Matthew Thomas “Moppa” Elliott entered the world on September 13, 1978, as the firstborn child of college instructors David and Carolyn Elliott in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where both parents also nurtured a deep passion for music. After an early, short-lived encounter with the piano, he took up the trombone during sixth grade. A few years afterward he expressed interest in a stringed instrument and received an electric bass guitar. At seventeen he restored his father’s neglected acoustic bass so he could audition for a summer program, then commenced serious study under Pocono resident Tony Marino. In the autumn of 1997 he entered Oberlin College in Ohio, pursuing a double-degree track that combined biology with jazz bass at the Conservatory of Music; he completed both the B.A. and B.M. in 2002. During those years he recorded a debut album with the ensemble Pinpoint and accumulated roughly three years of performance experience in Cleveland. Beginning in 2000 he joined the faculty of the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts in Erie, serving as resident director and assistant while also providing music therapy at the Lucy Idol Center for the Handicapped. He relocated to New York City in the summer of 2001 and maintained his teaching position at St. Mary’s High School. In 2004 he assembled the ensemble Mostly Other People Do the Killing, which included trumpeter Peter Evans.
