Matt Savage, age 26, has had a 17-year professional career as a jazz musician, bandleader and composer with ensembles of different size. He’s played with some of the biggest names in jazz, including Chick Corea, the Ellington All Stars, Chaka Khan, Wynton Marsalis, Bobby Watson, Clark Terry, Jimmy Heath, Jason Moran, Arturo O’Farrill, John Pizzarelli, Joshua Redman, Terri Lyne Carrington, Jon Faddis, Jerry Bergonzi and Donny McCaslin among others. Along the way, he’s recorded twelve albums as leader and one as collaborator. He is a Bösendorfer piano artist.
As a composer, Matt has garnered respect. He composed and recorded the score for a full-length documentary film, Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story. The movie, which premiered in 2014, chronicles the life of jazz alto saxophonist Frank Morgan. Additionally, Savage wrote almost all the songs on his twelve albums, several of which have been used in short documentaries, on web sites, in school music curricula and in government educational materials. Savage has toured worldwide and had many national media appearances including performances at The Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Birdland, the Blue Note, Bohemian Caverns, Town Hall, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Scullers, the Jazz Standard, the Pantages Theatre, the Iridium, the Berklee BeanTown Jazz Festival, the Monterey Jazz Festival, Heineken Jazzaldia (Spain), the Costa Rica International Jazz Festival, the International VSA Arts Festival, the Jacksonville Jazz Festival, the Ottawa International Jazz Festival, the New Orleans Jazz Festival, Japan, Curacao, Aruba and for the president of Singapore.
In April 2015, Matt opened for Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Shawn Colvin and others at Autism Speaks’ “Light Up the Blues” concert event in Hollywood… and in December 2015, he performed with Steve Earle and Jackson Browne at Town Hall in New York City. Matt’s latest project is a solo piano album, Matt Savage: Piano Voyages, which was released on October 14, 2016.
Media appearances have included Marian McPartland’s “Piano Jazz,” NPR’s “All Things Considered,” “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” “The Late Show with David Letterman,” the “Today” Show, ABC’s “20/20,” the Discovery Channel, BBC, Telemundo TV, and news shows and documentaries worldwide (including the U.S., Germany, France, Japan and the U.K.) The Wall Street Journal, JazzTimes, JAZZIZ, TIME, WIRED, Der Spiegel, The Jerusalem Report, People Magazine, TIME for Kids, American Way, The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, The Boston Globe, the New York Daily News, and others have featured Matt in print.
A graduate of Manhattan School of Music and Berklee College of Music, Matt balances his professional music career with teaching. He teaches at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, as well as several community music schools in eastern Massachusetts. Matt gives masterclasses and workshops domestically and internationally (in English and Spanish) as well as private piano lessons.
