Matthew Whitaker | |
---|---|
Background information | |
Born | Hackensack, New Jersey, U.S. | April 3, 2001
Genres | Jazz |
Instrument(s) | Piano Organ |
Website | www |
Matthew Whitaker (born April 3, 2001) is an American jazz pianist. Blind since birth, he has performed at venues including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center and the Apollo Theater, where, at 10, he was the opening performer for Stevie Wonder's induction into the Apollo Theater's Hall of Fame. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Whitaker was the subject of Thrive, a 13-minute documentary about "the prodigious talent and irrepressible spirit of a musically precocious 12-year-old blind boy." [6]
Whitaker was born in Hackensack, New Jersey to May and Moses Whitaker. Born three months prematurely, he weighed less than two pounds, and was given a less than 50 percent chance of survival. He was later diagnosed with retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), which caused his blindness. On his third birthday, he played "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" on a toy Yamaha keyboard he had received as a birthday present. Whitaker had heard the song and played it by ear. [7] [8]
Whitaker began taking piano lessons when he was 5 as the youngest student at The Filomen M. D'Agostino Greenberg Music School, a New York school for the blind and visually impaired. With perfect pitch, he learned to play piano mainly by listening, although he learned to read Braille music as well. He later studied at The Harlem School of the Arts, and in addition to taking lessons in classical and jazz piano, he learned to play the organ, percussion instruments, the clarinet and bass guitar. At 9, he earned the support of the Jazz Foundation of America, and as a teenager, he attended the Manhattan School of Music's Pre-College Jazz program. [3] [9] [10] His playing was influenced by Jimmy Smith, Joey DeFrancesco, Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Barry Harris, Erroll Garner, and Thelonious Monk. [11]
On March 6, 2017, he released his first album, Outta the Box. Other musicians on the album include Christian McBride, Dave Stryker, Will Calhoun, Sammy Figueroa, Melissa Walker, and James Carter. [3]
In April 2017, Whitaker performed on the Ellen Degeneres Show and competed on Fox's Showtime at the Apollo, winning first place. Whitaker has toured Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Among other venues, he has performed at the main concert hall at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C and the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. [12] [11]
George Washington Benson is an American jazz fusion guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He began his professional career at the age of 19 as a jazz guitarist.
Herbert Jeffrey Hancock is an American jazz musician, bandleader, and composer. Hancock started his career with trumpeter Donald Byrd's group. He shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet, where he helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the post-bop sound. In the 1970s, Hancock experimented with jazz fusion, funk, and electro styles, using a wide array of synthesizers and electronics. It was during this period that he released perhaps his best-known and most influential album, Head Hunters.
Stevland Hardaway Morris, known professionally as Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. One of the most acclaimed and influential musicians of the 20th century, he is credited as a pioneer and influence by musicians across a range of genres that include R&B, pop, soul, gospel, funk, and jazz. A virtual one-man band, Wonder's use of synthesizers and other electronic musical instruments during the 1970s reshaped the conventions of contemporary R&B. He also helped drive such genres into the album era, crafting his LPs as cohesive and consistent, in addition to socially conscious statements with complex compositions. Blind since shortly after his birth, Wonder was a child prodigy who signed with Motown's Tamla label at the age of 11, where he was given the professional name Little Stevie Wonder.
Benny Golson is an American bebop/hard bop jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and arranger. He came to prominence with the big bands of Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie, more as a writer than a performer, before launching his solo career. Golson is known for co-founding and co-leading The Jazztet with trumpeter Art Farmer in 1959. From the late 1960s through the 1970s Golson was in demand as an arranger for film and television and thus was less active as a performer, but he and Farmer re-formed the Jazztet in 1982.
Innervisions is the sixteenth studio album by American singer, songwriter, and musician Stevie Wonder, released on August 3, 1973, by Tamla, a subsidiary of Motown Records. A landmark recording of Wonder's "classic period", the album has been regarded as completing his transition from the "Little Stevie Wonder" known for romantic ballads into a more musically mature, conscious, and grown-up artist. On the album, Wonder continued to experiment with the revolutionary T.O.N.T.O. synthesizer system developed by Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, and Innervisions became hugely influential on the future sound of commercial soul and black music.
"Isn't She Lovely" is a song by Stevie Wonder from his 1976 album, Songs in the Key of Life. The lyrics celebrate the birth of his daughter, Aisha Morris. Wonder collaborated on the song with Harlem songwriter and studio owner Burnetta "Bunny" Jones.
Randolph Edward "Randy" Weston was an American jazz pianist and composer whose creativity was inspired by his ancestral African connection.
Sylvia Rose Moy was an American songwriter and record producer, formerly associated with the Motown Records group. The first woman at the Detroit-based music label to write and produce for Motown acts, she is probably best known for her songs written with and for Stevie Wonder.
Diane Joan Schuur, nicknamed "Deedles", is an American jazz singer and pianist. As of 2015, Schuur had released 23 albums, and had extended her jazz repertoire to include essences of Latin, gospel, pop and country music. Her most successful album is Diane Schuur & the Count Basie Orchestra, which remained number one on the Billboard Jazz Charts for 33 weeks. She won Grammy Awards for best female jazz vocal performance in both 1986 and 1987 and has had three other Grammy nominations.
Barbara Ann "Bobbi" Humphrey is an American jazz flautist and singer. She has recorded twelve albums over the course of her career, mostly playing jazz fusion, funk, and soul-jazz. In 1971, she was the first female instrumentalist signed by Blue Note and in 1994, she founded the jazz label Paradise Sounds Records.
Hubert Laws is an American flutist and saxophonist with a career spanning over 50 years in jazz, classical, and other music genres. Laws is one of the few classical artists who has also mastered jazz, pop, and rhythm-and-blues genres, moving effortlessly from one repertory to another. He has three Grammy nominations.
Robert Andre Glasper is an American pianist, record producer, songwriter, and musical arranger. His music embodies numerous musical genres, primarily centered around jazz. Glasper has won five Grammy Awards from 11 nominations.
Jonathan Michael Batiste is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, composer, and television personality. He has recorded and performed with artists including Stevie Wonder, Prince, Willie Nelson, Lenny Kravitz, Ed Sheeran, Lana Del Rey, Roy Hargrove, Juvenile, and Mavis Staples. Batiste, with his band, Stay Human, appeared nightly, as bandleader and musical director on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from 2015 to 2022.
Emily Jordan Bear is an American composer, pianist, songwriter and singer. After beginning to play the piano and compose music as a small child, Bear made her professional piano debut at the Ravinia Festival at the age of five, the youngest performer ever to play there. She gained wider notice from a series of appearances on The Ellen DeGeneres Show beginning at the age of six. She has since played her own compositions and other works with orchestras and ensembles in North America, Europe and Asia, including appearances at Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, the Montreux Jazz Festival and Jazz Open Stuttgart. She won two Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the youngest person ever to win the award, and also won two Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Awards.
Wendy Oxenhorn a.k.a. "The Barefoot Baroness," is the founding director and vice chairman of the Jazz Foundation of America, co-founder of Street News, a Reverend, a blues harmonica player and an NEA Jazz Master.
Josiah Alexander Sila, known professionally as Joey Alexander, is an Indonesian jazz pianist. He became the first Indonesian musician to perform on the Grammy Awards as well as to chart on Billboard 200 when his album My Favorite Things debuted at number 174 and then peaked at 59.
Thrive is a 2015 short documentary film about Matthew Whitaker, a piano prodigy who has been blind since birth. The film was directed and produced by Paul Szynol and has played at festivals worldwide, including North America, Europe, and Asia. The film includes appearances by Jonathan Batiste, Dr Lonnie Smith, and Chad Smith.
Ryan Wang is a Canadian pianist. He has performed at Carnegie Hall and was featured on The Ellen DeGeneres Show'
Ayanna Mose Witter-Johnson is an English composer, singer, songwriter and cellist. Her notable performances include opening for the MOBO Awards "Pre-Show" in 2016, and playing the Royal Albert Hall, London, on 6 March 2018.
Oleg Borisovich Akkuratov is a Russian pianist, jazz improviser and singer who has amaurosis – complete blindness. He is a virtuoso performer of jazz and classical works and a laureate of the Prize of the President of the Russian Federation for young cultural workers (2019).