Matthew Swanson is Director of Choruses for the Cincinnati May Festival, a cornerstone of the Cincinnati arts community since its founding in 1873. He is the artistic leader of the May Festival’s choral ensembles—the May Festival Chorus, the May Festival Chamber Choir, the May Festival Youth Chorus and the Cincinnati Boychoir—and collaborates with the annually appointed Festival Director to craft programming for the May Festival. He conducts and prepares the May Festival Chorus – the core artistic element of the Cincinnati May Festival and the official Chorus of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO) and Cincinnati Pops Orchestra – for their performances at historic Music Hall and beyond. As Director of Choruses, he also leads the May Festival Conducting Fellowship, a collaboration of the May Festival and the Choral Studies Program at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM).
In the 2024–25 season, Swanson will prepare the Chorus for performances of Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms with the CSO and conductor Marin Alsop and for performances of Handel’s Messiah with the CSO and conductor Sir Andrew Davis. He will conduct the May Festival Chamber Choir in performances across greater Cincinnati and will lead the May Festival Choruses in a February 2025 performance at Music Hall. He will also prepare the Choruses for their featured appearances at the 2025 May Festival.
Previously, Matthew Swanson was the Associate Director of Choruses, Youth Chorus Director and Director of Special Projects for the May Festival. In these roles, he instituted an annual Youth Chorus commissioning project, the presentation of community choral concerts during the May Festival, a program of free professional voice instruction for Chorus and Youth Chorus members, free in-school choral clinics for area middle and high schools, and the Youth Chorus Enrichment Program. In addition, he expanded institutional support for the Youth Chorus, which is fully cost-free for members, and led the creation of a strategic alliance of the May Festival and the Cincinnati Boychoir.
His portfolio of special projects at the May Festival has included staged productions of Leonard Bernstein’s MASS (2018) and Candide (2022) and the formation of the May Festival Community Chorus. In celebration of the May Festival’s 150th anniversary season in 2023, he led “25 for 25: A New Time for Choral Music,” the May Festival’s wide-ranging community commissioning project.
Beyond the May Festival, Swanson was previously affiliated with the Mostly Mozart Festival as an assistant conductor, production consultant, programmer and presenter.
As an educator, Swanson has taught conducting, choral literature and early music at CCM. He also taught conducting and choral methods and led the Xavier Choir at Xavier University from 2021 to 2024. He is frequently engaged as a host and presenter of lectures, concerts and broadcasts in Cincinnati, New York and elsewhere.
Swanson is a native of southeast Iowa and was educated at the University of Notre Dame (BA), CCM (MM, DMA), and King’s College, Cambridge (MMus). He held the May Festival Conducting Fellowship in 2015. Prior to his fellowship appointment, he joined the May Festival Chorus as a singer in 2012 and worked in the CSO and May Festival box office from 2014 to 2015.