HACKENSACK — His hands dance in the air, fingers skimming over the notes of an invisible keyboard.
Even if one was there, he would not be able to see it.
Matthew Whitaker is blind, but sees music the way others see colors. He hears a song, and can play it just like an artist can reproduce a painting.
He has played at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and at Lincoln Center. He plays piano, drums, clarinet and the guitar. He writes his own songs.
And he’s just 9 years old.
"Maybe he can’t see, but he was given another gift," said Sonelius Smith, one of his instructors at the Harlem School for the Arts.
A skinny boy with a wide smile and infectious enthusiasm, Matthew — a fourth-grade musical prodigy and jazz enthusiast from Hackensack — almost never sits still. When he’s not in front of a piano, organ or drum set, he keeps up a steady stream of chatter, mostly about music.
It’s been a long road for him to get here.
Born nearly three months premature, Matthew weighed just over 1 pound at birth and was given a 50 percent chance to live, said his mother, May Whitaker. His mother and father, Moses, did not find out until later that he had retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), a disease that can cause blindness in babies born prematurely.
"We didn’t know what kind of life he’d lead, but now look at him. We’re so glad he fought," May Whitaker said.
The family first realized Matthew had a gift for music when he tapped out "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" on a toy Yamaha keyboard he’d gotten for his third birthday, his father said. This was amazing, his parents said, because none of them had a music background. Matthew had just heard the song and figured out the notes on his own.
Matthew even jokes about his family’s lack of musical skills: "Know what my father plays?" he likes to ask. "The radio!" Matthew even accentuates the line with a "ba-dum-dah" on the drums.
His teachers say he can often play a song perfectly after hearing it just once. And, they say, he has perfect pitch.
"I listen on my iPod and then I just play it," Matthew said. "Jazz is the best. I just like the way it sounds."
He plays Latin jazz, gospel and classical music and composes his own music — mostly short pieces with a jazz influence, but also some that are more classical in nature.
He began taking piano lessons when he was 5 as the youngest student at Lighthouse International, a New York school for the blind and visually impaired, his father said. Typically, Lighthouse won’t accept students until they’re 7.
Dalia Sakas, his classical piano instructor at Lighthouse, and the school’s coordinator of curriculum, said Matthew can read Braille music but he mostly learns by listening.
"He just wants to learn everything and picks things up so quickly," Sakas said.
For the last two years, he’s also been studying at the Harlem School for the Arts. He has taught himself the organ, while taking lessons in classical and jazz piano, drums and percussion. Lately, he’s started picking up the clarinet and bass guitar. All the instruments are set up in the Whitaker family basement, which more closely resembles a music studio.
After homework and dinner, Matthew plays for hours a day, to the point that his parents have made rules restricting music hours to after 8 a.m. so his three older siblings can get some sleep.
"He’s always ready to play," his mother said.
He regularly performs in several ensembles with Lighthouse and the Harlem School, including the Lighthouse Jazz Band and a Latin jazz ensemble at the Harlem School. Last year, he won Amateur Night at the Apollo over many performers older than he. He also plays regularly at his church, the New Hope Baptist Church in Hackensack.
At the Park Place studios of WBGO Jazz 88.3 in Newark, he is something of an unofficial mascot. Last year, Matthew was invited to tour the station and attend a fund-raising gala, where he met Grammy Award-winning jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater.
"We have just fallen in love with Matthew because of his love for music, his enthusiasm, his energy," said Cephas Bowles, the station’s president and chief executive officer. "Here is this very gifted child, but he’s not going into hip hop or rock and roll, he’s playing jazz music."
Matthew said he would like to be a musician when he grows up. He’s a big fan of Miles Davis, Jimmy Smith and Dr. Lonnie Smith, a jazz organist, and he also admires Stevie Wonder, another musician who has not let blindness get in the way of his talent. He and Wonder play the same instruments — including harmonica, which Matthew received for Christmas and has already managed to teach himself to how play.
Some day, Matthew said, he would like to start his own band, playing all the instruments.
"I’ll call it The Matthew Whitaker One-Man Band," he said with a grin, hands already tapping out a rhythm on the tabletop. "I like to be the one in charge."