Bobby McFerrin is a uniquely talented, charming, delightful, *local*
hero... and a music critic's nightmare. He is a beloved emperor to whom,
about whom you really don't want to tell that major articles of clothing
are missing when it comes to Mozart and Beethoven. Imagine being a drama
critic back in Kopenhagen, reviewing a play by Hans Christian Andersen:
there are only so many times you can bring up that other genre in which he
excelled, but... (I am awaiting, with equanimity, a frontal assault by the
Andersen Drama Club.)
Here, then, is the definitive, true, fearless, and yet considerate review
of McFerrin:
McFerrin, Symphony Mix It Up Sing-alongs, Mozart at `Summer' program
Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic
Saturday, July 8, 2000
"Summer in the City," the San Francisco Symphony's annual festival
of breezy seasonal fare, could hardly have started on a more emblematic
note than Thursday's opening concert featuring singer-conductor Bobby
McFerrin.
For 2 1/2 weeks' worth of pop, jazz and light classics, who better
to kick things off than this prodigiously gifted (if rather glib)
Jazz vocalist, who in the past decade has also developed a career
as an orchestral conductor?
Thursday night's concert in Davies Symphony Hall found him leading
the orchestra in symphonies by Mozart and Beethoven. But the evening's
highlight, by any reckoning, was the half-hour he spent alone in the
spotlight singing to -- and with -- the audience.
No doubt about it, McFerrin's vocal technique is something amazing.
His combination of a huge range, agility and laser-perfect pitch
allows him to create intricate polyphony single-handedly, like the
performer of one of Bach's solo instrumental pieces.
In the first couple of ditties, for instance, he would lay down a
bass line, then keep it going while he overlaid a falsetto melody
above it -- and fill in the inner voices, too, so that the chord
progressions were clear and full.
McFerrin is also a proven crowd- pleaser, as long as the crowd in
question has a high tolerance for coy whimsy (audience sing-alongs
of "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" and "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" were
not the only segments that felt like inserts from a children's matinee
program).
He plunged into the audience at one point to engage a number of
patrons --including a particularly capable 6-year-old boy -- in
impromptu duets. In a wonderfully moving sing-along, McFerrin sang
Bach's C-Major Prelude with frightening precision, while inviting
the audience to sing the "Ave Maria" that Gounod wrote with the Bach
as accompaniment.
McFerrin's solo stint concluded with a quick slide from the sublime
to the ridiculous: a haunting, fragmented, wordless version of "Over
the Rainbow," followed by a cutesy and increasingly manic one-man
precis of "The Wizard of Oz."
The orchestral segments of the evening, featuring Mozart's Symphony
No. 29 in A and Beethoven's Seventh, were workmanlike, uninteresting
affairs.
It was 10 years ago that McFerrin first conducted in Davies, leading
the Symphony through Beethoven's Seventh in what amounted to a charming
vanity project -- the musical equivalent of a sports fantasy camp,
or perhaps a pro-am golf tournament.
Since then, though, McFerrin has landed a regular gig with the St.
Paul Chamber Orchestra and conducted top-level international orchestras.
How that has happened was hard to make out on the basis of these two
undernourished readings.
Aside from the flaccid first movement of the Mozart, nothing went
terribly wrong -- but nothing went notably right, either. For the
most part, McFerrin seemed content to keep the beat going and let
the finer points look after themselves. The result was a good bit
of rhythmic propulsiveness, particularly in the two finales, but a
terrible shortage of interpretive profile. All too often a listener
had to suspect that what we were hearing was simply a fine orchestra
playing on auto-pilot.
(c) 2000 San Francisco Chronicle
[log in to unmask]
Attachments to [log in to unmask]
|
