Matthew Fossa

Matthew "Matt" Fossa is Principal Oboist in the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra and the Northwest Florida Symphony. He has composed music for Wingman's Hangar and community members and can be heard playing on the Star Citizen soundtrack.

Early life
He began studying music at the age of 5. He studied the piano and the saxophone and then, at age 13, switched to oboe.

The music that Fatman had written for Wing Commander I and Wing Commander II was a huge influence on Matt's composing, which he used to play on his oboe and on english horn.

He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Music Performance and the Performer’s Certificate from the Crane School of Music in May 1998, and his Master’s Degree in Oboe Performance at the Florida State University in December of 2000.

Work at CIG
Around Episode 2 or 3 or Wingman's Hangar Matthew Fossa realized he had an opportunity to perhaps write theme music for the show as the show was taking contributions from the fans such as the show's logo.

At the time he was playing in the Barber of Seville opera however it didn't feature much oboe which left Matt with spare time during which he could write music.

CIG was interested by his proposition, however eventually Matt wrote a full blown orchestra using classical forms and created a 5 minutes long symphonic ouverture called "The Heroic Flight" which CIG still decided to use and featured on episode 5, and around episode 15 it was used as beginning and ending music. Eventually to make the show start faster it was only used at the ending.

He became friends with Pedro Macedo Camacho and told him that if there were any oboe parts he'd be happy to check them out to contribute, to which Pedro responded that he would love to have him play a solo on the soundtrack, which is what players hear in "My Home is in the Stars" when they spawn at Port Olisar and there isn't any crazy activity around.

Community work
He's the scoring composer for an audio drama called Star Citizen Amarok Rising.

He composed the soundtrack for the Star Citizen Addict Anonymous show.

He composed music for the Grievance Star Citizen Report.

He composed music for Nighthawk Zale.

He became the soundtrack composer for some of the Motley Collaborators projects such as Saving Citizens for a fundraiser.

In December 2022, he composed "Christmas in the Stars" by arranging traditional Christmas tunes with Pedro's Star Citizen themes for strings, oboe and saxophone. It was debuted on MissGabiz's holiday livestream.

He has several Star Citizen themed songs on his youtube channel.

Other work
Besides being the Principal Oboist in the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra and the Northwest Florida Symphony, he performs with the Mobile Symphony Orchestra. He has also performed as Guest Principal Oboist of the Richmond (VA) Symphony Orchestra, Co-Principal Oboist of the Gulf Coast Symphony Orchestra, and been a regular member of the oboe sections of the Orchestra of Northern New York and the Albany (GA) Symphony. Over the years, he has given many solo and chamber music recitals in west Florida and southern Alabama. He has also had several solo appearances with various regional orchestras and bands including said Pensacola Symphony Orchestra, the UWF “Runge Strings” Chamber Orchestra, and the Pensacola Civic Band.

He's an instructor of oboe on the faculties of Pensacola State College, Northwest Florida State College, and the University of West Florida.

He maintains a large private studio of middle and high school students.

He has written works ranging from solo instrument pieces to compositions for full band and orchestra.

He scored various video and short film projects as well as a mobile phone game.

Trivia

 * He's a huge sci fi geek and every sim he played he was comparing to Wing Commander.
 * He's a regular visitor of Ben Lesnick's Wing Commander News website which is how he initially learned about Star Citizen.
 * He's a pilot.
 * He created a sci fi music album called Forward Reflections with four tracks specifically inspired by Star Citizen.