Hampton Roads saxophonist Matt Willard released his first jazz album in 2022 at age 23 and got instant radio play. His singles climbed domestic and international charts, and musicians he once idolized started asking him to play with them.
The slow and steady momentum of his career had morphed into a feeling of rushing success. And then, it stopped. Bang. Done.
He was diagnosed with lockjaw. The pain was excruciating and chronic. Even talking hurt. He was forced to put down his tenor sax.
“The worst part was, music had saved my life. It had. Music saved my life,” Willard said. “And it was gone.”
He didn’t blow a note for 14 months — until earlier this year. Now 26, he is mounting a comeback.
Willard grew up in York County. Dealing with mental health issues, he frequently got in trouble as an elementary school student by acting out in class and getting into verbal and physical fights.
His parents took him to various doctors, and he tried multiple medication combos without results by the time he got to middle school and enrolled in a band class.
“All it took was finding a saxophone — putting a saxophone in my hands,” he recalled.
From sixth grade on, he devoted himself to it. He felt at peace when he practiced every day for hours.
“My brain kind of flipped a switch,” he said. “I had something to work toward. I had something to drive toward.”
His behavior issues didn’t disappear overnight but started to improve and gradually resolve.
“When I would pick up the horn and play, everything I was dealing with five minutes before just kind of left my brain, and it was put on a shelf,” he said.
He joined York High School’s marching band as a freshman and impressed its director, who kept a close eye on him over the next four years, witnessing a growth in his music and his character. Willard was offered a job as an assistant band director a few days after he graduated high school in 2016. He accepted.
At the time, Willard was primarily self-taught. So in the evenings after work, he started to receive formal and advanced training from a local musician, Martin Blockson, whom he now considers a prime mentor.
“He’s got a tone,” the mentor said.
He described his student’s music and style as a big tenor sound that some people may compare to the Grammy-nominated player and composer Richard Elliot, who’s considered one of the pioneers of urban contemporary jazz.
Blockson produced Willard’s 2022 debut album, “Soul Assassin.” Five of its songs garnered radio play.
“It’s not like I was Pink or anything,” Willard said, explaining that while contemporary jazz rarely, if ever, makes Top 40 pop radio, his record was considered a major success for a new artist within his genre.
His single “Electric Shock” was added to the playlist on the SiriusXM Watercolors channel — the creme de la creme of contemporary jazz radio — on the first day of a marketing campaign pitching it to stations. It later reached No. 5 on Radiowave’s U.S. Groove Jazz chart.
His “Nightcrawler” reached No. 19 on the smooth jazz singles chart for Spain and Latin America, The Smooth Jazz Top 100.
Lauded jazz musicians such as bandleader Christian de Mesones and composer Nathan Mitchell started to reach out, wanting to work with him.
The following year, the pain started.
Willard’s back, neck and jaw ached whenever he played, and one night in November 2023, he walked out of a rehearsal knowing he couldn’t play any longer.
He was diagnosed with a temporomandibular disorder that caused the muscles surrounding the joints in his jaw to tighten and feel locked. It also caused pain in his neck and back and about 12 months of sporadic, debilitating migraines.
He recovered slowly and felt nervous this year when he finally unpacked his sax in March. Worried about having lost the touch, he positioned the horn near his chest and, for the first time in a long time, played “Electric Shock.”
It sounded all right. In fact, it sounded good.
“It felt like coming home,” he said.
Not too long after, he released a new single, “Oh Baby Baby,” in June. His technical prowess is apparent on the track, his tenor saxophone pouring melody and notedly impassioned hooks. He has started composing a second full-length album and playing live again.
He’s scheduled to appear on stage next month in connection with Jazz Legacy Foundation’s 13th Annual Gala Weekend, playing two shows as a special guest with de Mesones on Nov. 5 at Roger Brown’s in Portsmouth and with Mitchell on Nov. 7 at the Hampton convention center.