Editor’s note: The Daily’s editorial department acknowledges that this article is premised on a conflict of interest. This article is a special feature for Commencement 2025 that does not represent the Daily’s standard journalistic practices.
In a wood-paneled practice room on the lower level of Granoff Music Center, graduating senior Matthew Winkler sat down to talk about his love of classical music, his years writing for the Daily and how composer Gustav Mahler changed his life.
“I can’t think of the exact time I first heard Mahler,” Winkler said. “I started the trumpet in sixth grade … but I think when I first actually fell in love with the music … [was when] I got a YouTube recommendation for [Mahler’s Symphony] No. 5. … That opening trumpet just kept building, and the depth of emotion overwhelmed me. It was so stormy and dramatic, but also had these profound moments of beauty in the middle of it.”
Coming from Austin, Texas, music has always been a part of Winkler’s life — but not always part of his plan. Coming into Tufts, Winkler planned to double major in history and English. “Music was just sort of my hobby and the way I processed emotions, especially composition,” Winkler said. After taking a handful of music classes every semester, including Associate Professor Frank Lehman’s “Sound and Structure,” Winkler finally decided to study music again.
“I didn’t want to study music because I took the trumpet very seriously in early high school, and then I burned out hard. … But this sort of academic side of music has been a pleasant surprise I didn’t realize existed until I got here,” he said.
One of his entry points into music journalism came from the Daily, where he began writing concert reviews of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for his column, “Winkler’s Weekly Symphony Guide,” a name his friend dared him to use. “Boston has been amazing because I’m a nerd about old arts, and Austin is very new arts scene. … I didn’t really have the opportunity to see a world-class symphony perform in Austin.” His sophomore year, with a BSO College Card, Winkler reviewed a season’s worth of performances. These reviews led him to start interviewing the musicians and performers he was listening to.
“The first interview I ever did was with this band called Oliver Hazard. And I was so nervous. … Ahead of our interview, I transcribed every single song they’d ever written because I was like, ‘I gotta be prepared,’” Winkler said.
Luckily, his preparation time has dwindled over his career at the Daily.
“But as I’ve done more and more, I’ve gotten more and more comfortable,” he said. “And I’ve discovered that the best interviews are actually the ones where instead of coming in with all this preparation and preconceived notions of what you should talk about, it actually goes better, even if you haven’t prepared, to just sort of listen and follow the flow of conversation.”
When asked about the importance of younger audiences attending the orchestra and writing reviews, Winkler didn’t hesitate.
“I think it starts with education, and I also think it starts with the way that the orchestras choose to present the music and how to program it,” he said. “The depth of emotion [in classical music] is, to me, unparalleled in any other art form. But I think that there are a lot of barriers of entry to getting to that point, and I think symphonies could do a lot more to make the music resonate with an audience member in a way that both appeals to an experienced listener and also a brand new listener.”
Winkler recounted a memorable interview he gave with Chad Smith, BSO president and CEO.
“[Smith] aligns with what I want out of these big institutions in terms of public humanities and public arts projects. And I think he’s doing a lot of really great work to try to connect this really abstract, inaccessible music to people who might not normally have the doors open to them to experience that,” Winkler said.
And, the inevitable question: What is after Tufts?
In the long run, Winkler hopes to pursue a doctorate degree in historical musicology and cites Assistant Professor Jeremy Eichler as an inspiration. Winkler spoke about Eichler and his novel, “Time’s Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance.”
“The craft of his writing is very impressive in a way that connects with the public while still having rigorous historiography about this art form of classical music that just means so much to me,” he said. “The reception that book has received has told me that it is possible to connect with the public about these more inaccessible topics, and [that] there is a hunger for that as well.”
Before his venture into graduate school, Winkler will be teaching English for the Teaching Assistant Program in France and contributing to a Five Sisters Production documentary on jazz singer Joya Sherrill with Jennifer Burton, Tufts professor of the practice in the theatre, dance, and performance studies department.
To Winkler, musical scholarship extends far beyond the limits of academia and reaches something that Alma Mahler — composer, writer and wife of Gustav Mahler — would consider to be “the loving soul.”
“Music is the architecture of time. When a Mahler piece or a Beethoven piece or a Julia Perry piece gets performed, you are hearing the exact same thing that they heard 300 years ago. And there’s something really special about the ability to travel back into that,” Winkler said. “Music, to me, more than other art forms, feels like such a window into someone’s soul.”
