Pianist savant wows jazz world

Autism isn't slowing down 12-year-old music prodigy Matt Savage; He's already done six CDs

by Robert Everett-Green
Globe and Mail
Thursday, November 11, 2004

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Toronto — The chandeliered ballroom at the Royal York Hotel is empty except for a grand piano and a small boy running laps on the thick carpet. Matt Savage, who is 12, informs me that he's not yet as fast as he could be, because he's still getting used to his new runners.

On the keyboard, however, Matt is plenty fast. We have barely been introduced when he dashes through a breezy off-kilter number called Seven Up, one of the 14 jazz pieces he wrote for his sixth and latest full-length CD (Cutting Loose, on Savage Records). His slender fingers scamper around the tune the way a puppy might frolic with a bone. An urbane, post-bebop puppy, if you can imagine such a thing.

"By the way, did you know that before Dave Brubeck made a record called Time Out, nobody had ever done a jazz tune in 5/4, and now everyone has one?" he says, in the clear confident voice of a boy accustomed to making important discoveries. Matt likes irregular meters, being enamoured of numbers in general and certain numbers in particular. For some time he's been having a love affair with 47.

"I wrote a piece called 47, because it's such an ordinary number, and ever since then it's been terrifyingly nice to me," he says. "But 12 is usually winning right now. 47 is in a slump." Twelve is the current favourite of Matt's sister Rebecca, his rival in all things, although the rivalry is not so fierce as to prevent him from writing a piece for her birthday called Sneaking Up.

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on edit:

I have no idea why.