About Me
Go to Ben's personal myspace
From the young age of 3, Ben started playing the piano, originally learning classical pieces, motivated by promises of Lego sets. In his sixth year of primary school, aged 11, he took up the trumpet, and joined the primary school band, and into the junior concert band of his highschool to-be. By the age of 13, he no longer had a piano teacher, and began developing his own style of contemporary piano, inspired initially by movie soundtrack scores, computer game soundtrack scores and Nobuo Uematsu's piano scores. Through this time he had joined the highschool's concert band, and swing band, keeping a focus on the trumpet, performing in various locations around the southern suburbs of Perth.
After highschool, Ben completed a Certificate IV in Jazz Performance (on trumpet) at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 2006. However, after seeing and hearing Japanese composer and pianist Hiromi Uehara , Ben has decided to head back to the Academy in 2008, aiming to complete a Bachelor of Performing Arts, majoring on Jazz Piano.
About the songs
Goodbye Angel was semi-written, semi-improvised. I'd written the theme, and sort of worked through the rest of it a few times, got the idea of it down and recorded it using my new keyboard, straight into the computer (hence the quality difference between Goodbye Angel and Something Worth Keeping). I'm still getting used to this whole home-studio recording stuff.
What's the Deal was recorded by Featherstone, in 2007. The band members are:
Luke McPharlin (vocals and guitars)
Hoda Golestani(vocals)
Mick Burns(drums)
Roushan Croft(bass guitar and upright)
Adrian Bollig(saxaphone)
Ben Matthews (Keyboards and trumpet)
Worth Keeping (Something Worth Keeping (the title was too long for the Myspace media player)) is an improvised piece, and one of the few that I've recorded that I've been fairly happy with, as far as playing and structure/form is concerned. However, the recording quality itself, as you can hear, is terrible! Unfortunately, being an improvised piece, I was unable to re-record it. There are a few timing or technical glitches, but through those and the recording quality, I hope you enjoy it regardless. It runs for 17 minutes, and as such, I had to break it into two songs for the sake of uploading it to myspace.
Enjoy!
-Ben
