..:: audio-music dot info ::..


Main Page      The Desert Island      Copyright Notice
 Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz


Bobby McFerrin: VOCAbuLarieS

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: EmArcy Records
Released: 2010
Time:
 63:50
Category: Jazz, Vocals
Producer(s): Roger Treece
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.bobbymcferrin.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2015
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Baby (Bobby McFerrin / Roger Treece) - 8:04
[2] Say Ladeo (Bobby McFerrin / Don Rosler / Roger Treece - 8:44
[3] Wailers (Bobby McFerrin / Roger Treece) - 10:25
[4] Messages (Don Rosler / Roger Treece) - 11:22
[5] The Garden (Bobby McFerrin / Roger Treece) - 8:34
[6] He Ran to the Train (Bobby McFerrin / Roger Treece) - 10:29
[7] Brief Eternity (Don Rosler / Roger Treece) - 6:13

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Bobby Mcferrin - Lead Vocals

Roger Treece - Vocals, Percussion/Synthesizer Programming on [1-6], Engineer, Mixing, Pre-Mixing, Producer
Lisa Fischer - Vocals
Joey Blake - Vocals on [1-6]
Kim Nazarian - Vocals on [1-6]
Janis Siegel - Vocals on [1, 2, 3, 5, 6]
Latanya Hall - Vocals on [1- 6]
Luciana Souza - Vocals on [2-6]
Albert Hera - Vocals on [3-6]
Lauren Kinhan - Vocals on [1, 3, 5, 6]
Peter Eldridge - Vocals on [1, 4, 5, 7]
Alexandra Montano - Vocals on [2, 4, 7]
Andrea Figallo - Vocals on [4, 6, 7]
Darmon Meader - Vocals on [1, 2, 7]
Darryl Tookes - Vocals on [3, 5, 6]
Dave Worm - Vocals on [3, 5, 6]
Katie Campbell - Vocals on [1, 4, 7]
Kristina Boerger - Vocals on [1, 4, 7]
Amelia Watkins - Vocals on [4, 7]
Aubrey Johnson - Vocals on [2, 4]
David Root - Vocals on [4, 7]
Everett Bradley - Vocals on [3, 5]
Fletcher Sheridan - Vocals on [4, 7]
Gary Eckert - Vocals on [1, 2], Engineer
Mark Johnson - Vocals on [4, 7]
Michele Eaton - Vocals on [ 4, 7]
Michelle Mailhot Vines - Vocals on [4, 7]
Pierre Cook - Vocals on [5, 6]
Rhiannon - Vocals on [3, 5]
Ryland Angel - Vocals on [4, 7]
Sandra Anderson - Vocals on [1, 7]
Beth Quist - Vocals on [1]
Bonnie Denise Christensen - Vocals on [2]
Cole Davis - Vocals on [7]
Curtis King - Vocals on [3]
Daniel Abraham Deveau - Vocals on [7]
Darren Percival - Vocals on [2]
Datevik Hovanesian - Vocals on [3]
David B. Whitworth - Vocals on [3]
Elizabeth Farnum - Vocals on [4]
Gayla Morgan - Vocals on [4]
Josephine Lee - Vocals on [1]
Judy Doneghy - Vocals on [1]
Kevin Osborne - Vocals on [1]
Lincoln Briney - Vocals on [2]
Marlon Saunders - Vocals on [5]
Michael Steinburger - Vocals on [4]
Michele Weir - Vocals on [1]
Richard Slade - Vocals on [4]
Rosana Eckert - Vocals on [2]
Sussan Deyhim - Vocals on [3]
Theo Bleckmann - Vocals on [4]
Thom Baker - Vocals on [4]
Alex Acuña - Bongos & Percussion on [1-6]
Donny Mccaslin - Saxophone on [4]
Pedro Eustache - Duduk & Woodwinds on [4]

Linda Goldstein - Original Design Concept, Co-Producer
Bruno Canale - Engineer
Bo Joe - Assistant Engineer, Mixing
Allen Sides - Mixing, Mixing Engineer
Steven Miller - Mixing Engineer
Ted Jensen - Mastering Engineer
Carol Friedman - Photography
Mark Hess - Design
Fred Miller - Production Executive
Karen Goldfeder - Liner Notes
Jeff Tamarkin - Liner Notes

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


“a veritable symphony of voices” – People Magazine (3.5 of 4 stars)

“the most extraordinary music Bobby McFerrin has ever made” – Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News

“heartstoppingly beautiful” – Philly.com

VOCAbuLarieS is Bobby McFerrin music for the 21st century. It is unlike anything the 10-time Grammy-winner has ever recorded. An ambitious project several years in the making, it draws from the array of influences that have long contributed to McFerrin’­s innovative style — classical to world music, R&B to gospel and beyond – and recasts the world-renowned singer in a new framework defined by dense compositional detail, rich textures and complex arrangements. VOCAbuLarieS builds upon McFerrin’­s past explorations and journeys into expansive territory. Constructed as meticulously as a Mozart symphony or a Steely Dan album, intricately synthesized from countless stylistic elements, VOCAbuLarieS may be unlike any album anyone has ever recorded.

VOCAbuLarieS was imagined by McFerrin’­s longtime manager and producer, Linda Goldstein. “There was Bobby, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, experimenting with multi-track recording, touring with his twelve voice improvising ensemble Voicestra, and performing his adventurous, pioneering solo show,” says Goldstein, “and I wanted to find an intersection of these pathways.” She envisioned a new kind of vocal ensemble music using extended compositional forms. Bobby’s inventive articulation, timbre, and phrasing would serve as a template, allowing singers to break free of choral conventions. “I was trying to harness the way Bobby takes ideas, sounds from all over the world and alchemizes them into a new language.”

To begin this experiment, Linda recruited Roger Treece, a classically trained composer/arranger and vocalist. Roger and Linda listened to hundreds of hours of Bobby’s wildly diverse archival recordings, searching for the finest threads of ideas. Over the seven years of writing, recording and editing VOCAbuLarieS, Treece “got a triple Ph.D. in Bobby McFerrinisms,” says Goldstein.

Treece found starting places for his compositions in the most interesting motifs from those recordings, and in classic songs from Bobby’s catalogue. “I set out to construct each piece with lots of twists and turns and modulations, like a page-turner or a movie that keeps you on the edge of your seat,” says Treece, “but I also wanted to stay true to the loose, easy feel of Bobby’­s singing, the joyful quality. What emerged was through-composed music that’­s got groove.”

“It’­s a very different project for me,” says McFerrin. “I’­ve never worked so closely with another writer who could create around what I do. As an improviser, everything exists only in the moment, and then you let go of it. But in this context, Roger would hear something I did once, write it down and build the material into a fully scored theme and variations form, and then say, “Here, sing this.” It was old and new, mine and not mine. It was a challenge for me.”

Bobby and Roger enlisted members of Voicestra and fine vocalists from the worlds of jazz, opera, performance art, early music, cabaret, and rock and roll. Roger spent years in the studio recording Bobby and Grammy-winning recording artists like R&B singer Lisa Fischer, Brazilian jazz innovator Luciana Souza, Janis Siegel of the Manhattan Transfer, and the stellar ensemble singers of New York Voices, editing and re-editing to design the right sound. The singers were recorded one at a time and in small groups to create a virtual choir made up of over 1,400 vocal tracks. Over the course of many years and over a thousand hours of studio time, the best performances were captured and sculpted into form. “The music emerged elegantly from the meticulous craftsmanship of Roger’­s surgical recording and editing process,” says Goldstein. “Voices of different colors, types, and stylistic bents were joined to invent a new sound, inspired by Bobby McFerrin. The technique allowed us to combine studio R&B sound, classical choral blend, and African tribal chant. We melded them into a new amalgam, built up layer by layer.” The final mix required over 100 gigs of audio memory to house the enormity of the musical material: intricate, overwhelming, and yet vividly joyous.

The seven songs that make up VOCAbuLarieS “keep the listener’­s ear in a constant state of surprise,” says Roger Treece. Each song unfolds a kaleidoscopic perspective on Bobby’­s irresistible vocal riffs. The lyrics offer a collage of Latin, Italian, Sanskrit, Zulu, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, French, Arabic, German, English, Gaelic as well as Bobby’­s own invented language. In the song Ladeo, McFerrin sums up his musical philosophy. “Time for taking words away,” he sings, “the melody will tell the story as we go along.”

From the opening cry of Baby through the final notes of Brief Eternity, McFerrin, Treece and their virtual choir transport us to uncharted ground. It’s like arriving in an unfamiliar city that feels like home. This is a universal music that works on many levels. Every listener will hear something different in VOCAbuLarieS. “One song becomes a thousand songs,” Bobby sings. Within the seven songs of VOCAbuLarieS are many thousands of songs, each one a moving, wondrous, enveloping creation brimming with ecstasy, uplift and a sense of infinite possibility.

www.bobbymcferrin.com



Bobby McFerrin has always been a wildly restless talent, continually looking to develop fresh ideas for the human voice and place it in -- sometimes wildly -- different contexts from simple folk and pop songs to improvisational settings to strident compositional frameworks. His productions include duet records with instrumentalists Chick Corea and Yo-Yo Ma, as well as the creation of a virtual a cappella choir from his own vocal overdubs. All of this said, there has always been “something missing” from his recorded works that shows itself in concert, outside recording studio confines. On VOCAbuLarieS he seems to have found it. This is the work that anyone remotely interested in McFerrin needs to hear. Collaborating with composer, arranger, and conductor Roger Treece over seven years, McFerrin’s been given a foil who not only understands his previous output, but can focus his ideas and take them to the next developmental peak. The pair employed over 50 vocalists from different genres and nations to create a virtual choir in the studio. According to a press release, they cut over 1,400 vocal tracks. The music here is “fusion” in the most seamless and beautiful sense of the word: classical, pop, soul, Middle Eastern, African, and Eastern European vocal traditions all move together, and encounter one another head-on. They meld into a whole where the seams show, but are elegantly aurally tailored to create something entirely new -- even if the material always isn’t. Three selections here come from the controversially beautiful Medicine Music album, from 1996. But the versions here are radically different than the originals; the voices, rhythms, textures, and even ambiences of these voices have a more muscular quality, much more forceful and complex while simultaneously being more "listenable." The opener, “Baby,” provides proof. In the original it was a simple folk song, a lullaby with African roots; here is it a harmonically challenging, intricate labyrinth where 22 singers accompany McFerrin as well as a rhythm section. ”Wailers” is a pulsing chant with Middle Eastern, African, and Eastern European harmonies woven together by singers who include Sussan Deyhim, Luciana Souza, and Janis Siegel. ”He Ran to the Train” combines -- in a wholly new way -- two tracks from Medicine Music in an explosively knotty, compellingly emotional call-and-response piece that is as rhythmically complex as it is harmonically. The set closes with “Brief Eternity,” a new piece of modern sacred music that evokes everything from Gregorian chant and polyphony to John Tavener and Arvo Pärt. VOCAbuLarieS is easily McFerrin’s finest moment on record as well as his most ambitious, and should win him some new fans even among cynics.

Thom Jurek - All Music Guide



VOCAbuLarieS took seven years to put together, and it shows. Not only is it vocalist Bobby McFerrrin’s most ambitious and wide-ranging work to date, it is also one of the most complex albums ever constructed. Remarkably, it contains more than 1,400 vocal tracks recorded by over 50 top singers, individually or in small groups, before being assembled to create a virtual choir.

The end result has that wow factor which signals an instant classic. Whether your ideal of vocal harmony is doo-wop, The Beach Boys, a gospel choir, Manhattan Transfer, Ladysmith Black Mambazo or beyond, the joyful sounds of VOCAbuLarieS will appeal to you.

McFerrin has always drawn from a broad spectrum of music, mixing and matching his tastes and influences. In his freewheeling concerts, he can switch mid-song from The Beatles straight into Ave Maria, interject some vocalese, organise an impromptu sing-along with the audience or a call-and-response exchange with a choir.

In contrast to the looseness of the live experience, but still retaining its spirit, VOCAbuLarieS is a structured, through-composed album. McFerrin worked on it with vocalist, composer and arranger Roger Treece, a member of his 12-voice group Voicestra. Treece used compositions and motifs from McFerrin’s past work as the starting points for the album’s seven elaborate pieces. These include Baby, McFerrin’s touching anthem to parenthood, which opens VOCAbuLarieS.

Treece has captured the groove that characterises McFerrin’s music, as well as his playful love of voices. The vocals are sung in a range of languages from Arabic to Latin to Zulu, so their literal meaning is secondary to the rich sound created by the constantly shifting harmonies. Although voices predominate, instruments are added sparingly, most noticeably subtle percussion.

Alongside McFerrin and members of Voicestra and New York Voices are such diverse singers as Janis Siegel from Manhattan Transfer, R&B talent Lisa Fischer, and Brazilian jazz vocalist Luciana Souza. The climax of the album, Brief Eternity, pairs McFerrin and Fischer as lead vocalists, creating a spine-tingling combination. But VOCAbuLarieS is greater than any one track, the whole being a kaleidoscopic celebration of the human voice.

John Eyles  - 2010
BBC Review



For nearly thirty years, Bobby McFerrin's illustrious career has proven that there is no instrument like the human voice. With an ability to cover any vocal range, his spontaneous inventions have spanned inventive a cappella singing, wonderful mimicries and global dialects, through memorable performances and recordings with the likes of the Vienna Philharmonic, Yo-Yo Ma, Chick Corea, and Herbie Hancock, or demonstrating the power of the pentatonic scale at the 2009 World Science Festival. A true virtuoso, McFerrin is far more than just the pop sensation who delivered to the world his signature 1988 hit song "Don't Worry Be Happy."

VOCAbuLarieS comes eight years after McFerrin's previous recording, and it is his most challenging release to date. It is one that incorporates the ten-time Grammy winner in collaboration with over fifty vocalists through the meticulous technical guidance of composer/producer/singer Roger Treece, a member of McFerrin's vocal ensemble, Voicestra. Seven years in the making, the project includes a diversity of voices recorded in small groups to create a "virtual choir" with over 1400 vocal tracks and lyrics in multiple languages.

As the liner note aptly states, this is "through-composed music that's got groove." The seven compositions are all defined by their playfulness and infectious rhythms, as well as their unique vocalizations and interplay. With dazzling harmonies and multiple progressions, songs such as "Baby" and "The Garden" (taken from McFerrin's unappreciated yet brilliant Medicine Man (EMI, 1990)) are like pieces in a quilt. Each section is detailed and when woven together forms a more elaborate work.

McFerrin's interest in diverse cultures is evident throughout. "Wailers" is akin to an African safari where voices traverse different kinds of terrain. "Messages," built around a simple ostinato, contains the referenced lyrics from Arabic to Zulu, creating a veritable utopia of voices. "He Ran To The Train" is a stunning combination of two songs from the aforementioned Medicine Man, "He Ran All The Way" and "The Train" which embodies heart-pulsing syncopation, call and response, and McFerrin's magic touches. The project concludes with the angelic "Brief Eternity," where voices and lyrics intersect blissfully.

Take McFerrin's spellbinding one-man-show, involving audiences, singers, and artists into his exploratory playground, and multiply it. VOCAbuLarieS is the result.

MARK F. TURNER - April 21, 2010
© 2015 All About Jazz
 

 L y r i c s


Currently no Lyrics available!

 M P 3   S a m p l e s


Currently no Samples available!