Matt Berkeley: Home

Friday, March 19th is a special night for San Francisco music fans. OONA and Joe Bagale will co-headline SF's #1 music club The Independent (http://theindependentsf.com)
Yours truly will be on keyboards with both bands. Visi The Independents website now to get tickets now as this show is expected to sell out!

Hey friends,

Lot's of exciting stuff has been coming up, so much so that I haven't even had a chance to blog about it lately. First off, OONA will be playing our first headlining gig this Friday, February 19th at the Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco, and next week we will be playing ourselves in an independent film. We get to be movie stars! Meanwhile, the Jazz Mafia has lined up some really great stuff for this Spring and Summer. We'll be doing a 'Brass, Bows and Beats' fundraiser at Yoshi's in April and we'd love your support. Like any large ensemble, fundraising is a key component to taking the show on the road, and BBB is slated to play some fantastic international jazz festivals this summer: Newport Jazz Festival (Rhode Island), Montreal Jazz Festival, Playboy Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival...as well as some dates at performance art centers around the US. Tune in to http://jazzmafia.com if you want to be involved with this amazing and groundbreaking symphony. Meanwhile, Supertaster is busy at work on our debut record, and I have also been privileged to collaborate with my Supertaster bandmates Joe Bagale and Karyn Paige for their upcoming solo efforts.

Stay tuned in 2010...it's gonna be a blast!

Wow....that's all I can say. It's been two days, and I'm still flying from the amazing experience that was backing-up the great Stevie Wonder.



And there's video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV1vyMps9i0


It was in San Francisco...last Saturday night...around 12:45am (sorry I guess that is technically Sunday morning) at Coda. (http://codalive.com). I looked to the back of the room, and there he was...listening to our little band.

Somehow, we were in the right place at the right time, and somehow played the right music to coax the legend onto stage with us to sing a couple of songs. It was our version of Donny Hathaway's version of the John Lennon song 'Jealous Guy' that lifted Stevie from his seat and onto the stage. Perhaps because Stevie is such a humanitarian and because Donny's version of the Lennon tune represents such an amazing amalgamation of cultures and music and diversity. After playing two songs with us, 'All Day Sucker' and 'I Can't Help It' (the song Stevie wrote from Michael Jackson's 'Off the Wall' album) we ended the show, and Stevie huddled up the band imparted on us some words of wisdom, encouraging us to continue on our path of music, because music the power to unite all colors, all creeds --- all PEOPLE.

My bandmates Joe Bagale and Adam Theis offer detailed play-by-play accounts of this amazing evening, and I encourage you to visit their Facebook pages if you want a full account of how that magical night came to be. It was an amazing and challenging day, as I already had six-and-a-half hours of driving, three sets of music and two-and-a-half gigs behind me...to be joined by onstage by Stevie Wonder was a sign from the universe I'm on the right road

in this musical journey.

If you have heard Supertaster perform before, than you would know that Stevie Wonder would be the single most wonderful guest we could ever have with us onstage in our wildest dreams....and it happened, in real life.

In other exciting news, my aforementioned bandmates Adam Theis and Joe Bagale have BOTH BEEN NOMINATED FOR SF WEEKLY MUSIC AWARDS!!!! Yeah!!!!

PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO SUPPORT THESE GUYS BY VOTING!!!
here's the link...it will take two minutes. Adam is in the Jazz/Blues category, Joe in the Soul/R&B/Funk category. They are two amazing musicians I'm so proud to work with.

VOTE HERE: http://polls.sfweekly.com/polls/san/musicawards09/