Matt Alber brings his lifelong passion of music to San Diego at May 16 concert

Matt Alber knew he wanted to be a singer at a young age, performing in a children’s choir in fourth grade. After performing in many singing groups since then, including high school glee clubs, college chorus and professional touring groups, he is venturing on his own as a solo artist. He performs in San Diego, May 16.

“I started singing as a little fourth grader in St Louis,” Alber said. “I felt safe there. I learned that I loved to sing. There was this great magic that was happening. That stuck with me.”

And Alber stuck with singing, performing throughout high school and college. However, while in college, he got kicked out of a singing group – an event that changed his singing and his life.

Alber performed with the Campus Christian Fellowship, a small group of performers. There were about 30 of them. He was the only gay guy. While he still held on to the strong religious faith he was raised with, the group was a challenge for him.

“The message just wasn’t working – that I was going to hell because I wanted to hold hands with guys, and somehow I was an abomination. I tried all the things: I prayed, I wept, and nothing was changing inside of me. So I started letting go of that message.”

The singing fellowship eventually asked him to quit, but he was not going to leave quietly. “It was for the best. I needed to get out of there anyway,” he said.

Just after college, he left Missouri and headed west to San Francisco – not because it was a gay mecca, but because he had a job. Alber became a singer with Chanticleer, a world-renowned professional classical men’s ensemble.

“They came through my choir class (in college) and I got to meet them. I got to see you can actually get paid to sing choir music. So I said, heck yeah, I want to audition for that,” Alber said. After three auditions, he made it in. “I went from a college graduate with a music degree in my hand to a professional singer living in San Francisco.”

The opportunity opened so many doors for him, musically and personally. “I was so ready to go and be gay,” he recalled. “There is nothing that replaces that feeling of walking down the street and feeling normal, and you are around everyone else that is like you. I learned to be free, to be happy, to explore – and I got to sing, and make a living doing it.”

Alber toured “all-the-time” with Chanticleer for five years. During that time, the ensemble recorded seven albums, two of which won Grammy Awards.

After great memories with the group, and a lifetime of performing with choirs and ensembles, Alber decided to pursue his own music – “to see if there is any music in me that needs to come out,” he said – and started his solo career. He purchased some recording equipment, and with the help of his great friend Jeff Crerie, he produced his first record.

“Every night, I would walk down the hill from Jeff’s studio with my headphones on, listening to the work we did, and that would make me want to go back again and again,” he said. “We were always on the same wavelength. It just made working together so much fun.”

Together, they released Nonchalant on iTunes. The album was quickly picked up by a gay producer, Silver Label, a division of Tommy Boy Records.

“I signed with Tommy Boy Records as the first artist to their gay imprint, and further developed the songs and ended up releasing Hide Nothing, two years later,” Alber said of his freshman 2008 CD.

The album includes songs like “Field Trip Buddy,” telling of his first crush at a young age with another boy in his class. Another song, called “Monarch,” uses the butterfly’s migration to talk about people’s journeys and where they need to be. The album’s critical standout is “End of the World,” a song about trying to keep a relationship together.

In his bio, he writes about his music: “Everyone says the best songs are born out of tragedy. But for me they come from that last sliver of hope that things just might turn around.”

“I do have the heartbreaking love songs. I think anybody who writes songs is going to have those,” he said, adding, “I do feel a lot of joy when I am performing. It just feels like the right place to be. So yeah, I feel there is enough sad, depressing music in the world already.”

Alber brings his fun and lighthearted music to San Diego, performing May 16 at Soda Bar (3615 El Cajon Blvd. in Normal Heights). Doors open at 7 p.m. and the show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $8 and benefit The Center’s youth housing.

For info, log on to mattalber.com or sodabarmusic.com.

“You can expect to hear acoustic versions of my songs, as well as some familiar covers. I like to steal other people’s songs and make them my own, when I get bored with my own songs,” he says about his show. “People should expect to see a lot of people with arms around each other, boyfriends kissing their boyfriend’s ears, it’s going to turn into a cuddle-fest.”