Photo credit: Josy Gonzalo

A 2026 Guggenheim Fellow and 2025 Rome Prize finalist, Mathew Arrellín (pronounced: A-rre-yín) is a composer and cellist from El Paso, Texas, currently based in Chicago. 

His music has been performed by the Mivos Quartet, Third Coast Percussion, ~Nois, Fonema Consort, Ensemble Dal Niente, the Low Frequency Trio, Dalia Chin, Ben Roidl-Ward, and the Chicago Composers Orchestra, among others. His work spans solo, chamber, and orchestral formats and has been presented at festivals and institutions across the United States and abroad, including VIPA, June in Buffalo, SCI National Conference, and Foro Internacional de Música Nueva.

A lifelong painter, Mathew frequently draws on visual art as a compositional source. His flute concerto "Overpainted Photographs" takes its title and conceptual point of departure from Gerhard Richter's series of the same name.

He is the recipient of a 2023 General Commission from the Barlow Endowment for Musical Composition, two William T. Faricy Awards for excellence in composition from Northwestern University, and Illinois Arts Council grants in support of new works.

He holds a PhD in Music Composition and Technology from Northwestern University (2022), where he studied with Jay Alan Yim, Alex Mincek, and Hans Thomalla, and a bachelor's degree in theory/composition and cello performance from the University of New Mexico (2016), where he studied cello with David Schepps and composition with José-Luis Hurtado. He has taught at Northwestern University and given masterclasses and workshops in composition.