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A man and his guitar
A day in the life of a Union-dwelling musician
By Tasha Paradies
He looks up from his notes and smiles. His eyes are a warm hazel like the wood of the guitar.
The guitarist brushes his fingers along the instrument to make soft Spanish melodies, warming the overcast day like a flickering candle.
It is Valentine’s Day and his audience is the rest of the 10 o’clock crowd in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Union. His sheet music is spread out on a table that is surrounded by other students, who are sipping coffee and turning pages.
The man sitting and playing a guitar is an unusual sight amid the blank-looking faces of students on their way to class and others who sit over open books. It might seem as his intention, to stand out. He is just concerned about tomorrow.
He will be performing on a stage then, and that is why he chooses to play in the company of others today — for practice.
“It gets me to have more people around when I play,” says Matt Miller, 27, the classical guitar graduate student who can be seen playing in the Union once or twice a week. “It helps with the feeling of anxiety when I do perform at a serious concert.”
Tomorrow he will travel to UW-Waukesha to fulfill an artist in residency and teach a theory class, master class and perform.
Sometimes music students will seek him out in the Union to ask about his instruction, instrument or choice of music.
He looks up from his notes and smiles. His eyes are a warm hazel like the wood of the guitar. He is clean-cut with matching sandy hair, spiked just so. Today he wears a gray sweater zipped up all the way, and his black dress coat is draped over the chair beside him.
In an hour, he will observe a guitar lesson, and after a second lesson of his own, he is “done for the day.”
Tonight he is cooking dinner for his girlfriend, Jenny. The menu is ahi tuna steak with asparagus and an orange and lime cilantro sauce.
There will be no serenades, though, just good food.
“She hears enough of me playing,” he says. “I feel bad for her, she hears a lot of my mistakes and run-throughs.”
Still, she is a good listener, he says.
His family is also supportive, even though he is the only musician in his immediate family. He says it is uncommon to be the lone musician.
“Usually people are born with a musician family,” he says, also noting he has stuck with the guitar since he was 7.
He wishes to pass on his own enjoyment of the instrument with his research project to create a “solid classical guitar curriculum.” The important things, he says, are working on posture and sitting, the foundations for a successful classical guitarist.
Anyone at a concert or passing by in the Union can tell Miller has built this foundation, but he says he still worries if he is doing his best.
“That is what helps me search for what I need, and that is a good education and good experiences,” he says. “It is what keeps you at it.”
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