Matthew Heck

Dr. Matthew Heck is the Director of The Conservatory Program at The Rivers School and Musicologist in Residence for Radius Ensemble. He received his PhD in musicology at Brandeis University for a dissertation that situates Dmitri Shostakovich’s harmonic-contrapuntal language within twentieth-century Russian theoretical writings and the history of Russian ideas. Dr. Heck studied in St. Petersburg with the help of an American Councils Study Abroad Scholarship and a Title VIII Fellowship from the U.S. Department of State, and with a Mellon Dissertation Research Grant, he explored Shostakovich's datebooks at the composer's Family Archive in Moscow. His interests extend beyond Russian Music, and his class Love is the Message: Dance Musics and Their Cultures from Disco to Dubstep won a University Prize Instructorship award at Brandeis.