April 16, 2012, Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto.
The Bobby McFerrin experience is freedom. It’s a song freed from words bouncing over the moon.
This man with the perfect smile made Roy Thomson Hall into an intimate room. Mr. McFerrin opened with a few jazz tunes that he sang scat with special guests Paul Nagle on piano and Jeff Carney on bass. At some point, the savvy fans began to clap, and never-mind-the-Mister McFerrin began to work his magic by cueing the audience to shout out a 2-part backing. After setting up each musician with a go-for-broke solo that raised the musical bar to the roof, Bobby claimed the stage for his solo a cappella performance that took us over the moon.
In case the name of this 10-Grammy winning guy who back in the 90’s sang “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” doesn’t ring a bell, don’t worry. Basically, he is a singer who has taught himself how to improvise.
Bobby presents as simplicity itself. In jeans, T-shirt and sneakers, he sits in a chair, one hand holding a mike which he fingers like a flute, the other hand tapping on his chest, and out of his mouth comes the music of a ‘voicestra’: woodwind melodies, vocals—part language, part scat, part jabberwocky; rumbling bass lines, percussive taps and clicks, gongs, string sounds—arco, plucked, pulled-off and hammered on, Bachian fugues, soulful blues, African chants, Brazillian choros, and the one-voice-chord singing of Tibetan Gyuto monks. A quilt of world and beyond this world music coming out of a guy who is basically just kind of improvising a hum to himself.
To get the bigger picture of what Bobby can do with improvisation, you have to know that he has conducted many of the world’s finest ensembles including the Vienna Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Kirov Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Orchestra of La Scala. Bobby is also the founder of Voicestra—a ten member group of singers from classical, jazz and theatre backgrounds.
This man who hums to himself loves to work with others. Last night he invited more than a dozen members of the audience to come up and dance while he sang and to sing while he improvised around them. Some were good, some not so much, but Bobby inspired each one with his confidence and each one did something that stole a piece of your heart.
The band came back to round off the evening, and for an encore, Bobby took questions. “How did you learn to improvise?” was the final question. Bobby’s final answer was, “Once you start to sing, just keep going. Just keep going. Keep going.”
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