Doyce points this amazing article:
Matt Savage launched his jazz career by attempting to improve a Schubert sonata. His piano teacher told him that the G-sharp he just played was supposed to be a G-natural. “It sounds better my way,” he protested. She replied that only when he wrote his own music could he take liberties with a score. Keen on taking liberties, he became a jazz composer. He released his fifth album this year, making guest appearances on the Today show, 20/20, and NPR. Recently, his trio booked two shows at the Blue Note in New York City.
The kicker is, Matt Savage is eleven years old. Matt’s a “perseverative hyperlexic with pervasive developmental disorder,” and a musical savant.
Aside from lots of interesting bits in the article, there’s this:
As we finish lunch, Matt asks me in his distinctively high-pitched voice, “Did you know that numbers can be friendly and amicable?” He means friendly and amicable in the math-geek sense – numbers that can be factored into one another – but I also felt he was using those words in their ordinary sense. Matt is intimate with numbers. They come to him in dreams and inspire him to write songs. One of his tunes on the album Groovin’ on Mount Everest is called “Forty-Seven” – a number he feels is “lonely” because when he asks people to think up a random number, no one ever chooses it.
Now for the synchronicity. Not only is 47 the non-random random number of my alma mater, but this morning I got an e-mail from my boss that he was down to 47 unanswered messages in his inbox, and I sent back to him a link to this article.
I’m not sure what it all means, but …