Matthew Pakulski graduated from Harvard University in 1994 with a degree in "Music for Theater and Film", having studied with the composers Bernard Rands and Ivan Tcherepnin.

For over a decade, starting during his undergraduate years, he revolutionized the attitudes of teenagers in small towns everywhere by creating NEW MUSIC and translating it into the medium of "punk rock" with his band Fat Day; during this time, he further attempted to bring down to earth the rarefied world of record collecting by owning a record store called Pipeline.

From 2000 on, he has worked in the digital music industry, specifically in the realm of "recommendations technology", while entertaining side gigs as a truck driver and as an office manager for a professional harpist and composer.

In 2006, after Fat Day broke up and he moved to Chicago, he began composing in earnest for chamber and larger ensembles. In 2010 he created the ensemble WACSAC in order to more fully realize his creative vision.

Throughout his career, he has made it his goal to de-mystify and bring to those who might otherwise miss out on it the beauty of music and art in genres and styles that are often believed to be "inaccessible".

He's also the proud dad of Frances Pakulski, born 2008.