Concert Preview: Matt Maher
April 8, 2016
On Friday, April 15, Student Activities is proud to present Matt Maher, with special guestsJohn Tibbs and Clay Finnesand. Join us in the LaHaye Event Space starting at 8 p.m.for a night of uplifting and encouraging worship. General admission tickets are just $10 in advance for students ($15 for general public) and are on sale now on our website.
A lot of emphasis is placed on awards, especially when it comes to music, and Matt Maher has certainly received his fair share of them. When you see Matt perform on April 15, you will be looking at a Grammy Award nominee and Unity, Covenant, and Dove Award winner, which covers just about every significant award a worship artist can win in North America. Though he has been nominated for Dove Awards in the past, winning in 2010 for his work on the compilation albumGlory Revealed IIand sharing that award with Kari Jobe, 2015 was somewhat of a culmination for him as an award-winning artist, as he took home Dove Awards for Song of the Year and Songwriter of the Year. Honors like that might easily be seen as icing on the cake, especially since Matt was selected to perform in front of the Pope not once but twice, most recently in 2013 at World Youth Day in Rio De Janeiro where his Song of the Year work “Because He Lives (Amen)” was heard by an estimated 3 million people.
However, as is almost always the case when an individual wins an award, Matt Maher pointed to others. In his acceptance speech for Song of the Year at the 2015 Dove Awards, Matt suggested that he needed to make 8 more of those awards to give to the others who contributed to the song. Additionally, he drew attention to the significance of an individual’s talents as they impact “the church”, acknowledging both that it is church folk who allow his and other Christian artists’ careers to flourish and that the true value of those careers is in God’s use of them in service to the church.
This is why Matt Maher is a welcome addition to the top of the CCM charts. He is a talented musician, trained in jazz and holding a degree in music from Arizona State. As such, he capably carries on the tradition of many great worship artists of the past like Keith Green and Michael W. Smith, but also regularly shows the breadth of his musical influences on such songs as his hit “All the People Said Amen”, or the tracks “Sons and Daughters” and the beautiful “Rest” from his latest album Saints and Sinners. But more than this, he has a broader vision for his music, aware of the immediate impact of what he is making, and yet, able to fix his gaze on the horizon. He has a long perspective that, regardless of award and accolade, reveals he understands he is an instrument to be used for God’s glory, the most significant contribution of which is his desire to impact the unity of the body of Christ.
For more information about Matt Maher’s concert, other upcoming concerts on our calendar, or any other event offerings, check out our website or follow us on Twitter for the most up-to-date information.