Pianist Matt Savage has played music professionally since childhood, as a performer, bandleader, and composer with ensembles of various sizes. 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, and Jimmy Heath, among others. He’s also opened for rock legends Neil Young and Stephen Stills, and performed with folk singers Steve Earle, Jackson Browne, Shawn Colvin, and Al Stewart. He is a Bösendorfer piano artist.
As a composer, Matt has garnered respect and recognition. He composed and recorded the score for a full-length jazz documentary film, Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story. Additionally, Savage has thirteen albums, which consist mostly of his original compositions. His latest album is the Matt Savage Groove Experiment’s debut EP, Splash Variations. In recent years, Matt Savage has put a lot of time into composing classical pieces – including his very virtuosic “pandemic pet project”, the 12 Etudes for Piano.
Savage has toured worldwide, including performances at The Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Birdland, the Blue Note (NYC and Beijing), jazz festivals worldwide, and tours of Asia and Europe.
Six years after receiving his Master’s degree, Matt Savage is honored to be teaching in the Collaborative Piano and Jazz and Contemporary Music Departments at Longy. He is looking forward to seeing how the various styles of music that form today’s performance scene interact. And he is a strong believer that improvisation is central to all styles of music – no matter how a piece is notated.
