The Arrival of Matthew Halpin

Matthew Halpin is a tenor saxophonist from Dublin, Ireland who has finished a degree in performance at Berklee College of Music in Boston, one of the two international presidential scholars of 2009. Before beginning at Berklee, Matthew had been playing saxophone for 9 years, 7 of which were spent studying classical music at the Royal Irish Academy of Music.

He has been playing with small ensembles since the age of 14, many of which were under his own name, as well as larger ensembles such as the RTE National Concert Orchestra and the Dublin City Big Band. In 2008 he was the youngest musician to take part in the Banff Centre's three week workshops in jazz and creative music in Canada directed by Dave Douglas.

In July 2009 Matthew performed with his own group at the Sligo Jazz Project, a festival which he had been a student at only 2 years before. Other performance highlights include the 2010 Panama Jazz Festival, the National Concert Hall Ireland with RIAM Big Band as a featured soloist, performances with Justin Carroll's Togetherness as well as guesting with Altered States (Mark McKnight, Damien Evans and David Lyttle). 2010 performances include the Blue Note, New York in April and the Newport Jazz Festival in August.

In 2010 Matthew was selected to be one of the 14 inaugural students of the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, with whom he tours throughout the US and internationally. He has studied with George Garzone, Joe Jovano, Ben Street, Terri Lynn Carrington, Hal Crook, Jamie Oehlers, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Branford Marsalis and Danilo Perez.

Wilkommen in Köln (Januar 2015).

Matthew Halpin - saxophone
Riaz Khabirpour - guitar
Matthias Akeo Nowak - bass
Fabian Arends - drums