Matthew has pursued a dual career in Organ Building (embracing practical experience of the work of Hill, Lewis, Forster & Andrews, and Willis among others) and in Church Music, having studied organ with George McPhee at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now Royal Conservatoire of Scotland).
Relinquishing full-time Organ Building in 2014, his schedule now comprises professional consultancy work and, as Burgh Organist at Ayr Town Hall, curatorial and outreach responsibilities for an unaltered instrument by Lewis & Co., dating from 1904. He has been Director of Music at Ayr St. Columba Parish Church since 2007, and is a visiting peripatetic tutor at Wellington School.
As Curator of the 1876 Willis organ in Cottier’s Theatre Glasgow, Matthew was involved as a consultant for the instrument’s landmark restoration, completed in 2014. Recent and ongoing consultancy projects include restorations of instruments by Hill (1865), Lewis (1868), Forster & Andrews (1885), Willis (four instruments of 1893, 1896, 1902 and 1912 provenance) and Harrison & Harrison (1903 and 1914).
In maintaining a practical interest in organ conservation, Matthew is Chairman of the Scottish Historic Organs Trust, and since 2014 he has served on the assessment panel of the Historic Organ Listing Scheme for the British Institute of Organ Studies (“BIOS”).
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