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The Prodigy with His Shirt Out
Yigal Schleifer, New Orleans
Jazz liberates an autistic 10-year-old
Jazz musicians are notorious for their unpredictable offstage behavior and pianist Matt Savage is no exception. Savage�s antics, though, have nothing to do with drinking too much or showing up late for gigs. They are more like what he did before his performance at the prestigious New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in April, which was to run around the stage so much that his mother had to call him over and tuck his shirt back into his pants in order to make him presentable.
The young Savage, you see, is only 10. He is also very accomplished, having already recorded four bebop-influenced CDs. And, for the last year, he has been leading his own jazz trio -- the drummer and bassist are both old enough to be his father -- which played its first show at Matt�s Massachusetts synagogue and which is scheduled to play a benefit concert in Singapore in October in front of an expected crowd of 10,000.
What makes this all the more impressive is that Matt is autistic, a child who, when he was younger, had great difficulty communicating, did not like to be touched and -- most incredibly for a musician -- couldn�t stand the sound of music or of household noises like a blender or a vacuum cleaner.
Matt was so hypersensitive to sound that his parents didn�t play the radio or turn on the television, fearing he would have a terrible tantrum. At the same time, Matt was showing signs of a keen intelligence, learning the alphabet by the time he was a year old and reading by the age of 18 months.
When Matt was 3, he was diagnosed with a type of autism called pervasive developmental disorder and with hyperlexia, a syndrome that often manifests itself in an intense fascination with words and numbers. For Matt�s parents, Larry and Diane, the diagnosis was a mixed blessing, offering the relief of finally understanding what is behind their son�s behavior as well as the fear of what this could mean for his future.
"I was a little bit overwhelmed because here was the doctor painting a very dark picture and saying it�s something that never goes away," Diane says. "He said Matt may get better and learn how to cope with the world, but it�s a lifelong issue."
Although Matt is on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum, Diane says he still struggles with its effects. Hyperactivity is an issue, she says, as well as a difficulty in controlling his emotional responses. A runny nose, for example, will set him off entirely disproportionately.
When Matt was 4 and then again when he was 6, he underwent a type of audio therapy called auditory integration training, which involves listening and adjusting to different frequencies in order to make him less sensitive to sound. It was after the second time Matt went through the therapy that Diane noticed him suddenly taking an interest in an old toy piano that had been sitting around the house for years. The piano had color-coded musical notation and Matt was playing songs in no time. Seeing how quickly Matt mastered the toy piano, Diane -- who plays the piano herself -- took him to the big piano in their house and showed him middle C and how to hold his hand on the keyboard.
"We started playing songs he learned on the toy piano," Diane, 40, recalls. "Pretty soon I was pulling out real music books. He had no trouble transitioning from color-coded music to real music." Matt was 6� at the time.
Seeing Matt�s interest in music, the Savages found a classical piano teacher for him, but already early on the jazz improviser inside him started to appear. "His teacher would tell him to play a different note than the one he was playing and he would say, �but it sounds better this way.� Soon he was writing his own music," Diane says.
Matt truly discovered jazz when he was 7, while the family was visiting a summer fair during a vacation in Maine. Walking around the fair, the Savages -- who live in Sudbury, outside of Boston, and also have a 6-year-old daughter -- came across a jazz group setting up in a tent. When Matt heard the band warming up, he ran up on stage, sat down at the piano and started playing his own version of jazz and blues -- music Diane says he had not really heard much at home.
Realizing Matt�s talent, Diane and Larry enrolled him in weekly jazz classes at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and started taking him to a jam session at a local caf� in nearby Acton, which is where he met the members of his trio.
"It was nice to find something that was socially acceptable," Diane says with a laugh when asked about discovering Matt�s unique musical talent. "He used to obsess about license plate numbers and the number of garage doors people have on their houses."
But deciding what to do with Matt�s talent was more difficult. "It was agonizing for us," Diane says. "We felt he had this gift and should share it with the world, but we are also parents and want to protect our children."
Letting their child pursue his fascination with jazz appears to have allowed Matt -- who studies in a regular school, although with the help of a full-time aide -- to flourish and develop skills not readily available to autistic children. "He can now approximate and improvise, not just musically but in his life," Diane says. "Being flexible was a big hurdle for him."
Matt�s piano playing ability falls into the category of "savant" skills, possessed by an estimated 10 percent of autistic children. Darold Treffert, a Wisconsin psychiatrist who is the author of the book "Extraordinary People: Understanding the Savant Syndrome," says Matt�s achievement reflects a new understanding about the benefits of encouraging the development of such talents. "In the past there was some reluctance to �train the talent� for fear that the person would become only occupied with that one thing. But that has largely dissipated now. Now the skill can be used as a conduit toward normalization," says Treffert.
"In general, the understanding is that there is some brain dysfunction at some level for which another area of the brain compensates," Treffert says, explaining how a child develops these skills. "It is not simply a compensation, but an enabling of an area that otherwise would not be tapped."
SEEING MATT IN CONCERT IS AN experience that is at once completely amazing and utterly charming. At the New Orleans festival, an annual multi-day event that attracts some of the world�s greatest musicians, Matt and his trio are booked to play at the fest�s children�s tent, a venue that usually features adults playing for children. In Matt�s case, the situation is reversed: up on stage is this little child, while the audience is filled with adults who are curious to check out the kid pianist.
Wearing glasses, a short-sleeved checked shirt and khaki pants, Matt bounds on to the stage and warms the crowd up like a pro, asking them to guess which one of the three people on stage is Matt Savage. He then introduces the first tune (the title track of his latest album), "Grooving on Mount Everest," an original written, he says playfully, "by you know whoooooo."
Matt sits down at the keyboard, his legs dangling in the air, and starts playing a fast-paced bebop tune, his tiny hands flying across the keyboard. The music, the kind of solid, straight-ahead jazz you would hear on a Saturday night in a small jazz club, has jaws in the audience dropping, heads shaking in disbelief.
On the next number, a Miles Davis tune, Matt plays with confidence, even quoting a few bars of "Jingle Bells" towards the end of the song. The trio, which includes Steve Silverstein, 46, on drums and John Funkhouser, 35, on bass, plays a few more Matt originals, everybody taking a solo, as well as "Chelsea Bridge," a slow Billy Strayhorn standard that Matt plays with emotion and sensitivity. By the end of the set, the crowd is on its feet, clapping wildly and demanding an encore.
Backstage after the show, a sweaty Matt, his shirt again untucked, sits down for something that is already almost routine in his short life -- the press interview. He shakes hands warmly, and his manner is calmly adult, although he doesn�t make great eye contact, his eyes wandering around the space of the tent he just played in.
What do you like about being a musician? "Well, when it gets to my solo, I feel free," Matt says, as he starts mimicking the motion of a bird flying with his hands. "It just feels good. It feels great."
Any favorite musicians? "I love Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie. The bebop guys."
Why do you like jazz? "Why jazz?" he repeats the question to himself. "You can do all kinds of stuff in it, and when you get to your solo -- like I told you -- you can throw all kinds of stuff in, while in classical you have to follow the sheet."
How do you write your own tunes? "There are themes to the songs, patterns or rhythm changes -- �I Got Rhythm� changes," Matt answers, making a jazz joke in the process. "Maybe," he adds, stopping for a second, his body wiggling in his chair, "maybe even playing a note that then branches out one little bit and then it grows and grows and grows into another song," Matt says, as he starts to make wild gestures with his hands.
Silverstein, Matt�s drummer and a music teacher in the Boston area, says playing with Matt means constant surprises for him and Funkhouser. "It�s unlike anything that either of us has ever done," he says. "We�re along for this unique journey." Silverstein says he often finds himself on stage just watching Matt with fascination. "Considering his age and knowledge, he�s very unique," he says. "Even someone in high school would not have that much knowledge of the repertoire."
Matt continues adding to that repertoire. His new album, released last month by the family�s label, Savage Records, which is run by Diane, contains mostly originals and his mother says he never stops composing. Matt's first record, a solo effort, sold a modest 1,000 copies, but sales have picked up for his later releases, Diane says. Although she doesn�t give a figure, Diane says his latest record is "flying off the shelf." As far as concerts go, Matt has about nine gigs booked through early next year, a combination of autism benefit shows and jazz festivals.
As Matt�s music gains popularity, Diane says she hopes his story will help bring more attention to developments in the treatment of autism. "I think that was the deciding factor for us to allow him to go ahead with his music, because people are very intrigued by him and I get hundreds and hundreds of e-mails from parents with autistic children who want to talk about treatments and therapies," Diane says.
(The family lives on Larry�s earnings as a financial consultant, and proceeds from the sale of Matt�s records go towards autism research efforts.)
For Matt, though, playing music seems to be what it�s all about. At the end of his backstage interview, he is asked a last question, one that few accomplished jazz musicians have put to them: So, what do you want to do when you grow up? Matt thinks for a second and then says with a big smile: "I want to play jazz!"
(June 3, 2002)
Arts
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