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Re: "Madsen" refacing?

Author: classicalguss
Date: 2008-08-07 18:08

The above is, of course, correct. The name is Everett Matson, who we all called "Matt". He never worked outside his modest home in Oceanport, NJ and he worked at the local Bendix plant after time in the service and Juilliard (studied there with Bonade).
I was lucky to call Matt my friend for years. I turned his pages on the 1st stand of the Asbury Park Concert Band for about 20 years. He was a wonderful player, musician, and the most decent human being I have ever had the pleasure to know.
He came to mouthpiece work entirely because of his lack of satisfaction with his sound. He grew up admiring the sound of Lindemann in the CSO and always had that sound in his ears. An extremely intelligent man, he came to his methods of mouthpiece work through years of trial and error. He never advertised his work and yet became one of the greats of that profession. He had a stack of mouthpieces that still needed work when he passed away after a long illness, even though he kept working until the very end.
One of the things that always stays with me about Matt is that his friends (myself included) would always try to get him to charge more for his work. He would have none of it, charging peanuts for what could become hours of work, but he would always accept a fine bottle of single-malt Scotch, something we shared many times after playing duets or trios with our friend, Leon Knize.
A Prince of a man and someone who made the world a better place because he was among us. I learned as much sitting next to him as I did the fine teachers I studied with and I still miss him terribly.
I would really appreciate any other thoughts about this great man here. I know he touched an amazing amount of people.

Best Wishes,
Roy

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"Madsen" refacing? new

csmith

2008-08-05 15:08