Mathew Whitaker may be an anomaly in the human world, but to us, he is a prodigy. Once a person witnesses his musical capabilities, they are going to salute him for his creative genius. Whitaker grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey. And he was born at 24 months to Moses and May Whitaker. He was born with retinopathy of prematurity, which means that his vision was already at 50%. And soon, he would lose all his sight. He underwent 11 surgeries without any avail.
When he was three years old, his parents saw no progress. So they decided to stop the surgeries as their son was suffering a lot due to that. They chose to deal with the condition. As a kid, Mathew wasn’t strong enough to crawl, but his parents figured out a way. They discovered that Matthew loved music and gravitated towards it. That’s why they used toys that made a sound to tempt Matthew to crawl.
And it worked, at a young age, Matthew played with both hands. Even though he started playing rhymes, soon, he progressed. His parents wanted to teach him, so they decided to find a teacher. However, most of them denied teaching because they did not know how to teach a blind kid.
But it was Dalia Sakas Sakas, the director of music studies at the Filomen M. D’Agostino Greenberg Music School in New York City, decided to take him in. The music school is for the visually impaired, and Matthew did remarkably well there. You can learn more about how you can play piano by the ear just so that you have a good grip on the music. He started touring from the age of 11 and has done many concerts since then. He is so talented that Limb, a scientist, decided to include him in a research study.
In the study, they found out that Whitaker’s brain literally lit up when he plays or listens to music. His mind is using his non-working eyesight cells to boost his musical talent. When asked about how he feels about this, Whitaker replied, that means he loves music. His new Album “Now hear this” is out now.