Matthew Lyon Hazzard (b. 1989) is an award-winning Filipino-American composer, conductor, singer, and educator.

Praised for his “exquisite text-setting” and for creating “stunning landscapes of sound” (18th Street Singers), Hazzard’s music is regularly performed by professional, collegiate, and Grammy-award winning ensembles around the world, including the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, the Metropolitan Chorus of Tokyo, the University of Georgia Hodgson Singers, the Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia, the Concordia University Irvine Chamber Singers, the Vancouver Chamber Choir, the Choral Project, and others. His music has been featured in many all-state and honor choirs, including those in Arizona, California, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. He has been commissioned by the Oregon Repertory Singers, the Portland State Chamber Choir, the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus, the Bob Cole Chamber Choir, and others. In 2022, four of his works were performed at three different regional conferences of the American Choral Directors Association, and in 2023, he served as composer-in-residence at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

His music has received numerous accolades. He became a prize winner in the Vancouver Chamber Choir Young Composers Competition in 2011, won the North Carolina Master Chorale Composition Competition in 2012, and was awarded the William and Eleanor Greatbatch Endowed Choral Composition Prize from Houghton College in 2014. He was also awarded the grand prize in the 18th Street Singers 10th Anniversary Composition Competition, second prize in the 2016 International Choral Composition Competition Japan, named PREMIERE|Project composer for the Choral Arts Initiative, and won the 2016 Arrowhead Chorale Choral Composition Competition. In 2017, he won the ACDA Raymond W. Brock Student Composition Competition, and became the inaugural winner of the True Concord Stephen Paulus Emerging Composer Composition Competition. Since then, he has won various awards, including those from CCDA, ACDA, the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus, and more.

Hazzard earned his D.M.A. in Choral Conducting from the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston, his M.M. in Choral Conducting from the Bob Cole Conservatory at California State University Long Beach, and his M.A.T. and B.M. in Music Composition from East Carolina University. He has directed and conducted school, community, church, collegiate, and professional choirs, and is regularly invited as a guest composer and clinician. At the Bob Cole Conservatory at CSULB, he directed the Cantus Tenor-Bass ensemble and the Bel Canto Treble Choir, and served as assistant conductor for the University Choir and award-winning Bob Cole Chamber Choir; he also conducted the USC Thornton Concert Choir at the 2017 Western ACDA Conference in the premiere of his piece, Peace Flows Into Me. At the University of Houston, he directed the entry-level University Women’s Chorus, the Soundscape advanced treble choir, and the Valiant Online Chorus, and conducted the ManCorps Tenor-Bass choir and the premiere mixed choir Concert Chorale in concert. He was also the Choral Conducting Intern at the Houston Chamber Choir for their 2021–2022 season, and a rehearsal conductor for the Houston Symphony Chorus. In 2022, he assembled a choir of his own to perform Eric Whitacre’s 2018 hour-long work for choir, piano, and cello, The Sacred Veil. His work was recognized throughout his education: he received the 2018 and 2019 Outstanding Student Award in Graduate Conducting at CSULB; the 2018 University Achievement Award for Outstanding Graduate Student in Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity by CSULB Academic Affairs; and the 2019 Distinguished Achievement in Creative Activity Award from the CSULB College of the Arts. He was also awarded the Jeanette Chase Bay Area Chorus Scholarship, and the Howard Pollack Scholarship at the University of Houston.

Prior to pursuing his graduate studies, Hazzard taught at Greene Central High School (NC) for four years where his choirs flourished underneath his leadership. His ensembles received consistent superior ratings, and won the 2015 Busch Gardens Music Sweepstakes Award for Best High School Choral performance; an honor that recognizes the strongest performing ensemble across the entire season. In 2016, his choirs were invited to perform on the stage of Carnegie Hall, where they premiered Ivo Antognini’s A Prayer for Mother Earth under the direction of Andrew Crane.

Hazzard now directs the Fullerton College Treble Chorale and Tenor-Bass Chorale, and continues to write for voices at his home in Long Beach, California.