I have a confession to make...

I have a confession to make...

I am a professional musician who rarely listens to music for fun. Does that make me weird? I think it does.

Let me clarify- my life is far from devoid of music. In fact, there is hardly any time when there is no music playing. I listen to music that I’m working on or when I’m looking for a song for a setlist. Beyoncé’s Renaissance and Cowboy Carter are on permanent rotation at our house, and when that’s not playing, I almost always have lofi music on for the dog, to drown out the neighbor dogs and school buses on our street and hoping to save our eardrums from his own reactive outbursts. Sometimes I come downstairs to the living room in the morning and the white noise or lofi has been playing on all night, it’s just a part of the background and I don’t even notice it to shut it off in the evening.

But I rarely just listen to music for fun, outside of my work. I fill my quiet moments with podcasts and youtube videos and rain sounds and episodes of Chopped on TV (fully completing my transformation into my mother). My brain is broken like everyone else in my generation and I don’t like to leave too much quiet time, but for some reason listening to music has become a purely practical event. When I was in graduate school for music, I would put EDM beats or even just white noise in my ears as I left campus, just to drown out my own brain and all the music I had worked on all day. I needed a break from it in order to keep going back.

If I do consume non-work music, it’s still for practical purposes. I usually listen to a song or album one time and that’s it. I love to scroll the ‘New Releases’ tab of Apple Music, and will usually give a listen to any new album by a major artist. I have almost always heard the newest Sabrina Carpenter or Doechii album before anyone I know, within the first few days of release, but it’s just because I want to know what it sounds like and what the trends are in pop music. Once I’ve heard it, I check it off my mental list and move on. If I listen to music on a road trip, it’s the soundtrack to an upcoming show I’m learning (practical), or it’s old music from high school I know well and can sing along to, with the purpose of keeping myself awake (practical).

Once I was chatting with two professional performing musicians over drinks at Pearl’s, on the East end of Cincinnati, and we all came to the realization that how we approached music and what we looked for in it was very different. My partner Douglas talked about loving the music itself- he’s always revered composers and loved music theory, paying close attention to how music is put together. The more complexity and craft there is behind a certain piece, the more he is likely to be obsessed with it.

My friend Tyler loved performers. I remember the summer we met, at a small rural summer opera camp in Arkansas. We would sit in the cabins on our afternoons off and he would play for me performances on youtube of opera singers and musical theater singers and solo pianists. He loved especially bel canto singers, some of the most controlled, refined, and athletic performers in the world (vocally-speaking, anyways), always noting the impressiveness of their skills in language and breath precision. He’s the biggest opera recordings-buff I’ve ever met, but a singer in just about any genre could capture his attention if they were truly talented and made strong, emotional, and technically-perfect choices.

For me, I realized that what I loved about music (and what keeps me coming back to this career, no matter how many times I’ve pretended to quit) is the practical work of actually making music. Yes, I love to practice on my own- playing the piano is just plain fun! However, I’m most excited when I have rehearsals with other people. When I was 6 years old, my piano teacher paired me with my first piano duet partner and taught me that music was something to be made with other people. In college I was technically a solo piano major, and I did give solo recitals when necessary, but my piano teacher had to beg me to practice my Beethoven sonatas when all I wanted to do was play opera arias for a dramatic soprano in a practice room. My graduate degree was specifically in collaborative piano, basically professional accompanying. Playing chamber music, music directing a musical, accompanying an opera rehearsal, these are what makes me happiest and what I have always seeked out. The genre doesn’t matter, as long as I’m making music with other people who care about it and who are approaching their craft from an authentic place.

So I love to MAKE music, and luckily I get to all the time. Most of my consumption of music has always come from my own personal, tactical involvement in the making of it. When I was in high school I actually did listen to a ton of music for fun (mostly musical theater), but even then I imagined myself as a part of the performance, singing or playing or conducting. I was listening practically for instrumentation and style and the creative choices of the performers, looking for anything I could steal learn from that would help me perform the music better and more accurately. For me, the enjoyment of (and emotional connection to) music has always come from being a part of it.

What draws you to music? Do you connect more with the piece, the performers or performing it yourself?

Upcoming:

Monday September 29, 6-9pm: Queen City Cabaret at Washington Park

Making Arrangements

I started making my own arrangements for the Cabaret a few years back - we were never able to find sheet music that matched the recordings we wanted to perform, so I would scratch out leadsheets on a cheap version of Sibelius to give to our band, that at least showed the intros and endings we wanted. Gradually we got more creative and starting mashing tunes up, creating actual brand new arrangements. I’m grateful to my band members who suffered through early versions as I learned what has helpful and necessary to see in sheet music - what cues does the bass player need? How can I get the drummer on board without actually writing out a drum part (something I will someday learn how to do)? Arranging for guitar felt even more foreign, sometimes it still does. But each time I prepare the arrangements and sheet music for another show, I feel like I’m a little bit closer to know how to approach things.

This year has been one for the books arranging-wise! Sarah and I arranged more songs for our Cozy Christmas, Rocktails, and Songs and Stories of the Tin Pan Alley shows this year than ever before, including several medleys/mashups we are super proud of. I also provided some arrangements and orchestrations for Mrs. Dalloway: A New Musical at Cincinnati Shakespeare, did some major edition to the piano/vocal score of the opera The Knock by Aleksandra Vrebalov (this new edition was used at Central City Opera this summer), and have also been lucky enough to do some private arranging-for-hire for some singers with special requests. One of these projects was for Schyler Vargas, a super talented guy who needed a couple of arrangements/transcriptions for the American Traditions competition in Savannah, GA.

Schyler sent me Youtube videos of performances he liked for ‘Bed I Made’ by Allen Stone and ‘Cry to Me’ by Solomon Burke, but none of them were performed with piano and he couldn’t find sheet music anywhere on the internet to give to his pianist for the competition. I was able to make some transcriptions of both songs and gave them piano accompaniment parts inspired by those original versions but that worked better for just piano. His competition pianist Aaron Lehrian took it to the next level and added some serious style. Absolutely a blast to work on these for Schyler and it is no surprise based on his performances that he was a finalist in the competition!

I love to work on projects like these! Have some sheet music projects in your dreams that you want to make a reality! I can do transcriptions, turn handwritten notes into clean printed sheet music, get you a transposition you can’t find online, or even make a brand new arrangement. Reach out via the hire page on my website and let’s make it happen!

Autumn Leaves

Upcoming September Events!

Tis the season for smoky autumnal jazz! Here's a couple of upcoming FREE Queen City Cabaret shows where you can catch Sarah and Matthew playing some of their favorite jazz and theater standards celebrating the cooler weather and changing leaves.

Sunday, 9/14 at 3:00pm: 'St. B at 3' - St. Barnabas Church

More info: https://www.st-barnabas.org/stbat3

Monday, 9/29 from 7:00-10:00pm: Jazz at Washington Park

More info: https://washingtonpark.org/series/jazz-at-the-park-25/

Find out more about these and other upcoming shows at www.queencitycabaretcincy.com!


Mon 9/22 at 8:00pm, Tues 9/23 at 10:45am: Rosh Hashanah at Valley Temple

If you have a craving for challah bread and are looking for a home temple to celebrate the Jewish New Year (Year 5786!), join us at Valley Temple for Rosh Hashanah services! I love collaborating with Marilyn Zelcer (cantor), Christina Hazen (soloist), Avery Bargasse (soloist), Betty Douglas (flute) and Tom Guth (cello) on some really incredible and meaningful music. You do need to call ahead and reserve a free ticket if you'd like to attend.

More info: https://valleytemple.com/high-holidays/

Follow Matthew on Substack for more!

September-Spring-Summer

Starting off this new venture with, what else, a retrospective. Professionally, summer 2025 has been a busy but very fulfilling period full of music directing, arranging, and performing.

May and June: Mrs. Dalloway

It was truly an honor to music direct and contribute some arrangements/orchestrations for the world premiere of 'Mrs. Dalloway', a new musical by the brilliant Lindsey Augusta Mercer. The cast was incredible and it was fun to get to know a new (to me) theater company in town.

Also - this show marked the biggest band I’ve ever conducted (fortunately an easy job when you hire stellar musicians and wonderful humans) and first time creating orchestrations for a show. I think I could get hooked….

July: Tin Pan Alley

When Cincinnati Opera approached Sarah Folsom and myself last winter about doing a Tin Pan Alley studio session collaboration, we were instantly excited but wanted to make sure we could put together a show that both had our classic QCC brand of authentic cheesiness™️ but was polished and balanced enough for the opera audience. We spent hours refining the set list and then gave each song a brand new QCC arrangement - the most new arrangements we’ve ever created for a single show. This plus the insane talents of Victoria Okafor and Simon Barrad as guest artists and the wonderful opera production team (sorry for asking for almost 100 light cues just for a cabaret concert!) added up to a show we were SO proud of.

(Doesn’t hurt that the Wilkes Theater at Music Hall is the best cabaret venue in town)

August: Grease

I was wary about taking on Grease after a long a busy summer, but will jump at any chance to work with Eric Byrd- not just a friend but a director and choreographer I have so much respect for. So in August we went on a field trip to Rydell High. The cast (mostly students from CCM and other area universities) was mind-blowingly good, the audiences were packed and loved it, the band sounded great, and under Eric’s direction we made a show where you loved the characters and the ‘Grease vibes’ and almost forgot how dumb of a show Grease really is.

Bonus- getting to work with TV icon Paige Davis, who millenials probably remember as the host of Trading Spaces in the early 2000s (but my millenial cast did not).

Shoulder

One exciting but not-so-fun thing from August was dislocating my shoulder- not ideal for a pianist / music director! Exactly 2 weeks from opening Grease, I was in the emergency room with my shoulder laying not quite in its socket after a weight-lifting injury. The ER team was great, and of course the Carnegie was most wonderfully supportive, bringing in a substitute pianist for several rehearsals while I healed and conducted with my left hand. Sling came off on opening night and luckily, a good physical therapist has me back to my regularly scheduled ‘Greased Lightning’ choreography, good as new 🙂

September

Looking ahead, September isn’t any less busy than the rest of the summer. The Jewish High Holidays are coming up, and I’ll be celebrating the new year for the 9th year in a row by accompanying the services at Valley Temple. Queen City Cabaret has a pretty stacked lineup, including 3 hours of music at Washington Park on Monday, September 29.

It’s my plan to post regular updates here, including upcoming shows, so check out this feed, follow me on Substack (https://substack.com/@matthewumphreys) and also subscribe to the QCC newsletter at www.queencitycabaretcincy.com to keep up-to-date on where to catch us next. Thanks for reading and happy music making!