Matthew Klohs

From Wind Repertory Project
Matthew Klohs

Biography

Matt Klohs (b. 1973, Queensland, Australia) is an Australian composer, musician and conductor.

Klohs began playing piano at the age of six. While in secondary school, he learned to play flute, clarinet, saxophone, and piccolo. In 1991, at the age of 17, he enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy Band in Melbourne as a flutist. Three years later, he moved to Sydney as a member of the Royal Australian Navy Band there. He left the Navy in 1996 to devote his time to free-lance performing and teaching in Brisbane. He then performed throughout Australia on piano, saxophone and as a vocalist with some of that country’s best known cabaret artists. In 1999, he rejoined the Royal Australian Navy Band, playing woodwinds, keyboard, and as a vocalist. While there, he studied arranging and harmony at the Defence Force School of Music under the tutelage of members of the Australian Army Band.

Matt has served as the Officer-in-Charge and Music Director of both of the full-time RAN Bands, Melbourne and Sydney, and has managed over 1000 performances by Navy musicians to date. He was appointed in 2009 as director of music of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines Band in Devon, England, becoming the first and only foreign national to do so. Other positions held during his 26-year career have included Assistant Director of Music – Navy, Divisional Officer, Event Manager and currently Senior Instructor at the Defence Force School of Music.

Matt’s skills are in demand throughout Australia and internationally as a conductor, clinician and adjudicator, and he is a published composer of wind band works.

He has conducted professional and high level wind bands throughout Australia, in the UK and more recently, in the United States.

A passionate advocate for the creation of new wind band music, Matt is active in commissioning works primarily from Australian composers both emerging and established. Matt’s passion for music and desire to grow the genre at all levels is evident in all he does both from the podium and behind the scenes.


Works for Winds


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