John Robert Matz is a Chicago-based performer, arranger, composer, and music educator.  Classically trained, he graduated with honors from Elmhurst College, majoring in music education, but with an emphasis on brass and vocal performance.  As a composer, he has incorporated his educational multi-disciplinary musical training throughout his works, performing a variety of wind, brass, string and percussive instruments in his game and film scores, and using his knowledge to stretch instrumental timbres and find new sounds.  He is known for his work on video game scores as diverse as the BAFTA-nominated "Gunpoint", "Artemis: the Spaceship Bridge Simulator", "Rodina", and the award-winning “Fossil Echo”, as well as being a regular musical contributor to YouTube's "RocketJump" (and now Hulu's "RocketJump: The Show").  In addition, he is also active in writing concert works for band and orchestra.  As a performer, he has sung in Chicago's Symphony Center, New York's Carnegie Hall, on multiple "Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds" concerts, including the "Distant Worlds II" album recording, toured as an operatic vocal soloist in Italy and central Europe, and has played trumpet in several Chicago-area musical ensembles, including serving as principal in the Elmhurst Philharmonic Orchestra.  John Robert is a member of the Materia Collective, ASCAP, and the Game Audio Network Guild, and has recently been honored with a nomination for "Best Video Game Score" for the ASCAP Screen Awards, and in the 2017 G.A.N.G. Awards, winning “Best Interactive Score” for his work on “Fossil Echo”, and being named G.A.N.G.'s “Rookie of the Year” for 2017.  In his spare time, he enjoys worrying about his Steam backlog, reading good books, and removing cats from his MIDI controllers.  He is currently working on music for the upcoming games "Mythgard", "Ambition: A Minuet in Power", and the Final Fantasy VI musical adaptation, "Project ESPER".