Matthew Coorey was born in Sydney in 1973 and began his musical studies when he was ten. His main instrument is the French horn and since graduating from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music he has held positions with the Tasmanian and Sydney Symphony Orchestras. He has been a triple finalist in Symphony Australias Young Performers Awards and performs regularly with Australias leading ensembles, including the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Brandenburg Orchestra and the Australia Ensemble. His first conducting appearance was on Bastille Day 1998, when he conducted works by Ravel and Debussy in a concert at St Andrews Cathedral, Sydney. This was soon followed by a variety of programmes, several all Mozart concerts, a performance of recent Australian compositions and a twentieth century concert with Ensemble Antarctica at the Sydney Conservatorium. More recently he has conducted the Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestras as well as the State Orchestra of Victoria. In January 1999, after only six months of conducting, Matthew Coorey auditioned and was accepted into the conducting course of the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he performed and worked with such renowned conductors as Seiji Ozawa, André Previn, and Jorma Panula. He has also had lessons with the last named in Helsinki and participated in his master classes in Moscow and Australia.
In 2001 he was appointed a Fellow of the Aspen Music Festival, where he studied with David Zinman and also participated in Jorma Panulas master classes at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. He has taken part in several other prestigious master classes and made his European début conducting the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra in Amsterdam. He was chosen by Lorin Maazel as a finalist in the 2002 Maazel-Vilar Conducting Competition and now holds a position in the conducting department at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.