Matthew Aucoin is an American composer, conductor, and a 2018 MacArthur Fellow. He is a co-founder of the pathbreaking American Modern Opera Company (AMOC).

This summer, Aucoin conducts his new vocal symphony, Music for New Bodies, at Tanglewood and Lincoln Center, in a staging by Peter Sellars. Aucoin's operas, which include Eurydice and Crossing, have been produced at leading companies including the Metropolitan Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Boston Lyric Opera, and many others.

His orchestral and chamber music has been performed, commissioned and recorded by Yo-Yo Ma, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the MET Orchestra, Zurich's Tonhalle Orchestra, and the BBC Scottish Symphony, among others.

Aucoin's conducting engagements include appearances at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, and Salzburg's Mozarteum Orchestra.

Aucoin's book about opera, The Impossible Art, was published in 2021. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and The Atlantic.