A career of certain note

__Son of a church pianist, Matt Yount carves jazzy, classical niche at Southeast Missouri State University and in the community__

At first, Matt Yount seems too tall for his office.

His shaved head skirts the low ceiling of the top-floor space in the River Campus Seminary Building.

"They had to put me up here because I make so much noise," he explained, patting the sheet-music-strewn baby grand that fills a quarter of the room.

Others of his more than 6-foot stature might be cramped, but Yount feels right at home.

Matt Yount plays a piece of music in the Robert F. and Gertrude L. Shuck Recital Hall on Southeast Missouri State University's River Campus Thursday, Jan. 29, 2015. (Glenn Landberg)

"It's the violins and upright basses that have to worry about [hitting the ceiling]," he joked. "I'm always sitting down."

By "always," he means the six to eight hours a day he's at a piano. For more than 10 years, he's been a member of the music faculty at Southeast Missouri State University, teaching several courses, but mostly working one-on-one with students -- and other faculty members -- on recital pieces.

When he's not being the university's go-to pianist, he provides the music at his church, where he attends with his wife, Jessie, and two boys, and where he's also a deacon. In his spare time, he lifts weights. Yet despite his being so aggravatingly talented, it's hard not to like a guy with such an earnest Missouri manner.

"I grew up in Bollinger County," he said. "And I've really never gone away."

The son of a church pianist, Yount showed an aptitude for music as a toddler, plunking out on the family piano the melodies of the hymns his mother played at Liberty Congregational Methodist Church. He was taking lessons by the time he was 4.

Matt Yount plays a piece of music in the Robert F. and Gertrude L. Shuck Recital Hall on Southeast Missouri State University's River Campus Thursday, Jan. 29, 2015. (Glenn Landberg)

"At that age, a kid's not old enough to tell if he enjoys it, really," he explained, but by adolescence, Yount realized he enjoyed playing the piano quite a bit. He didn't expect it to take him anywhere, though.

"Growing up in this area, I really didn't know what opportunities there were for classically trained pianists," he said. Growing up, he had wanted to be a teacher.

"You just continue to take lessons because you're good at it and you enjoy it," he said.

"It was Dr. John Shelton who nudged me toward applying myself more in terms of playing," he recalled. So he turned his music minor into a second major, and after graduating, studied for two years at the renowned Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. He eventually came back to Cape and landed a job at Southeast doing what his high-school-self didn't realize was possible: teaching and playing professionally all in his own hometown.

"I definitely see the hand of providence in it," he said.

Matt Yount performs on keyboard with the Jazz Sultans, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2015, at Lodo in downtown Cape Girardeau. (Laura Simon)

Shepherding students to the recital stage is perhaps what he was meant to do all along, but a quiet gusto fills his voice when he shifts to what he plays for himself.

"I like to play jazz."

The bust of Beethoven on his desk embodies the elegance, form and the sometimes-austere genius of the classical composers, but the stormy portrait of Thelonious Monk on the opposite wall evokes the liberated, ephemeral brilliance Yount finds in jazz.

"He did a lot of things that were, well, unorthodox," Yount explained, miming Monk's crooked, often-elephantine playing style, evidently savoring the idea as only a form-conscious instructor-slash-jazz-pianist is capable.

"Jazz is so spontaneous. When you're playing a recital, you read the notes, drill the notes and play the notes," he said. "But jazz is the opposite. You have this informal idea and it just goes moment to moment."

Matt Yount performs on keyboard with the Jazz Sultans, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2015, at Lodo in downtown Cape Girardeau. (Laura Simon)

He compares it to the difference between a play and comedic improv.

"It's a very different style of playing, almost 95 percent improvisational. You all have an idea of where you're going, but it's not scripted," he said.

Every few months, he plays downtown or at a private party with a handful of fellow professors as part of Dr. Bob Conger's Jazz Sultans, putting that high-wire vitality on display.

Decked in blacks, they work the music like sculptors, kneading and shaping the songs up off the sheets and into a breathing, vibrant form. They take turns fleshing it out, each spinning a different direction, but all headed toward the same end.

And true to Yount's metaphor, they work crowds like comedians, getting them comfortable in the groove just to push them outside it with unexpected chords and drop-beats that come fast and again, swirling and brewing tension until the point, when the audience realizes they've snapped back -- to the resolution.

Matt Yount performs on keyboard with the Jazz Sultans, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2015, at Lodo in downtown Cape Girardeau. (Laura Simon)

And while applause settles over the song's denouement, the bandmembers savor each other's punchlines.

"Sometimes, something happens and I'll just look over at the bass player or the [drum] set player and we'll just know that we've just had a great moment," he said.

But alone in his office, Yount demonstrates a softer side of jazz. As the pensive, meandering jazz standard "Body and Soul" floods his small office, he explains how good the view is from the window where he plays. How in the morning, the sun rises over the Emerson Bridge and how thankful he is for the type of life he's been able to build right here.

"Such a thing is not done," he said. "I see it as a sovereign blessing."

tgraef@semissourian.com

Matt Yount performs on keyboard with the Jazz Sultans, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2015, at Lodo in downtown Cape Girardeau. (Laura Simon)

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