Local Folks: Matt Monroe
Meet Matt Monroe of Riverside — father, teacher, musician.
Matt is a single dad of two sons: 11-year-old Maverick and 9-year-old Quentin. “I love reading to them,” Matt said. They’ve enjoyed H.G. Wells’s “The Time Machine” and “The Invisible Man”. They have a set of Roald Dahl books that they are making their way through with titles like “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “James and the Giant Peach.” “My older son reads a ton on his own now,” Matt said. When not reading, they like movies at Sun-Ray. Matt said of his sons, “They are both budding musicians. So, sometimes, I’m practicing with them”— Maverick on the viola and Quentin on the cello. Both play piano.
The three enjoy being outdoors together, too. Maverick is into archery. His grandmother bought him a target for the backyard. It’s a small, fake buck rather than a bullseye circle. “It’s a blast, not something that everybody does in their backyard in Riverside,” Matt said. Quentin is into baseball. One of his favorite positions has been catcher, but now he’s starting to pitch. “It’s an exciting new chapter,” said Matt, who has served as coach on various teams.
In addition to being a dad, Matt is a music teacher at Jacksonville Classical Academy. He teaches mainly sixth and seventh grades, but sometimes younger ones as well. His classes include choral groups, singing groups, music history and music theory. Outside the classroom, Matt offers private horn lessons.
As a professional musician, Matt is a hornist in a variety of symphony orchestras and ensembles. He is also the producer of A Lonely Horn, a YouTube channel established in 2015 with weekly shows dedicated to the performance of music on the French horn. Matt started the show not long after he and his family had moved to Jacksonville from Chicago on account of his former spouse’s job. “I was looking for stuff to do and places to play,” he said. As a freelance musician, Matt had more opportunities in Illinois than in Florida. The move was a slow transition for him, but Matt did not remain idle.
He wanted to make the French horn, his passion, entertaining and accessible to a variety of people. He knew he could do that via the internet. “It was also a way to connect with friends, let people know what I was doing,” he said. Matt used the videos as a form of advertising his availability for gigs and for lessons, too. He also intended for the videos to highlight the spaces where he was recording from. In Jacksonville, those included churches like Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd and Riverside Presbyterian. There were other venues as well. Still a member of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra at that time, which is near to his former Chicago home, Matt would sometimes travel back to Michigan to play and record.
The weekly shows consisted of Matt playing a piece of music and then giving a brief talk about the piece, its composer and history. The music had been recorded in the various venues where acoustics were appropriate. The talks were usually recorded from home. His young boys in the background add to the charm of some episodes.
Matt began the channel alone. He recorded approximately 16 episodes of himself playing. He’d use his iPhone on a tripod. “My goal was to see if I could do it all by myself, just so I could keep it simple and affordable. It was an experiment, at first,” he said. Matt’s channel now has well over 200 subscribers and nearly 1,500 views. His current students like to watch sometimes, and they have requested that Mr. Monroe record an episode at the Academy. Matt agrees that might be fun, and he would like to get back to producing more episodes. What he has done so far “was a really good start,” he said, but he desires now to get professional help with the recordings to get better quality out of the productions.
Overall, Matt’s life has had many ups and downs since he’s moved to Jacksonville, but he’s found so many great things here. “I love the Riverside neighborhood,” he said. The walkability of the community reminds him of where he grew up in Portland, Oregon. The house he lives in now is historic, as was his parents’ house where he spent his childhood, both built in the same era. “So, it feels like home to me,” he said.
By Mary Wanser
Resident Community News
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading... 
