And in recent years, they've been getting bigger. Moses and May always makes a point of giving Matthew a full audio description of whatever venue they're playing, big or small. One thing I always go back to, one time we were on a plane and he said, 'What does it look like out the window?' I said, 'Oh, it's really nice, the sky is blue and there are a lot of clouds.' And he says, 'What are clouds?' "We take our sight for granted," Moses Whitaker says. "If I'm on the stage, I'm not that close to the edge," he says.īut Matthew's sightlessness, like his prodigious talent, will always be a little mysterious to his parents. His sense of his surroundings is well developed. On stage, he has his keyboards arrayed around him like a workstation, so he can pivot effortlessly from one to the other as he performs. Matthew's ability in music, like his inability to see, are both things he takes for granted. "What happens, Matthew hears something, and he's internalizing it, and he can play it back," Moses says. Music teachers would call it a great ear. Then I started playing 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,' with no one showing me how to play it." "It was a little keyboard that my grandfather gave me to play," Matthew says. He was playing it with full chord progressions. Understand: Matthew was not just plinking out the melody. But then when he came home he could play it." "He was probably attracted to 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,' when he heard it. "In the nursery school he was in with the blind kids, most of the stuff is music," Moses Whitaker says. Like anything else that makes noise, it was naturally fascinating to a toddler. There was a small Yamaha keyboard in the house. In any case, his parents soon discovered that he had discovered it. It may have been in his special nursery school, in a class with other blind children, that a 3-year-old Matthew discovered music. Matthew was a "preemie" - weighing 1 pound 11 ounces when he was born, and initially given a less than 50 percent chance of survival. Matthew Christopher Whitaker is the youngest of four children born to Moses (originally from Paterson), and May (originally from the Dominican Republic) Whitaker, both information technology specialists who moved to Hackensack about 20 years ago. It's an honor to be compared to him, but remember - you're Matthew Whitaker.' " You're good, people are comparing you to a lot of people, people are comparing you to Stevie Wonder, but there's only one Stevie Wonder. "So basically I say to him a lot of times, 'Matt, you still have a lot to learn. "He gets a lot of accolades and praise, and my job is to keep him grounded," Moses Whitaker says. If Matthew's ego seems healthily in check, credit his dad. He said, 'How you doing, Matt?' He gave me one of his harmonicas. He was being inducted into the Hall of Fame. When I was 10, I opened for him at the Apollo Theater. People try their best to imitate him, but they just can't. Though Matthew himself would never make the comparison. Most-read subscriber stories: If you're not a subscriber, you missed these stories in 2020Īnd Stevie, of course. Teen pianist: NJ girl puts feelings about pandemic into a song and lands spot on 'Today' show Lonnie Smith, but also to the organists Jimmy Smith and Joey DeFrancesco, and the pianists Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Barry Harris, Erroll Garner, and Thelonious Monk. He's paid attention, while developing his chops, not only to his mentor, the famed organist Dr. "Because of all the different sounds you can get out of it. "Where are we going to put a vibraphone?" his father asks.įor the time being, Matthew's instruments are piano, organ, drums, bass, melodica and a smattering of guitar. "Where are you going to put it?" asks his father, sounding stunned. "I need more, though," Matthew says, still happily improvising upstairs on the baby grand, acquired for him three Christmases ago. His basement studio looks like a showroom from a Sam Ash music store - nine keyboards, including acoustic piano, banks of synthesizers, and a full-size Hammond organ a Leslie cabinet speaker, guitars, basses, amps, and a full drum kit. Basically all I do is carry his equipment." I took trombone lessons in high school, like other kids taking music class. "Matthew is the only one who has the gift," Moses Whitaker says. They have to feed, guide, protect and discipline a child who has, in some ways, advanced far beyond them. Like all parents of prodigies - like Leopold Mozart, say, or even Mary and Joseph - May Whitaker and her husband, Moses, are in a strange position. Which is funny, because he's never actually seen Stevie." "People say that Matt's gestures remind them of Stevie. "I think it's normal for people to see the similarities between two people who are blind, and who started playing music very young, and who have a passion for music," says Whitaker's mother, May.
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