The Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra Presents 'Bobby McFerrin Takes On Gershwin'

    KALAMAZOO, MI, December 29, 2014 /24-7PressRelease/ -- The Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra proudly welcomes vocalist and conductor, Bobby McFerrin, in special event concert Bobby McFerrin Takes on Gershwin. For decades, Bobby McFerrin has broken all the rules! The ten-time Grammy winner has blurred the distinction between pop music and fine art, goofing around barefoot in the world's finest concert halls. Join your KSO with Bobby McFerrin as guest-conductor for an all-Gershwin program featuring An American in Paris and other Gershwin favorites!

This exciting program will feature selections from George Gershwin's wildly popular opera, Porgy and Bess. While the composer did not live to see the grand success we know it to be, the production's songs quickly became hits after its 1935 premiere. Bess, You Is My Woman Now, I Got Plenty O' Nuttin', It Ain't Necessarily So, and, most famously, Summertime, are a few of the songs that gained popularity after Porgy and Bess' stage premiere. Bobby McFerrin provides vocals and conducts the orchestra in a variety of selections from the opera.

"Having Bobby McFerrin with the KSO is one of these unique artistic experiences," said Peter H. Gistelinck , President & CEO of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra. "Bobby McFerrin and his organic approach of conducting and working with a symphony orchestra will not only be a thrill for our musicians but definitely for our audience; this is a concert not to be missed!"

Music Director, Raymond Harvey, shares "I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Bobby McFerrin and his late father Robert McFerrin at the same time, at a banquet in St. Louis many years ago. The elder McFerrin was an operatic baritone of great acclaim. He was the first African-American man to sing at the Metropolitan Opera. He later recorded the voice-over for the film version of "Porgy and Bess" starring Sidney Poitier. His son Bobby said that his strongest musical influence came from his father."

Critically acclaimed pianist Charlie Albright joins the KSO with guest conductor Bobby McFerrin for Gershwin's Concerto in F. Gershwin rejected the notion asserted by many critics that this work was a "jazz concerto." While infused with jazz rhythms, Concerto in F is much closer to the traditional classical concerto form - much more so than his earlier work, Rhapsody in Blue. To date, Gershwin's Concerto in F is considered the most successful American piano concerto.

A composition Gershwin completed during a visit to Paris, France in 1928, and appropriately titled An American in Paris is also on the evening's program. The quintessential instrumentation of this piece even calls for French taxi-horns. After an exuberant opening, this rhythmic work dips into a bluesy mid-section, where Gershwin describes "our American friend, perhaps after strolling into a cafe and having a couple of drinks, has succumbed to a spasm of homesickness." Later, the composition's lively spirit returns; the open air dispels our friend's blues and he again rejoices in the delights of Parisian life - French taxi horns and all! As typical of a concert under the direction of McFerrin, the evening will also consist of unannounced and unexpected features and perfromances.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Bobby McFerrin
For decades Bobby McFerrin has broken all the rules. The 10-time Grammy winner has blurred the distinction between pop music and fine art, goofing around barefoot in the world's finest concert halls, exploring uncharted vocal territory, inspiring a whole new generation of a cappella singers and the beatbox movement. His latest album, spirityouall, is a bluesy, feel-good recording, an unexpected move from the music-industry rebel who singlehandedly redefined the role of the human voice with his a cappella hit "Don't Worry, Be Happy," his collaborations with Yo-Yo Ma, Chick Corea and the Vienna Philharmonic, his improvising choir Voicestra, and his legendary solo vocal performances.

It's been the quietest and most polite of revolutions. Bobby McFerrin was always an unlikely pop star. He created a lasting ear-worm of a #1 hit early in his career. Then he calmly went back to pursuing his own iconoclastic musical journey, improvising on national television, singing melodies without words, spontaneously inventing parts for 60,000 choral singers in a stadium in Germany, ignoring boundaries of genre, defying all expectations. Most people don't know that Bobby came from a family of singers. Bobby's father, the Metropolitan Opera baritone Robert McFerrin, Sr., provided the singing voice for Sydney Poitier for the film version of Porgy & Bess, and his mother Sara was a fine soprano soloist and voice teacher. He played the clarinet seriously as a child, but he began his musical career as a pianist, at the age of 14. He led his own jazz groups, studied composition, toured with the show band for the Ice Follies, and played for dance classes. Then one day he was walking home and suddenly he understood that he had been a singer all along.

Bobby's history as an instrumentalist and bandleader is key to understanding his innovative approach to mapping harmony and rhythm (as well as melody) with his voice. "I can't sing everything at once," he says, "but I can hint at it so the audience hears even what I don't sing." All that pioneer spirit and virtuosity has opened up a great big sky full of new options for singers; so have Bobby's experiments in multi-tracking his voice (Don't Worry, Be Happy has seven separate, over-dubbed vocal tracks; Bobby's choral album VOCAbuLarieS, with Roger Treece, has thousands). But virtuosity isn't the point. "I try not to "perform" onstage," says Bobby. "I try to sing the way I sing in my kitchen, because I just can't help myself. I want audiences to leave the theatre and sing in their own kitchens the next morning. I want to bring audiences into the incredible feeling of joy and freedom I get when I sing. "

Charlie Albright, Piano
2014 Avery Fisher Career Grant Recipient, 2009 Young Concert Artist, 2010 Gilmore Young Artist, and Official Steinway Artist, Charlie Albright has been critically acclaimed by The Washington Post as "among the most gifted musicians of his generation" whose "musical shape was never sacrificed to showmanship" and whose "impressive range of differently colored sounds at the keyboard was matched by overwhelming virtuosity." The New York Times praised his "jaw-dropping technique," "intelligently wrought interpretation," and "virtuosity meshed with a distinctive musicality." He is also described as a "poet of the piano" by Robert Sherman of New York's WQXR Radio, and as a "keyboard wizard" who "played like an angel...with a level of polish pianists twice his age would envy" by New York's Democrat and Chronicle. Having performed duets and chamber music on multiple occasions with such artists as cellist Yo-Yo Ma (four times) and such groups as the Silk Road Project (twice), the national and international competition winner has performed or competed across the United States, France, Australia, Norway, and Portugal.

Albright is the first prize winner of such competitions as the 2009 Young Concert Artist Competition, the 2006 Eastman International, 2006 New York Biennial National, and 2005 IIYM International Piano Competitions, and has won awards at the 2007 Hilton Head International, 2008 Sydney International, 2009 Top of the World International, and 2009 Vendome Prize International Piano Competitions. He was awarded the 2010 Gilmore Young Artist Award and was recently named the Harvard University Leverett Artist-in-Residence for 2012, a position previously held by cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 1979. He was also named the recipient of Harvard's 2011 Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts. Mr. Albright was selected by pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin to receive the German 2014 Ruhr Klavier Festival Young Artist Scholarship Award, including a debut concert in the 2014 Ruhr Festival.

Charlie completed his Associate of Science degree at the Centralia College during high school while studying with Nancy Adsit, and is the first classical pianist in the Harvard/New England Conservatory B.A./M.M. 5-Year Joint Program, where he received his B.A. in Economics at Harvard as a premedical student and received his Masters of Music in Piano Performance in 2012 with Wha-Kyung Byun. He graduated with the prestigious Artist Diploma (A.D.) from The Juilliard School of Music with Yoheved Kaplinsky. He is under management with Bill Capone of the Arts Management Group.

CALENDAR LISTING

Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra presents
KSO Special Event
Bobby McFerrin Takes on Gershwin

Bobby McFerrin, singer and conductor
Charlie Albright, piano

For decades, Bobby McFerrin has broken all the rules! The ten-time Grammy winner has blurred the distinction between pop music and fine art, goofing around barefoot in the world's finest concert halls. Join your KSO with Bobby McFerrin as guest-conductor for an all-Gershwin program featuring An American in Paris and other Gershwin favorites!

Friday, January 30, 2015 | Miller Auditorium | 8pm

Tickets: $60 - $24

For tickets, visit www.kalamazoosymphony.com or call the Miller Auditorium Ticket Office at (269) 387-2300.

Visit www.kalamazoosymphony.com for up-to-date information, details and schedules. Prices, artists, dates, time and program are subject to change without notice.

The Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra receives major support from the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, the Kalamazoo Community Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs. The Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra also receives generous support from other local, state and national foundations, as well as private and corporate support. For more information, visit www.kalamazoosymphony.com.

About the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra
Founded in 1921, the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra is Southwest Michigan's premier musical organization, providing musical enrichment to over 80,000 adults and youth per year. The third-largest professional orchestra in the state, the KSO has won numerous awards and grants, including the Met Life Award for Arts Access in Underserved Communities, the National Endowment for the Arts for its extensive education programs, and a major Ford Foundation grant to found its innovative Artist-in-Residence program.

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