Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician(s) involved. The term can refer to both a technique (employed by any musician in any genre) and as a recognizable genre in its own right.

Free improvisation, as a genre of music, developed in the U.S. and Europe in the mid to late 1960s, largely as an outgrowth of free jazz and modern classical musics. None of its primary exponents can be said to be famous amongst the general public; however, in experimental circles, a number of free musicians are well known, including saxophonists Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton and Peter Brötzmann, trombonist George Lewis, guitarist Derek Bailey, and the improvising groups The Art Ensemble of Chicago and AMM.

Characteristics[link]

Although performers may choose to play in a certain style or key, or at a certain tempo, conventional songs are highly uncommon in free improvisation; more emphasis is generally placed on mood, texture or more simply, on performative gesture than on preset forms of melody, harmony or rhythm. These elements are improvised at will, as the music progresses.

Guitarist Derek Bailey proposed "non-idiomatic improvisation" as a more accurately descriptive term, claiming the form offers musicians more possibilities "per cubic second" than any genre;^[1] while guitarist Elliott Sharp (himself occasionally active in free improvisation) has argued—partly tongue in cheek—that no improvisation is ever truly free, excepting the unlikelihood of amnesiac improvising musicians.^{[1][citation needed]} Interestingly, John Eyles notes that Bailey has been quoted as saying that free improvisation is “playing without memory”.^[2]

In his landmark book Improvisation, Bailey writes, "The lack of precision over its [free improv's] naming is, if anything, increased when we come to the thing itself. Diversity is its most consistent characteristic. It has no stylistic or idiomatic commitment. It has no prescribed idiomatic sound. The characteristics of freely improvised music are established only by the sonic-musical identity of the person or persons playing it."^[3]

Free music performers, coming from a disparate variety of backgrounds, often engage musically with other genres. For example, acclaimed soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone was a member of the free improvisation group Nuova Consonanza. Anthony Braxton has written opera, and John Zorn has written acclaimed orchestral pieces.

As it has influenced and been influenced by other areas of exploration, aspects of modern classical music (extended techniques), noise rock (aggressive confrontation and dissonance), IDM (computer manipulation and digital synthesis), minimalism and electroacoustic music can now be heard in free improvisation.

History[link]

Though there are many important precedents and developments, free improvisation developed gradually, making it difficult to pinpoint a single moment when the style was born. As an uncredited critic has written for Allmusic, "being freed of all rules, free improvisation cannot be traced back to a genre other than the very generic term avant-garde".^[4]

However, in the same article cited above, Bailey contends that free improvisation must have been the earliest musical style, because "mankind's first musical performance couldn't have been anything other than a free improvisation." Similarly, Keith Rowe stated, "Other players got into playing freely, way before AMM, way before Derek [Bailey]! Who knows when free playing started? You can imagine lute players in the 1500s getting drunk and doing improvisations for people in front of a log fire.. the noise, the clatter must have been enormous. You read absolutely incredible descriptions of that. I cannot believe that musicians back then didn't float off into free playing. The melisma in Monterverdi [sic] must derive from that. But it was all in the context of a repertoire."^[5]

Classical precedents[link]

By the middle decades of the 20th century, composers like Henry Cowell, Earle Brown, David Tudor, La Monte Young, Jackson Mac Low, Morton Feldman, Sylvano Bussotti, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and George Crumb, re-introduced improvisation to classical music, with compositions that allowed or even required musicians to improvise. One notable example of this is Cornelius Cardew's Treatise: a graphic score with no conventional notation whatsoever, which musicians were invited to interpret.

Improvisation is still commonly practised by some organists at concerts or church services, and courses in improvisation (including free improvisation) are part of many higher education programmes for church musicians.^[6] Notable contemporary organists include Olivier Latry and Jean Guillou. Free improvisations for organ has also occationally been recorded and released on albums, such as Like a Flame by Frederik Magle.

Jazz precedents[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Improvisation has been a central element of jazz since the music's inception, but until the 1950s, such improvisation was typically clearly within the jazz idiom and based on prescribed traditions.

Perhaps the earliest free recordings in jazz are two pieces recorded under the leadership of jazz pianist Lennie Tristano: "Intuition" and "Digression", both recorded in 1949 with a sextet including saxophone players Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh.^[7] In 1954 Shelly Manne recorded a piece called "Abstract No. 1" with trumpeter Shorty Rogers and reedsmith Jimmy Giuffre which was freely improvised. Jazz critic Harvey Pekar has also pointed out that one of Django Reinhardt's recorded improvisations strays drastically from the chord changes of the established piece. While noteworthy, these examples were clearly in the jazz idiom.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the free jazz movement coalesced around such important (and disparate) figures as Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane, as well as many lesser-known figures such as Joe Maneri and Joe Harriott. Free jazz allowed for radical improvised departures from the harmonic and rhythmic material of the composition – for instance, by permitting performers to ignore conventional repeating song-structures. Such music often seemed far removed from the preceding jazz tradition, even though it almost always preserved one or more central elements of that tradition while abandoning others.

These ideas were extended in the 1962 Free Fall recording by jazz clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre's trio, featuring music that was often freely and spontaneously improvised, and which had only tenuous similarity to established jazz styles. Another important recording was New York Eye and Ear Control (1964), a soundtrack for a film by Michael Snow, recorded for the ESP-Disk label under the leadership of saxophonist Albert Ayler. Snow suggested to Ayler that the band simply play without a composition or themes.

The Spontaneous Music Ensemble was formed by John Stevens and Trevor Watts in the mid-1960s and included, at various times, influential players such as Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Kenny Wheeler, Roger Smith, and John Butcher. As with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), many of these players began in jazz, but gradually pushed the music into a zone of abstraction and relative quietude. The British record label Emanem has documented much music in this vein.

There was (and continues to be) often considerable blurring of the line between free jazz and free improvisation. The Chicago-based AACM, a loose collective of improvising musicians including Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, Jack DeJohnette, Lester Bowie, Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Famadou Don Moye, Malachi Favors and George Lewis was formed in 1965 and included many of the key players in the nascent international free improv scene. (Braxton recorded many times with Bailey and Teitelbaum; Mitchell recorded with Thomas Buckner and Pauline Oliveros.)

In 1966 Elektra Records issued the first recording of European free improvisation by the UK group AMM, which included at the time Cornelius Cardew, Eddie Prévost, Lou Gare, Keith Rowe and Lawrence Sheaff.

In 1967 classical strings-focused Just Music had been formed by Alfred Harth and been recorded on ECM (1002) in 1969 in West Germany.

International free improvisation[link]

Through the remainder of the 1960s and through the 1970s, free improvisation spread across the U.S., Europe and East Asia, entering quickly into a dialogue with Fluxus, happenings, performance art and rock music.

By the mid-1970s, free improvisation was truly a worldwide phenomenon.

In 1976 Derek Bailey founded and curated Company Week, the first of an annual series of improvised music festivals in which Bailey programmed performances by ad hoc ensembles of musicians who in many cases had never played with each other before. This musical chairs approach to collaboration was a characteristically provocative gesture by Bailey, perhaps in response to John Stevens' claim that musicians needed to collaborate for months or years in order to improvise well together. The final Company Week was in 1994.

Since 2002 New Zealand collective Vitamin S has hosted weekly improvisations based around randomly drawn trios. Vitamin S takes the form beyond music and includes improvisers from other forms such as dance, theatre and puppetry.^[8]

Since 2006, improvisational music in many forms has been supported and promoted by ISIM, the International Society for Improvised Music, founded by Ed Sarath of the University of Michigan and Sarah Weaver. ISIM comprises some 300 performing artists and scholars worldwide, including Pauline Oliveros, Oliver Lake, Stephen Nachmanovitch, Thomas Buckner, Robert Dick, India Cooke, Jane Ira Bloom, Karlton Hester, Roman Stolyar, Mark Dresser, and many others.

Electronic free improvisation[link]

Electronic devices such as oscillators, echoes, filters and alarm clocks were an integral part of free improvisation performances by groups such as Kluster at the underground scene at Zodiac Club in Berlin in the late 1960s.^[9] But it was only later that traditional instruments were disbanded altogether in favour of pure electronic free improvisation. In 1984, the Swiss improvisation duo Voice Crack started making use of strictly "cracked everyday electronics".^[10] More recently, electronic free improvisation has drawn on Circuit bending, Noise music, DIY-culture and Turntablism, represented by performers such as Yoshihide Otomo, Hemmelig Tempo, Günter Müller, poire z and many others.

Electroacoustic improvisation[link]

A recent branch of improvised music is characterized by quiet, slow moving, minimalistic textures and often utilizing laptop computers or unorthodox forms of electronics.

Developing worldwide in the mid-to-late 1990s, with centers in New York, Tokyo and Austria, this style has been called lowercase music or EAI (electroacoustic improvisation), and is represented, for instance, by the American record label Erstwhile Records and the Austrian label Mego.

EAI is often radically different even from established free improvisation. Eyles writes, "One of the problems of describing this music is that it requires a new vocabulary and ways of conveying its sound and impact; such vocabulary does not yet exist - how do you describe the subtle differences between different types of controlled feedback? I’ve yet to see anyone do it convincingly - hence the use of words like 'shape' and 'texture'!"^[11]

Free improvisation on the radio[link]

The London based independent radio station Resonance 104.4FM, founded by the London Musicians Collective, frequently broadcasts experimental and free improvised performance works. WNUR 89.3 FM ("Chicago's Sound Experiment") is another source for free improvised music on the radio. Taran's Free Jazz Hour broadcast on Radio-G 101.5 FM, Angers and Euradio 101.3 FM, Nantes is entirely dedicated to free jazz and other freely improvised music. A l'improviste,^[12] (France musique) French Radio, Listen online the last four broadcasts, only free music every week by Anne Montaron. Based in the neighboring town of Newton, Boston is served with a good amount of free improvisation music from Boston College's non-commercial radio station 90.3 FM WZBC, as part of its vast number of experimental programs.

See also[link]

• Free jazz
• Improvisation
• Japanoise
• Music for People
• Musical collectives
• Musics (magazine)
• List of free improvising musicians and groups

References[link]

1. ^ ^{a b} Guitar Player, January 1997^{[citation needed]}
2. ^ Eyles, John (10 August 2005). "Free Improvisation". All About Jazz. http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=18638. Retrieved 2008-04-04. 
3. ^ Bailey, Derek. "FREE IMPROVISATION". Cortical Foundation. http://www.cortical.org/dbfree.html. Retrieved 2008-04-04. 
4. ^ anonymous. "Free Improvisation". allmusic/Macrovision Corporation. http://www.allmusic.com/explore/style/d10998. Retrieved 2008-04-04. 
5. ^ Warburton, Dan (January 2001). "Keith Rowe". Paris Transatlantic Magazine. http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/interviews/rowe.html. Retrieved 2008-04-04. 
6. ^ http://www.hmtm-hannover.de/en/application/programmes-of-study/church-music-bmus/
7. ^ "Lennie Tristano AllMusic". http://allmusic.com/artist/lennie-tristano-p7707/biography. Retrieved 24 January 2012. 
8. ^ "98-bFM - Inside Track 2008: Episode 4". 95bFM. http://www.95bfm.com/assets/sm/187016/3/insidetrackepi4.mp3. 
9. ^ Freeman, Steven and Freeman, Alan The Crack In The Cosmic Egg (Audion Publications, 1996) ISBN 0-9529506-0-X
10. ^ http://www.for4ears.com/poire_z/about_poire_z.html
11. ^ Eyles, John (21 June 2006). "4g: cloud". All About Jazz. http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=22196. Retrieved 2008-04-04. 
12. ^ A l'improviste http://sites.radiofrance.fr/francemusique/em/improviste/pres.php?e_id=13

Further reading[link]

• Costa, Rogério. 2011. "Free Musical Improvisation and the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze". Perspectives of New Music 49, no. 1 (Winter): 127–42.

External links[link]

• International Society for Improvised Music
• European Free Improvisation Pages An information resource for European free improvisation
• Signal to Noise magazine A publication focusing on avant-garde jazz and electro-acoustic improvisation
• [1] Avant Garde Blog and Forum
• Bergstroem-Nielsen, Carl: Experimental improvisation and notation practise 1945-1999; Experimental improvisation and notation practise, addenda 2000- Online bibliographies.

Cecil Taylor
Cecil Taylor playing in his apartment in the 1960s
Background information
Birth name	Cecil Percival Taylor
Born	(1929-03-25) March 25, 1929 (age 83)
Origin	New York City
Genres	Avant-garde jazz
Occupations	Bandleader, composer
Instruments	Piano
Years active	1956–present
Labels	Transition Blue Note Freedom Hat Hut Enja Records FMP
Associated acts	Steve Lacy, Jimmy Lyons, Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, Buell Neidlinger, Alan Silva, William Parker, Sunny Murray, Andrew Cyrille, Tony Oxley
Website	http://www.ceciltaylor-art.com

Cecil Percival Taylor (born March 25, 1929, in New York City) is an American pianist and poet.^[1] Classically trained, Taylor is generally acknowledged as one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, producing complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and intricate polyrhythms. His piano technique has been likened to percussion, for example described as "eighty-eight tuned drums" (referring to the number of keys on a standard piano),^[2] and also to Art Tatum's.^[3]

Early life[link]

Taylor began playing piano at age six and studied at the New York College of Music and New England Conservatory. After first steps in R&B and swing-styled small groups in the early 1950s, he formed his own band with soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy in 1956.

Taylor's first recording, Jazz Advance, featured Lacy and was released in 1956. It is described by Cook and Morton in the Penguin Guide to Jazz: "While there are still many nods to conventional post-bop form in this set, it already points to the freedoms which the pianist would later immerse himself in." Taylor's Quartet featuring Lacy also appeared at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival. He collaborated with saxophonist John Coltrane in 1958 (Stereo Drive, currently available as Coltrane Time).

1950s and '60s[link]

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Taylor's music grew more complex and moved away from existing jazz styles. Gigs were often hard to come by, and club owners found Taylor's approach to performance (long pieces) unhelpful in conducting business.^[4] Landmark recordings, like Unit Structures (1966), appeared. With 'the Unit', musicians developed often volcanic new forms of conversational interplay.

By 1961, Taylor was working regularly with alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, one of his most important and consistent collaborators. Taylor, Lyons and drummer Sunny Murray (and later Andrew Cyrille) formed the core personnel of The Unit, Taylor's primary group effort until Lyons's premature death in 1986. Lyons's playing, strongly influenced by jazz icon Charlie Parker, retained a strong blues sensibility and helped keep Taylor's increasingly avant garde music tethered to the jazz tradition.^[5]

Solo concerts[link]

Taylor began to perform solo concerts in the early 1970s. Many of these were released on album and include Indent (1973), side one of Spring of Two Blue-J's (1973),^[6] Silent Tongues (1974), Garden (1982), For Olim (1987), Erzulie Maketh Scent (1989) and The Tree of Life (1998). He began to garner critical, if not popular, acclaim, playing for Jimmy Carter on the White House Lawn, lecturing as an in-residence artist at universities, and eventually being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973 and then a MacArthur Fellowship in 1991.

1990s and the Feel Trio[link]

Following Lyons's death in 1986 Taylor formed the Feel Trio in the early 1990s with William Parker (bass) and Tony Oxley (drums); the group can be heard on Celebrated Blazons, Looking (The Feel Trio) and the 10-CD set 2 T's for a Lovely T. He has also performed with larger ensembles and big-band projects. His extended residence in Berlin in 1988 was extensively documented by the German label FMP, resulting in a massive boxed set of performances in duet and trio with a who's who of European free improvisors, including Oxley, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, Tristan Honsinger, Louis Moholo, Paul Lovens, and others. Most of his latter day recordings have been put out on European labels, with the exception of Momentum Space (a meeting with Dewey Redman and Elvin Jones) on Verve/Gitanes. The classical label Bridge released his 1998 Library of Congress performance Algonquin, a duet with violinist Mat Maneri. Taylor continued to perform for capacity audiences around the world with live concerts, usually played on his favored instrument, a Bösendorfer piano that features nine extra lower-register keys. A documentary entitled "All the Notes", was released on DVD in 2006 by director Chris Felver. Taylor was also featured in an earlier documentary film Imagine the Sound (1981), in which he discusses and performs his music, poetry and dance.

2000s[link]

Cecil Taylor, at Moers Festival 2008

Taylor recorded sparingly in the 2000s, but continues to perform with his own ensembles (the Cecil Taylor Ensemble and the Cecil Taylor Big Band) as well as with other musicians such as Joe Locke, Max Roach, and the poet Amiri Baraka.^[7] In 2004, the Cecil Taylor Big Band at the Iridium 2005 was nominated a best performance of 2004 by All About Jazz,^[8] and the same in 2009 for the Cecil Taylor Trio at the Highline Ballroom in 2009.^[9] The trio consisted of Taylor, Albey Balgochian, and Jackson Krall. An autobiography, more concerts, and other projects are in the works.^[10] In 2010, Triple Point Records released a deluxe limited edition double LP titled Ailanthus/Altissima: Bilateral Dimensions of Two Root Songs, a set of duos with long-time collaborator Tony Oxley that was recorded live at the Village Vanguard in New York City.

Ballet and dance[link]

In addition to piano, Taylor has always been interested in ballet and dance. His mother, who died while he was still young, was a dancer and also played the piano and violin. Taylor once said: "I try to imitate on the piano the leaps in space a dancer makes". He collaborated with dancer Dianne McIntyre in 1977 and 1979. In 1979 he also composed and played the music for a twelve-minute ballet "Tetra Stomp: Eatin' Rain in Space", featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Heather Watts.

Poetry[link]

Taylor is a poet, citing Robert Duncan, Charles Olson and Amiri Baraka as major influences.^[11] He often integrates his poems into his musical performances, and they frequently appear in the liner notes of his albums. The CD Chinampas, released by Leo Records in 1987, is a recording of Taylor reciting several of his poems, accompanying himself on percussion.

Influence and musical style[link]

According to Steven Block, free jazz originated with the performances of Cecil Taylor at the Five Spot Cafe in 1957 and Ornette Coleman in 1959.^[12] In 1964, Taylor co-founded the Jazz Composers Guild to enhance the working possibilities of avant-garde jazz musicians.^[13]

Taylor's style and methods have been described as 'constructivist'.^[14] Despite Scott Yanow's warning regarding Taylor's "forbidding music":

Suffice it to say that Cecil Taylor's music is not for everyone

he goes on to praise Taylor's "remarkable technique and endurance," and his "advanced", "radical", "original", and uncompromising "musical vision."^[1]

This vision is one of Taylor's greatest influences upon others:

Playing with Taylor I began to be liberated from thinking about chords. I'd been imitating John Coltrane unsuccessfully and because of that I was really chord conscious.

—Archie Shepp, quoted in LeRoi Jones, album liner notes for Four for Trane, Impulse A-71, 1964. Cited in^[13]

Personal life[link]

This section requires expansion.

In 1982, jazz critic Stanley Crouch outed Taylor as being gay, prompting an angry response.^[15] However, Taylor never denied it.^[16]

Discography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (March 2011)

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Cecil Taylor

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cecil Taylor

• "Cecil Taylor: This Music is the Face of a Drum" by Robert Levin, 1971
• Discography of Cecil Taylor, by Richard Shapiro
• Cecil Taylor Online Sessionography
• The FMP releases
• The Shape of Jazz to Come - A panel discussion on April 6, 1964
• "Cecil Taylor interview" for the WGBH series, Say Brother
• being matter ignited... - Interviewed by Chris Funkhouser on September 3, 1994
• Cecil Taylor - Interviewed by Jason Gross, January 2000
• Mr. Taylor's Filibuster - Interviewed by Kurt Gottschalk, March 11, 2004
• A Fireside Chat With Cecil Taylor - Interviewed by Fred Jung
• Another Bio. (originally from Allmusic)

Bobby McFerrin
Bobby McFerrin in March 2011
Background information
Birth name	Robert McFerrin, Jr
Born	(1950-03-11) March 11, 1950 (age 62) Manhattan, New York
Genres	Jazz, Reggae, World Music, Classical Music
Occupations	Musician Songwriter Conductor Arranger Producer
Instruments	Vocals, piano, bass guitar, clarinet
Years active	1977–present
Labels	Manhattan Records Blue Note Records Elektra Records Sony Classical
Associated acts	Chick Corea Herbie Hancock
Website	www.bobbymcferrin.com

Robert "Bobby" McFerrin, Jr. (born March 11, 1950) is a virtuoso American vocalist and conductor. He is best known for his 1988 hit song "Don't Worry, Be Happy". He is a ten-time Grammy Award winner. He is well known for his unique vocal techniques and singing styles.

Life[link]

Bobby McFerrin was born in Manhattan, New York City, the son of operatic baritone Robert McFerrin and singer Sara Copper.^[1] Robert Sr. was the first African American to be a regular with New York's Metropolitan Opera. Sara is a former soloist with regional opera companies and in Broadway shows, and is a professor emeritus of music at Fullerton College in Fullerton, California.

Bobby McFerrin married Debbie Green in 1975. They have three children.^[2]

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. McFerrin has also worked in collaboration with instrumental performers, including pianists Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Joe Zawinul, drummer Tony Williams, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Vocal technique[link]

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, as observed in his song "Drive" from the 2005 DVD Live in Montreal.^[3]

A notable 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.^[4]

Career[link]

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, as well as the music for a Cadbury chocolate commercial.^{[citation needed]}

In 1988, McFerrin recorded the hit song "Don't Worry, Be Happy", which brought him widespread recognition across the world. However, 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.^[5] 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.^{[citation needed]}

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. McFerrin also performed with the Vocal Summit.^{[citation needed]}

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 ironically took his own life.^[6]

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 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."^[7]

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. Taylor has recently been singing, rapping, and playing minimal keyboard accompaniment with Vernon Reid (leader-guitarist of Living Colour) in the eclectic metal-fusion-funk group Yohimbe Brothers.^{[citation needed]}

In 2009, McFerrin and musician-scientist 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.^[8]

Discography[link]

As leader[link]

• Bobby McFerrin (1982)
• The Voice (1984)
• Spontaneous Inventions (1987)
• Elephant's Child (1987)
• Simple Pleasures (1988)
• Don't Worry, Be Happy (1988)
• How the Rhino Got His Skin/How the Camel Got His Hump (1990)
• Medicine Music (1990)
• Play, with Chick Corea, 1992
• Hush, with Yo-Yo Ma, 1992
• Many Faces of Bird (1991)
• "The Siamese Cat Song" on Simply Mad About the Mouse (1991)
• Sorrow Is Not Forever (1994)
• Paper Music (1995, Doick with the St. Paul Chamber orchestra)
• Bang! Zoom (1996)
• The Mozart Sessions, with Chick Corea, 1996
• Circlesongs (1997)
• Mouth Music (2001)
• Beyond Words (2002) – featuring Chick Corea, Cyro Baptista and Richard Bona
• Konzert für Europa -The Schönbrunn Concert (2004)
• VOCAbuLarieS (2010)

As sideman[link]

• Pharoah Sanders, Journey to the One, 1980
• Grover Washington, Jr., The Best Is Yet to Come, 1982
• Various Artists, The Young Lions, 1983
• Charles Lloyd Quartet, A Night in Copenhagen (Blue Note, 1984)
• Various Artists, A Tribute to Thelonius Monk, 1984
• Chico Freeman, Tangents, 1984
• Michael Hedges, Watching My Life Go By, 1985
• The Manhattan Transfer, Vocalese, 1985
• Joe Zawinul, Di•a•lects, 1986
• Weather Report, Sportin' Life, 1985
• Al Jarreau, Heart’s Horizon, 1988
• Quincy Jones, Back on the Block, 1989
• Laurie Anderson, Strange Angels, 1989
• Gal Costa, The Laziest Gal in Town, 1991
• Dizzy Gillespie, Bird Songs: The Final Recordings (Telarc, 1992), To Bird with Love (Telarc, 1992)
• Jack DeJohnette, Extra Special Edition (Blue Note, 1994)
• Yellowjackets, Dreamland, 1995
• George Martin, In My Life, 1998 – on "Come Together" with Robin Williams
• En Vogue, Masterpiece Theatre, 2000
• Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Little Worlds, 2003
• Chick Corea, Rendezvous in New York, 2003
• Wynton Marsalis, The Magic Hour, 2004
• size2shoes, 2006 (free track)^[9]

Grammys[link]

• 1985, Best Jazz Vocal Performance, male, "Another Night In Tunisia" with Jon Hendricks
• 1985, Best Vocal Arrangement for two or more voices, "Another Night In Tunisia" with Cheryl Bentyne
• 1986, Best Jazz Vocal Performance, male, "Round Midnight"
• 1987, Best Jazz Vocal Performance, male, "What Is This Thing Called Love"
• 1987, Best Recording for Children, "The Elephant's Child" with Jack Nicholson
• 1988, Song of the year, Best Pop Vocal Performance, male, Record of the year, "Don't Worry, Be Happy"
• 1988, Best Jazz Vocal Performance, male, "Brothers"
• 1992, Best Jazz Vocal Performance, "Round Midnight"

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bobby McFerrin

• Bobby McFerrin