perform in Iran since 1979. Other appearances abroad include the Voll-Damm Jazz Festival in Barcelona, the XXIII Festival Internacional de Jazz Ciudad de Almeria in Almeria, Spain, the London Jazz Fest in the UK, as well as throughout China, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Hong Kong.
Other credits include with Christopher Cross, Horace Bray, Sky Window, AMP Trio, The Night Above Us, Cas Haley, Jackbox Games, Hydro Flask, and Timbaland’s Beatclub. To date, his work can be heard on more than 200 releases as a drummer, producer, mixer, and/ or recording engineer.
Matt proudly endorses Vic Firth drumsticks and Canopus Drums.
