Math & the Music Man
Ask Roberto Matthews, Christ the King’s musical director, what he’s thinking during mass, and he’ll probably tell you he’s solving an equation. But more on that later. He didn’t come from a musical family. In fact, his Cuban grandmother, who raised him, forbade him from pursuing music. “In Cuba, music is like a handshake; anyone can play, but you don't get paid for giving handshakes,” Roberto says. She imagined a penniless life for him and instead encouraged him to pursue math and technology. But Roberto loved music, even at six years old, when he got his first instrument: a ukulele with no strings. He would spend hours with the broken instrument in his hands, pretending to play. Years later, at Loyola University, where he was studying math, he would pass by a baby grand in the cafeteria, feeling the urge to hear music come from the idle piano. At first, when no one was looking, he would press just one key. The next day, another. And then another. “I would walk past it and press a...
