Matthew Sheens is a genre-bending jazz pianist described as “totally innovative and luminous”.
Matthew Sheens is a genre-bending jazz pianist and composer. He is listed as one of Fred Hersch’s “pianists you should know” and described in The Australian as “an outstanding pianist, stoked full of creative ideas and limitless technique… totally innovative and luminous”.
Born in Bowral, and raised in Adelaide, Sheens graduated with a masters degree from the New England Conservatory in Boston in 2009 before relocating to NYC in 2011, where he has been based since.
Sheens has performed and recorded alongside musical luminaries including John Patitucci, Eric Harland, Kendrick Scott, Bob Moses, Donnie
McCaslin, Nir Felder, Myron Walden, Ben Monder and Ben Wendel among many others.
He has performed across Australia, USA, UK, Japan, The Netherlands. Other highlights include the Jazz Hoeilaart International Jazz Festival in Belgium, Montreux International Jazz Festival in Switzerland, Europafest in Romania, Wellington Jazz Festival in New Zealand, Australia’s Wangaratta Jazz Festival, Melbourne International Jazz Festival, International Panama Jazz festival in Panama City, and Festival Paax in Mexico.
In 2012 Sheens released his debut album, Every Eight Seconds, to wide acclaim and won the 2013 APRA/AMCOS Professional Development Award. Sheens released his second album Untranslatable (ABC Jazz) in 2014, and Cloud
Appreciation Day (QFTF) in 2016, which won the Jazz Couleurs Hit Award in France, and American Counterpoint (QFTF) in 2018, which won Australian Jazz Work of the Year at the APRA Art Awards.
A versatile composer, Matthew has had commissions from the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (Symphony No. 1 premiered in Adelaide, in 2019), and has arranged and orchestrated for the Czech National Symphony, Prague.