Meet Matt - Voice & Guitar Teacher

Matt was born in Boston and lived there until his 24th birthday. He has been singing and playing guitar since he was a little kid. His earliest recording experience was doing a three-part acapella rendition of "Let It Be" by The Beatles with his older brother and sister on a tape recorder. He and his siblings went on to sing in many choral groups together, learning the intricacies of various different styles of harmony, and how basses, tenors, altos and sopranos all did an elaborate dance to create a tapestry of sound. Matt was instilled with an almost-religious reverence for music very early on.

At 12, Matt began learning how to play guitar. It is extremely helpful for singers and songwriters to be able to accompany themselves with an additional instrument, and he was keen on getting good enough so that he could play songs rather than just sing along with them. This practice continued into his teenage years in the early 00s, when he started listening to bands like AFI, dying his hair, piercing his ears, and beginning to see music in a whole new (grown-up) light.

At 20, Matt dropped out of his linguistics program at Boston College in order to focus on music full-time. He was briefly the lead singer of a band called "Silhouette Rising" based out of Wakefield, MA, before turning his efforts entirely toward a solo career, becoming locally well-known in the indie and DIY scene in Boston and Cambridge. The benefit of coming up in a DIY context is that he also learned how to record and mix audio, which has been helpful not only to him, but to students who would otherwise not know how to have a lasting memory of their hard work. His final musical project before leaving Boston was starting a 3-piece band called "The Gathering Floozies", so-named after a Joanna Newsom song lyric. Consisting of a cellist, a drummer, and Matt on vocals, guitar and principal songwriting, the Floozies performed extensively for the entirety of 2013, culminating in the professional live recording of their most popular song, "Jodie".

Matt moved to Seattle at the beginning of 2014, and has been happily residing here ever since. He maintains a YouTube channel where he regularly posts cover songs, and he is currently working on a series of original songs inspired by Dyson spheres. He has never stopped playing, writing, recording, and finding deep fulfillment in musical expression, and that is what he hopes to instill in his students. His most recent work has been contributing to a Valentine's Day charity compilation album of cover songs, all proceeds going to Moon Base One, an all-ages and sober DIY venue in Salem, MA. He is currently a tutor in voice and guitar, but also tutors in the Spanish language, as well as periodically conducting group drawing classes. He lives a calm and creative life, and enjoys sci-fi and horror films.