Meet Matthew Wilder of Hallelujah Productions in Venice

Today we’d like to introduce you to Matthew Wilder.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Matthew. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I grew up in a creative family. My mother was an opera graduate of The Juilliard School of Music and my father and his father were theatrical advertisers for Broadway theater. I started studying classical piano when I was four and lived on Long Island till I was 14 yrs old when my family decided to move to Greenwich Village (New York City) in the late 60’s.

My older brother went off to college and for all intents and purposes, I became an only child that year. The world was going through tumultuous changes and I along with it. By my second year of high school, I found my footing. I finally began meeting and making friends in this strange new world and with that, began performing on the streets of New York in the famous folk clubs of the Village; The Bitter End, The Gaslight, Café Wha. I recorded my first album of original material when I was 16 and by the time I had graduated high school, I was well on my way to cultivating a life in music.

However, I still hadn’t fully committed. I had always had an interest in drawing, the fine arts. Rather than going on to a music conservatory for college, I was accepted to Pratt Institute and entered their foundation program in the early 70’s, spending one semester studying drawing, painting and sculpture, while performing in clubs and on the street whenever time would allow. One sunny Sunday afternoon, a producer and agent happened by Washington Sq Park while I and a fellow musician, a flutist, were performing. That was the turning point. We had gathered a sizable crowd and impressed these two music aficionados so that they offered us a recording contract and we were off to Los Angeles to record my first professional album. I was 19 years old. From that point forward, I never looked back. I left school, toured the eastern seaboard and the “southern bible belt”, performing on college campuses and playing the local clubs for the next couple of years.

By the time that had run its course and I decided to strike out on my own, I was in my early twenties. There were several years of playing clubs as a soloist, songwriting and searching for a new direction. I moved to Los Angeles on the promise of touring as the opening act for Seals and Crofts. I toured with them for a month but returned to LA broke and took a job as a singing busboy in a restaurant run exclusively by musicians in Santa Monica. The story is long and involved; one filled with twists and turns, ups and downs, but my first big break came when I signed to Arista Records, headed up by its CEO, Clive Davis. I spent two years on the label struggling to get attention, endlessly writing song after song, trying to prove to Clive that I was a “hit” songwriter. At the end of my second year, filled with frustration, for I was not making any headway, I found my inspiration in the new sound of the New Wave movement coming out of the UK. That’s the year I wrote and recorded my song, “Break My Stride”.

By this time, the label had stopped all its funding, so I, along with my production team made a spec deal with a small recording studio in Hollywood to record the demo of “Stride” along with a few other songs. When we submitted the recordings to the label, suffice it to say, it fell on deaf ears. My belief in that song was strong enough to request that Clive release me from my contract. I had no other prospects but felt any movement would be better than being left to twist in the wind. We were able to take our new masters with us and on the strength of that one song, I was signed to Private I/Epic Records, recorded my album, “I Don’t Speak The Language” and “Stride” went on to become a worldwide hit, charting Top 5 all over the world. That was just the beginning of a very long career that has spanned four decades now. There’s too much to tell! I lost my record deal after my second album, went back to my roots and signed on for several years as a staff writer at Geffen Music and Interscope, all the while honing my skills as a songwriter and producer.

My professional life took a turn and sent me down the road to produce No Doubt’s “Tragic Kingdom”, write and produce the score to Disney’s Feature Animation, “Mulan” and travel to England to collaborate with Robert Stigwood on a musical I had written based on a novel by Anne Rice called “Cry To Heaven”. “Tragic Kingdom” (which has its 25th Anniversary this year) went on to sell over 20 million records and was nominated for four Grammys that year, “Mulan” was released and my score garnered wonderful reviews, but the musical, “Cry To Heaven”, (which by the way, was responsible for introducing me to Disney), to this day, has yet to be seen nor heard. I could go on, but I’ll leave you with this thought… after all the trials and tribulations that I have experienced, I wouldn’t trade one moment. As trite as it may sound, I’ve been and continue to be blessed to have the chance to live a life that has led me down a path that has allowed me to follow my dream.

Has it been a smooth road?
Life for everyone is filled with struggles along the way, even tragedy. I am no different. I’ve had so many disappointments, the details of which are my own, some of them far too personal to explain. But the moments that have blessed my life far outweigh the challenges I have had to navigate, making the journey all worthwhile. I am one of the lucky ones. Blessed.

Can you give our readers some background on your music?
My business, as I have said, is music. My company is an independent production company that has afforded me countless opportunities to express myself as an artist. Unique, creative, with boundless possibilities. I never know from one day to the next what adventure or turn in the road is ahead. Yet my independence as an entrepreneur allows me the freedom to adapt everyday to meet the new challenges and embrace the unknown with what I believe is cultivated grace from years of experience.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Los Angeles is one of the cultural centers of our country. Personally, I came to this city to seek and establish myself in the community as a creative force and I have to say, after forty-two years, LA has been very good to me. Times have changed, obviously, since my arrival so many years ago. If I had one wish for the City Of Angels, we citizens could find better answers to help the homeless and assist those in a time of extraordinary social change and challenge.

Contact Info:

• Website: matthewwildermusic.com
• Email: hallelujahproductionsin[email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matthewwildermusic/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matthewwildermusic
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/wilderkingdom