Canadian Guitarist Matt Sellick Blends Flamenco and Symphony on New Album, Watching The Sky
With the release of his ambitious new album Watching the Sky, Toronto flamenco guitarist and composer Matt Sellick is bringing a decade-long dream to life. Known for his evocative fingerstyle work and deep love of Spanish music, Sellick boldly bridges genres by orchestrating his solo guitar compositions for a full symphony orchestra — the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Evan Mitchell — while retaining the soul of flamenco and the intimacy of his roots in Thunder Bay.
At the heart of Watching the Sky is a story of transformation: of place, of memory, and of music itself. Sellick, who studied flamenco extensively in Spain and began his career performing in Northwestern Ontario, has spent the last ten years developing these orchestral versions of his compositions. The result is a sonic landscape that is both sweeping and intimate, grounded in tradition but unafraid of innovation.
The album opens with “A Beautiful Day,” a lyrical celebration of renewal composed by Sellick and brought to life by his agile guitar work, the colorful depth of the TBSO, and the expressive percussion of longtime collaborator Marito Marques. The track feels like sunlight stretching over a horizon — a fitting start to an album that evokes nature and emotion in equal measure.
Though Sellick has previously released several solo albums, Watching the Sky is his first recorded project with a full orchestra — and his first time recording live, with all players in the same room.
“It was the complete opposite of how I’ve done things until now, and I just loved it,” says Sellick. “Everything about it felt so real, natural, and genuine.” The sessions took place in his beloved hometown venue, the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium, a room Sellick calls “absolutely top-notch.”
The pieces themselves are inspired by real places — Lake Superior’s rugged shorelines, quiet trails in Toronto, sunlit alleys in Spain — each track functioning as a tone poem for a memory. As Sellick revisited the landscapes that first inspired his music, he found himself reshaping and reorchestrating melodies to reflect how both he and those places have changed. The result is a rare fusion of reflection and forward motion.
Produced by Keith Horner and engineered by Dennis Patterson, the album features masterful playing by TBSO members and guest percussionist Marques, who contributed djembe, udu, and hand percussion on several tracks. Feature solos by bassist Martin Blanchet and pianist Paul Rodermond enrich the textures, while additional percussion was arranged by Marques on tracks 8 and 11.
Sellick, a graduate of Lakehead University and an active performer with artists such as Jesse Cook, has performed in over 20 U.S. states and 8 European countries. Yet, *Watching the Sky* remains a deeply personal work — a love letter to Thunder Bay, a tribute to musical collaboration, and an expression of his ever-evolving artistic identity.
The album’s credits read like a who’s who of orchestral talent: 40+ musicians fill out the ensemble, including principal players in strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion. The liner notes include special thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, whose support helped bring the recording and orchestration to life.
Though grounded in flamenco, Sellick’s music is not bound by it. There are moments of classical serenity, cinematic swells, and playful rhythmic interplay that speak to his broader influences — from Vicente Amigo to Debussy to the Canadian landscapes that shaped his imagination.
For listeners new to flamenco or orchestral music, Watching the Sky is a radiant entry point. For longtime fans, it’s Matt Sellick at his boldest and most vulnerable. Either way, it’s not to be missed.
Hi Matt! Good to meet you! Care to introduce yourself to the readers for those not familiar with your music?
Hi! Yes, so I usually tell people I’m a flamenco guitarist. That label sums up what I do when I work with other artists and teach. But if I think about it, it’s a bit more complex these days. I have a background in classical music, and I find myself incorporating that a lot more into my writing than I used to. In any case, I’m originally from Thunder Bay (in Northwestern Ontario), but I’ve lived in Toronto for the last six years. I tour a lot with Jesse Cook, and the rest of the time I’m composing, recording, performing, and even orchestrating my own solo guitar music.
“Watching the Sky” is such a poetic title — was there a specific moment or sky you were actually watching when the name came to you?
I’m glad you think so! There may not have been a specific one I was watching when it occurred to me, but specific skies have absolutely inspired many of my pieces. A lot of my music has been about capturing the moods of certain places (landscapes, shorelines, and streets I like), but I hadn’t put too much thought beyond that into what a unifying theme might be. When I started looking for patterns — this is my fifth album, there must be patterns by now — I noticed there were a lot of titles like On a Moonless Night, Overcast, and The Watch of Mars. I realized just how much I’ve been inspired by stargazing, or by watching the storm clouds in a fast-changing sky over Lake Superior.
I still struggled to find a specific wording I liked. Watching the Sky occurred to me when we were on tour in Kelowna earlier this year. I was listening to the soundtrack to the 1983 movie Local Hero (written by Mark Knopfler) while writing emails, and I just remembered that one of the characters in the movie also has a fixation on the night sky. He keeps saying to “watch the sky”, and I just thought, “oh … that’s it, that’s the title”.
Recording live with a full orchestra for the first time sounds thrilling — what was the most magical or nerve-wracking moment during those sessions?
It really was! Oh, there were a few of those. I’ll start with nerve-wracking. All four of my albums before this one have been done in overdubs, and usually on my own time, so I knew I could always retake things until I played them perfectly. With the full orchestra, it may as well have been a live recording. Sure, we did lots of takes, but we were on the stage in an auditorium, with no isolation and no chance for overdubs. At first, I was terrified of messing it up. Once we got going in the rehearsals, somehow I just relaxed into it. Everyone was so enthusiastic, and the overall sound was so good that I just stopped worrying and had fun instead. Whatever adrenaline was left over probably made things all the better. I’m sure there’s a lesson in there.
And for the magical moments, two things come to mind. A couple of the pieces end with abrupt full-ensemble shots. When the sound of those final chords is decaying in the room, you can feel everyone on stage hold their breath until the sound disappears. It’s only a few seconds, but it feels like forever. It’s an incredible moment, but you can’t disturb it. Then, when it’s gone, everyone exhales at once, and you feel the relief and the pride in a performance well done. It’s pretty special.
The other special moment for me was at the end of the last session. I got up to thank everyone for doing the recording with me, and I realized I was also thanking them for being a big reason I have a life in music. Some of the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra musicians have been teachers of mine, or have been part of that ensemble since I was a kid. I developed a love of live music by going to see their concerts in that very hall. Finishing those sessions was more than just a “project” for me; it was more like I was immortalizing something meaningful about my life up to this point.
You’ve said the album reflects how both you and these landscapes have changed. What surprised you the most about who you are now, musically or personally?
Yes, that’s true. When I write my orchestrations, I often find myself wanting to revise parts of the underlying composition. At first, this was more to ensure an effective “translation” into the orchestral setting (guitar can be a very, shall we say, idiosyncratic instrument), but I later saw it as an opportunity to tweak my older works. I think something that surprises me now is how much more easily I can make decisions about what I want in my music. I used to worry a lot more about what my music should be, but now I’m much more comfortable making music that I like, and trusting that people will connect with that. When I make changes to old pieces, that’s usually what I have in mind.
The big change that surprises me, musically and professionally, is how much more comfortable I am with treating these pieces like they’re living, changing things. I used to think of a musical work as something I would write, practice, perfect, record, and release. Then I’d be done and move on. Now, I like the idea that they evolve with me. There’s no need to make things perfect or final; instead, I feel more free to write things and try them out. I don’t necessarily feel that either the new or the old versions should be definitive; rather, they’re all just reflections of how I feel at these specific points in time. I’ll probably change them all again! Who knows?
One example is Callejón Aynadamar. That track, the orchestral piece I mean, is very different from the original version I wrote over ten years ago. The title is the name of a street I lived on a long time ago, and when I started on the orchestration, it was like revisiting an old, fond memory I hadn’t thought about in a very long time. It’s the kind of memory where how you remember it matures over time, so it seemed fitting to change the piece. It’s the same core theme, but where the old piece was a bit more of a disjointed series of ideas, this new version is more about developing the theme into something more potent. Like it’s exploring the subtleties of an idea a bit more deeply. I suppose that’s another way I’ve changed musically— I didn’t use to be so interested in that kind of approach!
Working with 40+ orchestral musicians is no small feat. Did any of them interpret your music in a way that made you hear it differently for the first time?
Oh, for sure! In general, I felt like the orchestra’s goal is to be faithful to the composer’s intent, but as that composer, sometimes it’s fun to give a broad-strokes guide and see how the musicians interpret it. For me, that’s the joy of composing. You get to see how they want to express your ideas with their personality. Don’t get me wrong, I usually write very meticulously and give irritatingly specific directions. But there was a piece where I gave very general dynamics, and just wrote “sarcastically” on the header. I got to sit there while the string players discussed what exactly that meant to them, and how exactly they were going to articulate all these silly little lines I’d given them. It was so much fun. Sometimes there would be exposed parts where they would articulate something differently than I had expected— details like “how short a shortened note should be”, and it might have been different from what I had thought I wanted, but I almost always liked the changes just as much or more. That way, it really felt like we were all involved.
I also tried to give solo moments to different members of the orchestra. I love the overall quality you get from a big orchestral sound, but my favourite thing is being able to move between the different specific colours of each instrument. I discovered just how much I love the sound of solo bassoon in my music! There were a few surprises about my own style— you start to notice patterns, things that work well, that you begin to lean into. It’s great to feel like you finally have your own style for something like orchestration.