“Drive my dead thoughts over the universe/Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth!”

- Percy Bysshe Shelley,​ “Ode to the West Wind”

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Inspired by the intimate materials found by the researchers of the Book Traces project at the University of Virginia, Matt was commissioned to create an evening of song for the intrepid company Victory Hall Opera, where he is a proud member of the ensemble. The world premiere took place on February 18, 2018, to a sold out audience in the MacGregor Room of the Alderman Library on the UVA campus.

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"Marginalia" from Picnic, Lightning by Billy Collins (1941-) © 1998. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press. "Monuments": a variation on a sestina written as part of a celebration of Washington, D.C. and the millennium with Citypiece: DC Monuments, a commissioned work by composer Robert Kapilow, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, June 28, 2000. The poem was published in Harmless, Mayapple Press 2010.

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• feature articles and stories from Virginia Public Radio (WVTF), CVILLE Magazine, and The Daily Progress

• Victory Hall Opera's website

• the Book Traces Project at the University of Virginia