Just out of grade school, Matt picked up the tenor sax at the age of twelve and became a standard fixture in his middle school and high school jazz bands. But the sax wasn’t his only instrument: he soon found he had a talent for using his voice. By his Senior year of High School, Matt had won the prestigious Louis Armstrong Jazz Award in both the vocal and instrumental categories, the first student from his school to achieve such a feat.

That affirmation was a turning point for Matt, as he realized that his true passion was using his voice to interpret a song. He grabbed a guitar, taught himself to play and began composing his own music the summer before he entered Nashville’s Vanderbilt University. Before the first day of class commenced, Billy Adair, Director of the Vanderbilt/Blair School of Music Blair Big Band, had already recruited Matt to sing for the Band. Soon, Matt was directing himself, leading the Dodecaphonics, an all-male a Capella campus group.

The rising star eventually came to the attention of Nashville’s music industry following a performance of the Nashville Jazz Orchestra. That performance landed him a televised appearance as a featured entertainer for the Miss Tennessee Scholarship Pageant 2006, which eventually led him to Green Hill Music, where he recorded an album of Christmas standards for the independent label. That album quickly became one of the label’s best selling holiday releases that season.

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