A trim, impeccably attired man of courtly poise, pianist and composer Matthew Kennedy has the light but firm handshake of a man who’s spent a lifetime depending on his fingers. When he was growing up in Georgia, already playing at age 4, a music teacher told his mother he belonged at Juilliard. The family moved to New York for his instruction, and he returned south in 1940 to Fisk University, where he performed as accompanist for the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Ultimately, he served as their director for 23 years, before his retirement in 1986. At age 82, he has just released Familiar Favorites, a CD of solo piano music ranging from Chopin to Duke Ellington. Last week, away from his usual bench at the First Baptist Church Capitol Hill, he sat down to the keyboard of a Madison retirement community for a noontime concert. He smoothed his tie (embossed with a keyboard spiral), raised his long, tapered fingers and played the majestic four-fingered chords of “How Great Thou Art” with such force of feeling that an artificial flower arrangement trembled nearby. Moments later, as he played the Hoagy Carmichael standard “Stardust,” his nimble flourishes breezed through a century of popular music, from prewar pop to ragtime to the lightest hint of jellyroll jazz. As two residents sat nearby, plainly enjoying the music, one asked the other to get up and dance. “I would,” the man replied, “but I just got my leg straightened out.”
—By Jim Ridley
A trim, impeccably attired man of courtly poise, pianist and composer Matthew Kennedy has the light but firm handshake of a man who’s spent a lifetime depending on his fingers. When he was growing up in Georgia, already playing at age 4, a music teacher told his mother he belonged at Juilliard. The family moved to New York for his instruction, and he returned south in 1940 to Fisk University, where he performed as accompanist for the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Ultimately, he served as their director for 23 years, before his retirement in 1986. At age 82, he has just released Familiar Favorites, a CD of solo piano music ranging from Chopin to Duke Ellington. Last week, away from his usual bench at the First Baptist Church Capitol Hill, he sat down to the keyboard of a Madison retirement community for a noontime concert. He smoothed his tie (embossed with a keyboard spiral), raised his long, tapered fingers and played the majestic four-fingered chords of “How Great Thou Art” with such force of feeling that an artificial flower arrangement trembled nearby. Moments later, as he played the Hoagy Carmichael standard “Stardust,” his nimble flourishes breezed through a century of popular music, from prewar pop to ragtime to the lightest hint of jellyroll jazz. As two residents sat nearby, plainly enjoying the music, one asked the other to get up and dance. “I would,” the man replied, “but I just got my leg straightened out.”
—By Jim Ridley
