Bobby McFerrin & Joe Lovano Print

Yury Ermolenko, ''Bobby McFerrin'' - Facevinyl - THE BIG COLLECTION - №6, side I, 2013, acrylic on vinyl. The History of Jazz and Blues. Yury Ermolenko, ''Joe Lovano'' - Facevinyl - THE BIG COLLECTION - №6, side II, 2013, acrylic on vinyl. The History of Jazz and Blues. Robert Keith McFerrin Jr. (born March 11 , 1950) is an American jazz vocalist and conductor. McFerrin was born in Manhattan, New York City, the son of operatic baritone Robert McFerrin and singer Sara Copper. He attended Cathedral High School in Los Angeles and the California State University, Sacramento. A ten-time Grammy Award winner, he is known for his unique vocal techniques, such as singing fluidly but with quick and considerable jumps in pitch—for example, sustaining a melody while also rapidly alternating with arpeggios and harmonies—as well as scat singing, polyphonic overtone singing, and improvisational vocal percussion. He is widely known for performing and recording regularly as an unaccompanied solo vocal artist. He has frequently collaborated with other artists from both the jazz and classical scenes. McFerrin has also worked in collaboration with instrumentalists, including pianists Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Joe Zawinul, drummer Tony Williams, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. As a vocalist, McFerrin often switches rapidly between modal and falsetto registers to create polyphonic effects, performing both the main melody and the accompanying parts of songs. He makes use of percussive effects created both with his mouth and by tapping on his chest. McFerrin is also capable of multiphonic singing. A document of McFerrin's approach to singing is his 1984 album The Voice, the first solo vocal jazz album recorded with no accompaniment or overdubbing. McFerrin's first recorded work, the self-titled album Bobby McFerrin, was not produced until 1982, when McFerrin was already 32 years old. Before that, he had spent six years developing his musical style, the first two years of which he attempted not to listen to other singers at all, in order to avoid sounding like them. He was influenced by Keith Jarrett, who had achieved great success with a series of improvised piano concerts including The Köln Concert of 1975, and wanted to attempt something similar vocally. In 1984 McFerrin performed onstage at the Playboy Jazz Festival in Los Angeles as a sixth member of Herbie Hancock's VSOP II sharing horn trio parts with the Marsalis Brothers. In 1986, McFerrin was the voice of Santa Bear in Santa Bear's First Christmas, and in 1987 he was the voice of Santa Bear/Bully Bear in the sequel Santa Bear's High Flying Adventure. That same year, he performed the theme song for the opening credits of Season 4 of The Cosby Show. McFerrin's song "Don't Worry, Be Happy" was a No. 1 U.S. pop hit in 1988 and won Song of the Year and Record of the Year honors at the 1989 Grammy Awards. The song's success "ended McFerrin's musical life as he had known it," and he began to pursue other musical possibilities on stage and in recording studios. The song was used in George H. W. Bush's 1988 U.S. presidential election as Bush's 1988 official presidential campaign song, without Bobby McFerrin's permission or endorsement. In reaction, Bobby McFerrin publicly protested that particular use of his song, including stating that he was going to vote against Bush, and completely dropped the song from his own performance repertoire, to make the point even clearer. At that time, he performed on the PBS TV special Sing Out America! with Judy Collins. McFerrin sang a Wizard of Oz medley during that television special. In 1989, he composed and performed the music for the Pixar short film Knick Knack. The rough cut to which McFerrin recorded his vocals had the words "blah blah blah" in place of the end credits (meant to indicate that he should improvise). McFerrin spontaneously decided to sing "blah blah blah" as lyrics, and the final version of the short film includes these lyrics during the end credits. Also in 1989, he formed a ten-person "Voicestra" which he featured on both his 1990 album Medicine Music and in the score to the 1989 Oscar-winning documentary Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt. The song "Common Threads" has frequently reappeared in some public service advertisements about AIDS. A modified version of the song Thinkin' About Your Body (as Thinkin' About Your Chocolate) from the album Spontaneous Inventions was used in a series of UK Cadbury's chocolate adverts in 1989/1990. As early as 1992, widespread rumors circulated that falsely claimed McFerrin committed suicide. The rumors intentionally made fun of the distinctly positive nature of his popular song "Don't Worry, Be Happy" by claiming McFerrin took his own life. In 1993, McFerrin sang Henry Mancini's "Pink Panther" theme for the movie Son of the Pink Panther. In addition to his vocal performing career, in 1994, Mr. McFerrin was appointed as creative chair of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. He makes regular tours as a guest conductor for symphony orchestras throughout the United States and Canada, including the San Francisco Symphony (on his 40th birthday), the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and many others. In McFerrin's concert appearances, he combines serious conducting of classical pieces with his own unique vocal improvisations, often with participation from the audience and the orchestra. For example, the concerts often end with McFerrin conducting the orchestra in an a cappella rendition of the "William Tell Overture," in which the orchestra members sing their musical parts in McFerrin's vocal style instead of playing their parts on their instruments. For a few years in the late 1990s, he toured a concert version of Porgy and Bess, partly in honor of his father, who sang the role for Sidney Poitier in the 1959 film version, and partly "to preserve the score's jazziness" in the face of "largely white orchestras" who tend not "to play around the bar lines, to stretch and bend". McFerrin says that because of his father's work in the movie, "This music has been in my body for 40 years, probably longer than any other music." McFerrin also participates in various music education programs and makes volunteer appearances as a guest music teacher and lecturer at public schools throughout the U.S. McFerrin has collaborated with his son, Taylor, on various musical ventures. In July 2003, McFerrin was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music during the Umbria Jazz Festival where he conducted two days of clinics. In 2009, McFerrin and musician-scientist (Psychologist) Daniel Levitin served as co-hosts of The Music Instinct, a two-hour award-winning documentary produced by PBS and based on Levitin's best-selling book This Is Your Brain on Music. Later that year, the two appeared together on a panel at the World Science Festival, where McFerrin demonstrated audience participation with the ubiquitous nature of human understanding of the pentatonic scale by singing and dancing, and having the audience sing while following his movements. Joseph Salvatore Lovano (born December 29, 1952) is an American jazz saxophonist, alto clarinetist, flautist, and drummer. Since the late 1980s, Lovano has been one of the world's premiere tenor saxophone players, described by critic Chris Kelsey of Allmusic as "the tenor titan for our times" and relentlessly creative and innovative, earning a Grammy Award and several mentions on Down Beat magazine's critics' and readers' polls. He is married to jazz singer Judi Silvano with whom he records and performs. Lovano was a longtime member of a trio led by drummer Paul Motian. Lovano was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Sicilian-American parents; his father was the tenor saxophonist Tony ("Big T") Lovano. His father's family came from Alcara Li Fusi in Sicily, and his mother's family came from Cesarò, also in Sicily. In Cleveland, Lovano's father exposed him to jazz throughout his early life, teaching him the standards, as well as how to lead a gig, pace a set, and be versatile enough to find work. Lovano started on alto saxophone at age six and switched to tenor saxophone five years later. John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, and Sonny Stitt were among his earlier influences. After graduating from Euclid High School in 1971, he went to Berklee College of Music, where he studied under Herb Pomeroy and Gary Burton. Lovano received an honorary doctor of music degree from the college in 1998. After Berklee he worked with Jack McDuff and Lonnie Smith. He spent three years with the Woody Herman orchestra, then moved to New York City, where he played with the big band of Mel Lewis. He often plays lines that convey the rhythmic drive and punch of an entire horn section. In the mid 1980s Lovano began working in a quartet with John Scofield and in a trio with Bill Frisell and Paul Motian. In 1993, he played on the album Anything Went by guitarist Bill DeArango, a native of Cleveland. In the late 1990s, he formed the Saxophone Summit with Dave Liebman and Michael Brecker (later replaced by Ravi Coltrane). Streams of Expression (2006) was a tribute to both cool jazz and free jazz. Lovano and pianist Hank Jones released an album together in June 2007, entitled Kids. He played the tenor saxophone on the 2007 McCoy Tyner album Quartet. In 2008 Lovano formed the quintet Us Five with Esperanza Spalding on bass, pianist James Weidman, and two drummers, Francisco Mela and Otis Brown III. Folk Art was an album of compositions by Lovano that the band hoped to interpret in the spirit of the avant-garde jazz and loft jazz of the 1960s. Bird Songs (2011) was a tribute to Charlie Parker. West African guitarist Lionel Loueke appeared on the album Cross Culture (Blue Note, 2013). Lovano played reed and percussion instruments he had collected since the 1970s. Peter Slavov replaced Esperanza Spalding on six tracks, all of them written by Lovano except for "Star Crossed Lovers" by Billy Strayhorn. "The idea wasn't just to play at the same time, but to collectively create music within the music," Lovano wrote in the liner notes to Cross Culture. "Everyone is leading and following," and "the double drummer configuration adds this other element of creativity." Lovano has taught at the Berklee College of Music. He taught Jeff Coffin after Coffin was given a NEA Jazz Studies Grant in 1991. Downbeat magazine gave its Jazz Album of the Year Award to Lovano for Quartets: Live at the Village Vanguard. Lovano has played Borgani saxophones since 1991 and exclusively since 1999. He has his own series called Borgani-Lovano, which uses Pearl-Silver Alloy with Gold 24K keys.

Print:Giclee on Fine Art Paper

Size:10 W x 10 H x 0.1 D in

Size with Frame:15.25 W x 15.25 H x 1.2 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.