Men Alive Signs Matt Alber for Spring Concert
By Stan Jenson
Recording artist Matt Alber was helping a friend who needed to find some gay male singers for a recording project. He volunteered to phone some of the local gay choruses, including Orange County’s Men Alive. When he reached Artistic Director Rich Cook, he explained his project. After a moment, Cook said, “Wait, did you say that you are Matt Alber? The one who wrote ‘End of the World’?” “Well, yes. I did write and record that song.” “That’s incredible,” Cook exclaimed. “We’re performing it in our upcoming Spring Concert, ‘Fever of Love’!” The two men spoke for a few moments more, and Cook persuaded Alber to perform the song himself along with the 140-voice chorus.
Alber was born in Wichita, and his father was a concert pianist. Little Matt used to love to watch him play, and couldn’t wait to put his fingers on the keys. At age nine, the family moved to Missouri, and Matt joined the St. Louis Children’s Choir. He grew to love singing so much that he selected voice as his college major. Upon graduating, he auditioned for San Francisco’s illustrious a cappella group, Chanticleer. He was invited to join as a soprano because of the incredible falsetto voice he had developed in college. Chanticleer was an amazing education for him, both in music and in living on the road. Traveling for a living and performing in a different city every night paved the way for the solo career he now pursues. His time with the group was exciting and exhausting. Their music was the most difficult and complex that he had ever heard, much less performed, and they stretched his ears in terms of harmony and what was musically possible.
In 2003, he left Chanticleer to get off the road. He took a job in San Francisco playing keyboards for “Beach Blanket Babylon.” Between shows each night, he would go to the basement where an old upright piano was stored in one of the hallways, often composing tunes to accompany lyrics he had written that day while riding city busses. One of those tunes was “End of the World,” which he describes as a “Hail Mary play” to keep a partner who wanted to leave him. He and a friend recorded the song using his Macintosh Computer, and added it to his first album, Nonchalant. Based on that album, Alber was picked up by Tommy Boy as the first artist on their new imprint, Silver Label. They produced a video to accompany “End of the World,” and released the video on U-Tube. In addition to becoming an incredible viral hit, it won the OUT Music Awards Video of the Year for 2009, and was chosen as the Number One Gay Music Video of 2009 by After Elton. Alber explained the video by saying, “Although there are plenty of gay characters in films and television, they are still a bit sensationalized – funny, flamboyant, sex-crazed, broken-hearted, or still in the closet. This video is about two ordinary guys in a barber shop, where the barber ends up acting as a matchmaker. It’s simple, and incredibly romantic. The response to it has been incredible!”
In addition to “End of the World,” Men Alive’s spring concert, “Fever of Love,” has a great collection of romantic songs, ranging from rock anthems “That’s How You Know” and “Boys, Boys, Boys” to the plaintive “Unforgettable” and the passionate “Be Italian,” from Nine. Chorus members Matt Jankowski and Charlie Reeves are handling the choreography, and bringing forth moves that they have learned in their many years of musical theatre. The steps are challenging, but the dancers are eager as they show up for extra weekend rehearsals. They can’t wait to bust their moves in front of the chorus’s typical sold-out houses, knowing how vocal their audiences are in their appreciation.
Blade readers will be especially happy to learn that Adam Boyles, Mr. US Gay who graced the cover of our February issue, is featured prominently in the dance numbers. We anticipate plenty of binoculars in the audience!
“Fever of Love” plays March 26 and 27 at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. Tickets are $25 - $47.50, and available at the box office, by phone at 949-854-4646, or online at www.thebarclay.org. More information about the chorus is at www.menalivehcorus.org.