Jazz breaking news: Bobby McFerrin gets blue and beautiful at the Barbican
Monday, March 4, 2013
The audience is treated to the familiar and the unfamiliar.
Recognisable from his trademark black T-shirt, faded blue jeans and graying dreads, Bobby McFerrin takes the stage to the kind of rapturous applause that comes with 40-years of redefining the rules of jazz singing. But he is trailed by a six-piece band, of which the notable members are keyboardist-accordionist-arranger Gil Goldstein and drummer Ali Jackson Jnr, the rhythmic bedrock of JALCO. Given the fact that McFerrin has taken the art of solo performance to giddy heights since his astounding album The Voice, it is a shock to see him flanked by two guitars and acoustic bass as well as the aforesaid instruments.
Tonight’s programme, SpiritYouAll, draws primarily on gospel and blues of an ancestral, ‘ole folks out on the porch’ strain, so the rustic, grainy textures provided by the acoustic and electric strings of David Mansfield and Armand Hirsch are very apposite. The delicate arpeggios of the largely finger picked lines fit hand in glove with the singer’s fluttering melodies. McFerrin has always been able to cover a song with great imagination and a quite heart stopping rendition of ‘Wade In The Water’, where all of the customary momentum and swing of the chorus is redirected towards a more dragging pulse with eerie chording, is brilliant. Ditto ‘The Whole World In His Hands’ and ‘Fix Me Jesus’.
McFerrin’s voice, with the glowing, muted trumpet quality of the upper register well intact, is simply heavenly. The singer performed a short, improvised solo set before the band returned for the highlight of the evening: McFerrin moved to the piano to play ‘Feline’, a gem from his eponymous 1984 debut. It is a timely reminder that the singer – who can transform Beethoven as joyfully as he does Bob Dylan – is also a songwriter of considerable stature.
– Kevin Le Gendre