Ed Matthew has performed in woodwind chairs on Broadway for 30 years, including orchestras of The Phantom of the Opera (for two decades), the original Lincoln Center production of Parade and City Center’s Tony Award-winning revival, The Music Man, as well as the off-Broadway Fermat’s Last Tango. The New York Times praised his “seductive saxophone work” with the Pit Stop Players. On clarinet, he premiered Joan Tower’s Island Prelude with the award-winning Quintessence (a wind quintet). For the 150Music label, he recorded Passages, Gary William Friedman’s clarinet concerto and is on RCA, Naxos, and other labels.

On reproductions of historical clarinets, he has served as guest-principal clarinetist with Tafelmusik, Philharmonia Baroque, The American Classical Orchestra, Opera Lafayette, Washington National Cathedral, Pacific MusicWorks, and Musica Angelica. He performs with the Staunton Music Festival, Apollo’s Fire, Handel & Haydn Society, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Washington Bach Consort, Teatro Nuovo, Smithsonian Academy, Music of the Regiment, and other period ensembles. He is on recent premiere recordings of Opera Lafayette’s Morgiane by Edmond Dédé and Bach Choir of Bethlehem’s St. Matthew Passion by J.S. Bach as reconstructed by Felix Mendelssohn.

He designs original soundscapes and live scores for Shakespearean and contemporary theater companies in New York City, Utah, and Arizona, and for the Chatillion Stage Company’s Project Mercury dramatic podcast. Sherlock, Jr. is his first scoring of a silent film with photoplay music from the 1920s.