Dr. Matthew Hoch
Assistant Professor of Music
Vocal Coordinator
Cooper Fine Arts 115
706-233-7286
mhoch@shorter.edu

Dr. Matthew Hoch, Assistant Professor of Music, earned his BM degree, summa cum laude, from Ithaca College with a triple major in vocal performance, music education, and music theory; his MM degree from the Hartt School with a double major in vocal performance and music history; and his DMA degree in vocal performance and literature from the New England Conservatory. At Shorter University, Dr. Hoch teaches applied voice, vocal literature, and serves as coordinator of the vocal division. Dr. Hoch's students have been accepted into top graduate programs and have won many competitions, including the district Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions, chapter and regional MTNA Young Artist Competition auditions, and chapter and regional NATS auditions. Equally at home as a musical theatre pedagogue, his students have been accepted into many professional training and summer stock programs, have consistently been top scorers at the Georgia Theatre Conference, and have included twelve Kennedy Center ACTF Irene Ryan nominees, including the 2011 Best Musical Theatre Performer in the Southeast Region. From 2006-2010, Dr. Hoch directed the Shorter University Guest Artist Series and the New Music Series. Dr. Hoch continues to serve as an advisor for several student organizations and is a member of many committees. He lives in Rome, Georgia, with his wife, Theresa, and three children: Hannah, Sofie, and Zachary.

Dr. Matthew Hoch

Professional Service

As a vocal pedagogue, Dr. Hoch has been extremely active in the nation’s two largest organizations for teachers of singing: the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) and the New York Singing Teachers Association (NYSTA). With NATS, he has coordinated the NATS CHATS program from 2006–2011 and is currently serving his second term as chair of the Professional Development Program Committee for the National Board of Directors; with SER-NATS, he has served as Repertoire Consultant and on the Musical Theatre Revision Task Force; and has served as Historian, Repertoire Consultant, and Registrar for GA-NATS. In 2010, he adjudicated the final round of the TEXOMA-NATSAA auditions. He is an alumnus of the 2006 NATS Intern Program, where he was apprenticed to National NATS President Dr. Donald Simonson. As a recipient of the 2007 NATS Vocal Pedagogy Award, he studied CCM vocal pedagogy with Jeannette LoVerti at Shenandoah University’s Music Theatre Vocal Pedagogy Institute, where he earned three levels of certification in Somatic Voicework Training™ – The LoVetri Method. He coordinated and hosted the 2009 NATS Intern Program at Shorter University. Dr. Hoch's students regularly win awards at the annual GA-NATS and SER-NATS auditions.

With NYSTA, Dr. Hoch has served as Editor-in-Chief of VOICEPrints (the Official Journal of NYSTA) since 2008 and is a member of the Board of Directors, the Professional Development Program Committee, and the Internet Technology Committee. He has completed the five-course core curriculum of NYSTA’s Oren Lathrop Brown Professional Development Program and has been awarded the NYSTA’s Distinguished Voice Professional (DVP) certificate.

Performance

Gianni Schicchi

Dr. Hoch has performed as a Bach soloist with many professional organizations, including the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra (in Bach’s cantatas BWV 56 and BWV 173a) and at the Oregon Bach Festival (in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion), the Hartford Symphony (in Bach's Magnificat), and the Vox Consort (in Bach's St John Passion). In 2008, he was one of seven national finalists in the Louisville Bach Competition. His professional oratorio experience includes over a dozen other works by JS Bach, Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s Paukenmesse, Mozart’s Coronation Mass, Mendelssohn's Elijah, Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem, Fauré’s Requiem, Duruflé’s Requiem, Puccini's Messa di Gloria, Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs and Dona nobis pacem, Dvořák’s Te Deum, and Orff’s  Carmina Burana. His 2011–2012 season will include Barber's Dover Beach with the Balkan String Quartet. Recent operatic credits have included Horace Tabor in The Ballad of Baby Doe, Melchior in Amahl and the Night Visitors, Falke in Die Fledermaus, Don Alhambra in The Gondoliers, Jupiter in Orphée aux enfers, Fiorello in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Silvio in Un ballo in maschera, Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro, and the title roles in Gianni Schicchi and Dido and Aeneas. In 2011–2012 he will perform the role of Ben in Menotti's The Telephone. Dr. Hoch has held summer apprenticeships with Ash Lawn Opera and the College Light Opera Company on Cape Cod. From 2003–2005 he was the baritone soloist at historic Trinity Church on Copley Square in Boston.

A champion of art song and recital singing, Dr. Hoch recently performed Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch at Spivey Hall. Other repertoire includes major cycles and sets by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Strauss, Beethoven, Fauré, Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc, Leguerney, Vaughan Williams, Finzi, Britten, Copland, Barber, and De Falla. Dr. Hoch performs in over a dozen languages and has recently began delving deeply into Scandinavian/Nordic song repertoire.

Also interested in new music, Dr. Hoch can be heard as a soloist on the Navona recording of Kile Smith’s Vespers with the Piffaro Renaissance Band and the Crossing. At the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, he studied twentieth century vocal techniques in New York City with Meredith Monk, a workshop that resulted in his solo and conducting debuts in Carnegie's Zankel Hall. As a soloist, he has sung world premieres by Robert Kyr, Daniel Asia, Jocelyn Hagen, Norman Mathews, and Sorrel Hayes. His voice teachers have included Larry Weller, Mark St. Laurent, Joanna Levy, Mitchell Piper, Susan Clickner, Carol McAmis, Randie Blooding, and Donald Nally.

Conducting

Dr. Hoch is Choirmaster at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Rome, Georgia, where he plans, rehearses, and conducts service music and anthems in the Anglican tradition. From 2006–2008, he directed the Shorter Chorus; under his direction, the Chorus performed repertoire in ten languages and explored many genres, including the Viennese mass, the Italian canzonetta, the English oratorio and carol, Jewish liturgical music, French operetta, the African-American spiritual, American Broadway repertoire, and a variety of contemporary octavos. From 2005–2006, he served as Director of Choral Activities at the University of Wisconsin-Barron, where he conducted the Red Cedar Choir, a community-based ensemble that drew its singers from Northern Wisconsin. He recently conducted the 2010 Gordon County High School Honors Chorus.

Before returning to graduate and doctoral school, Dr. Hoch served as Director of Music and Drama at Thomas A. Edison High School in Elmira Heights, New York. As an undergraduate at Ithaca College, he was the Dana Intern and Assistant Conductor with the Ithaca Children’s Choir, with whom he toured Spain in the summer of 1998. He has directed church choirs in New York, Connecticut, and Wisconsin. In 2007, he studied with the choral legend Alice Parker on a Melodious Accord Fellowship. His conducting teachers have included Edward Bolkovac and Janet Galván.

Scholarly Activities

Dr. Hoch is the author of a forthcoming book, A Dictionary for the Modern Singer, which will be published in 2013 by Scarecrow Press. As a scholar, he has researched, written, presented, and published on a variety of topics, including Richard Strauss, French art song, classical and popular singers, choral literature, and the female “belt” voice. He has been selected as a presenter at many conferences, including SETC, CMS (national), NOA (national), AMS (mega-regional), GMEA (state), GMTA (state), CMENC (state), the International Conference on the Arts in Society (Kassel, Germany), and the New Vocal Educators Symposium (Bloomington, Indiana). His writings are published by Salem Press and Pomegranate Communications. He is a two-time recipient of the Mu Phi Epsilon Musicological Research Award and was awarded the 2010 Bettylou Scandling Hubin Grant for World Music/Multicultural Studies by the Mu Phi Epsilon Foundation.

Dr. Hoch is a member of Mu Phi Epsilon, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, Pi Kappa Lambda, Phi Kappa Phi, Phi Beta, Pi Lambda Theta, Kappa Delta Pi, and Phi Delta Kappa. He is a lifetime member of ACDA, MENC, SRME, AMS, and SEM, and an active member of NATS, MTNA, SMT, the International Phonetic Association, and the Voice Foundation. He is recognized as a Nationally Certified Teacher of Music (NCTM) by MTNA.