Biography

Biography

Dr. Matt Hill is a composer, conductor, and educator whose work centers on choral music and the people who create it. He serves as Assistant Professor and Director of Choral Activities at Creighton University, where he conducts the Chamber Choir and University Chorus and teaches conducting and music history.

Hill was mentored in conducting and composition by Dr. Z. Randall Stroope and earned his Master of Music in Choral Conducting from Oklahoma State University and his Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

A committed vocal pedagogue, Hill draws on the work of Richard Miller and Berton Coffin in both studio and choral settings, with particular emphasis on healthy, repeatable vocal technique.

Hill’s compositions are characterized by memorable melodies, accessible voice leading, pianistic keyboard writing, and a text-first approach to composition. Recent works include Night, commissioned by the Nebraska Choral Directors Association in 2025, and the 2026 Choral Canvases project, which paired three original choral settings with commissioned paintings inspired by the same poetry. His new setting of Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day will premiere in December 2026.

In summer 2026, Hill was selected for the International Choral Composers Institute in Charlotte, North Carolina, where his composition Great Is the Sun! was premiered and selected to close the Institute’s final concert. The work was subsequently accepted for publication by Choristers Guild, with release scheduled for 2027. Beginning in 2027, he will join the Institute’s faculty, where he is developing and will direct a new conducting track offered alongside its established composition program.

Hill is also Founder and Artistic Director of Sing Omaha, which he established in 2007. Now celebrating its twentieth season, the organization encompasses nine choirs serving approximately 200 singers and music studios serving more than 150 private students each week through a faculty of more than 20 educators. He conducts three of the organization’s choirs and maintains an applied voice and composition studio. Choirs under his direction have appeared by audition as headlining performers at the Nebraska Choral Directors Association conference multiple times, and his work as a conductor and clinician has taken him to honor choirs, festivals, and professional development settings across the region and around the country.

Hill serves as Executive Director of the Nebraska Choral Directors Association and as National Repertoire & Resources Chair for Community Choirs for the American Choral Directors Association. He has twice been named the Nebraska Choral Directors Association’s Choral Director of the Year, in 2015 and 2019.