Greta Matassa | KNKX Studio Session

Greta Matassa is a singer whose expansive energy fills up a room. Her light was on full display at a recent studio session at KNKX’s downtown Seattle studios. Matassa regularly performs around the Puget Sound region, and will appear at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley in April with her new sextet.

Matassa is also a well-known music educator. Even the soundcheck at KNKX became a chance to educate the small audience, which included some of her former students.

After singing three original tunes she sat down with KNKX host Paige Hansen for a frank discussion about how she got started, the state of the music industry, and her current work both on and off-stage to keep the music community thriving.

Matassa got her start singing as a teenager and was soon being booked at gigs with age-limits. She convinced her open-minded parents to let her quit school and they forged a fake ID so she could go to work singing.

She learned a lot along the way, despite not being able to read music, shaping the lessons she shares with her students.

"Stepping onto a bandstand as a professional, I had to I had to find out how to communicate with musicians," Matassa explained.

"And as a teacher now, I kind of talk to singers about this because a lot of the singers that I work with, they don't read music either, and I'm obviously not gonna be able to teach them to read music, but I'm teaching them how to interface with musicians, how to discuss things, how to understand."

She said the 1980s were a time flush with lucrative gigs that could keep a musician working six days a week for four hours a night. But the advent of karaoke and DJs changed the the climate for musicians.

"A lot of the venues that we're used to paying a full-size group, they didn't have to do that anymore. They got a karaoke machine, or they got a DJ spinning discs. And so we were out, and there was no replacement for it,” she said.

Matassa started doing studio work, and eventually teaching.

"I did it because I needed the money. But I really did find that I really like it. I'm good at it, and I love helping people at whatever level get a chance to experience what this is like," she said.

Technology has once again changed the game for Matassa's work. The current array of available music services and nearly endless YouTube videos offer a lot of access to jazz music. But Matassa said sometimes this means jazz students skim the surface and don’t go as deep with their knowledge.

“It’s this double-edged sword – yes, they can listen to 50 different versions of it – but they don’t go deep with any of them," she said.

Matassa's solution is to send students one recording a week, maybe of Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald or Anita O’Day. Then she tells them to "live with that for the week," only listening to one great tune.

"When I learned this music, I had records, and I played the record over and over and over and over. And if you learned orally, the way I did, that was how I got deep with this music," Matassa said.

With a deep relationship with the music, and no plans to retire, Greta Matassa continues to inspire and entertain, waving her iconic fan onstage.

Musicians:
Greta Matassa - vocals
Brian Monroney - guitar
David Lee Joyner - piano
Clipper Anderson - bass
Mark Ivester - drums

Songs:
"About the Boy" (G.Matassa/C.Anderson)]
"Quiet Evening" (D.Grusin/G.Matassa)
"A Walk with Miss Begonia" (G.Matassa/C.Anderson)

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