About Matt
Matt Hoyne is a jazz guitarist based in Melbourne, Australia. He writes and performs his own music, works as an in-demand guitarist and improviser on the scene and teaches music to high school and tertiary students. Matt unconditionally loves music and hopes to share a bit of that with anyone who will listen. But how did he get this way you ask?
Many, many years ago, in a small hospital room in Clayton, Matthew Liam Hoyne entered the world. His first words were “Coltrane” and “pedal point” and from that moment on, his parents knew he would be a musician. The very next day they enrolled him into guitar lessons with his grade 5 French teacher (it’s normal to say your first words at 11 yeah?) and it was love at first sight (the guitar…not the French teacher). Many, many hours were spent learning songs, chords, melodies and solos, from Jimi Hendrix to B.B. King, Charlie Parker to Pat Metheny. Five years earnt him a scholarship to the VCA secondary school where he learnt and studied with some of Melbourne’s finest music educators. Matt continued to the VCA, completing his BFA undergraduate degree (with honours from Monash university) under the tutelage of Australian jazz icons, Stephen Magnusson, James Sherlock and Tamara Murphy.
Matt now performs regularly under his own name at some of Melbourne’s finest venues, including the Jazz Lab, the Melbourne Recital Centre Salon, Bennett’s Lane and Uptown Jazz Café. He also has been a featured performer at the Melbourne International and Wangaratta Jazz Festival’s. His playing can be seen and heard in projects lead by local legends Sam Bates, Geoff Kluke, Harriett Allcroft, Merinda Dias-Jayasinha, Lewis Pierre, Tamara Murphy and Aaron McCoullough. Matt also works as one third of the corporate jazz powerhouse, SWAY jazz ensemble, whose Friday night residency at the Recital Centre’s Blondie Bar has been going strong for almost 7 years. As well as his performance work, Matt is a passionate music educator and guitar teacher, currently teaching lessons and ensemble workshops at Princes Hill Secondary College and MacRobertson Secondary School.
In 2020, Matt released his debut album Stories We Tell, Songs We Sing (with funding assistance through City of Melbourne’s Quick Response Grants) that features a collection of songs with lyrics that are crafted to reflect the stories and experiences of contemporary Australians. Recorded alongside some of Melbourne’s finest musicians and improvisers, the music seeks to reconcile a love of jazz with a need to respond to, and acknowledge, the 21st century.
In 2021, Matt co-led the Emergence series alongside Harry Tinney, Flora Carbo and Brennan Hamilton-Smith that, through a partnership with Uptown Jazz Cafe, presented a program of original live music featuring young and emerging local musicians. This project was supported by the Creative Victoria and ran for six months in 2021. It culminated in the live album Big Vibe released in early 2022, which documents the final concert of the residency and features Matt Steele, Lewis Pierre and Robbie Finch. In 2022, he was nominated by Tamara Murphy for the prestigious Freedman Fellowship for his original music and contribution to the Australian jazz community.
He also writes a music blog, the noisy australians, that promotes and amplifies independent music made by young Australian improvisers and musicians.
