Gigging in his teens at New York restaurants and parties crystallized his musical priorities, and he took on the whole compositional curriculum: orchestration, conducting, and theory at Binghamton University in upstate New York. It looked like he was on the fast track towards his twin passions, performing and scoring film, when life threw him a curve ball.
His senior year in college, 1995, Matt began to lose control of his left hand — particularly bad news for a southpaw. After a six-month descent into a scary and puzzling world of blurred vision, slurred speech, and fainting spells, he was diagnosed with a rare and dangerous form of brain cancer. Matt was in for a dark passage of long surgeries and even longer post-op treatments. And through it all: No left hand.
The musical obsession is a powerful one, and as Matt was re-learning things like speech and swallowing, he devoted himself even more passionately to bringing back the chops the cancer had snatched away. After three painful years, he started to write and record a piano CD. “At first I wrote for right hand only,” he says. “Then I wrote slow, simple pieces for both hands, more harmonic than melodic.”
In 1999, having fully retrained his lefthand, he released Scribblings, an energetic solo outing that falls somewhere between George Winston and Keith Jarrett with a little Jerome Kern thrown in for good measure. Every Step of the Way followed a few years later and the composition and song titles (“Mysticisms,” “Aura,” “Awakenings,” “Recovery”) resonate with a new age spirit sourced in Matt’s victory over disaster.
In addition to a booming music career, Matt runs the “I’m Too Young For This! Cancer Foundation” — a vital advocacy and support community determined to change the way society views and treats cancer in young adults. It also offers wide-ranging and sassy programs catering to “Generation- Y” survivors. Even if you don’t have cancer, check out “The Stupid Cancer Radio Show” at i2y.org.
Last month, Matt returned to performing with his first public concert in nine years featuring his own works at the 92Y Tribeca venue in New York City. You can hear his music on CD Baby and iTunes, or at matthewzachary.com. If you’re in New York, go see him perform — with both hands — and welcome him back.