Exploring New Performance Territories
McFerrin, Nakra, and Chong Take Harvard Students on a Creative Journey
February brings a trio of Learning From Performers artists to Harvard
who are expanding the boundaries of vocal, instrumental, and dramatic
performance.
Vocalist, conductor, and improviser extraordinaire Bobby McFerrin visits
Harvard February 24-27 to take part in a series of workshops with undergraduate
performing ensembles and soloists. His residency will culminate in a concert
featuring McFerrin and students who participate in the workshop sessions.
This "Office for the Arts Presents" event will be held on Wednesday,
February 27, at 8 pm at Sanders Theater. For
ticket information.
"The hyperkinetic, superpersonable, wide-ranging Bobby McFerrin,
scion of a family of musicians, does more than vocalize, conduct, and
produce music. He lives it." (Los Angeles Times) Born to classically
trained singers in New York City in 1950, Bobby McFerrin began studying
musical theory at age six, shortly before his family relocated to Los
Angeles. The piano was his primary instrument in high school and during
his studies at California State University/Sacramento and Cerritos College.
After completing his formal education, he began to tour, first with the
Ice Follies and then with a series of "Top 40" bands, cabaret
acts and dance troupes. It was not until 1977 that he was inspired to
become a singer. After a period in New Orleans with a band called Astral
Projection, he moved to San Francisco where, among other important contacts,
he met Bill Cosby who arranged for McFerrin’s debut at the Hollywood
Bowl as part of the 1980 Playboy Jazz Festival. A triumph in New York
at the Kool Jazz Festival followed one year later, and shortly thereafter
he signed with the Elektra/Musician label, which released his debut album,
"Bobby McFerrin" in May 1982.
After touring with his own band and collaborating with such jazz artists
as Herbie Hancock and Wynton Marsalis, McFerrin took a major step in 1983
when he began unaccompanied concertizing. This led to a solo tour of Germany
where the live album "The Voice" was recorded. Released in June
of 1984, this album showcased McFerrin’s virtuosity and his ability
to captivate an audience without supporting instruments or, in many cases,
lyrics.
Through the 1980’s, he continued to expand his circle of collaborators
and his award-winning discography, working with Garrison Keillor, Jack
Nicholson, Weather Report’s Joe Zawinul, Manhattan Transfer (on "Another
Night in Tunisia" which won two Grammy Awards) and, for his Blue
Note album "Spontaneous Inventions" (1986), Herbie Hancock,
Jon Hendricks, Wayne Shorter, and Robin Williams. With the solo album
"Simple Pleasures" (EMI-Manhattan, 1988) and the chart-topping
single and video of "Don’t Worry, Be Happy," McFerrin’s
career reached a new plateau as he achieved unprecedented success as a
one-man vocal ensemble.
The 1990 release of "Medicine Music" demonstrated McFerrin’s
skills as an orchestrator, especially in his work with Voicestra, his
"orchestra of voices" established in the late 1980s. It was
with that ten-voice group that he appeared on "Today," "Arsenio
Hall," and "Evening at Pops," where viewers also saw the
beginnings of his newfound enthusiasm for conducting. He released his
first classical album, "Paper Music," with the Saint Paul Chamber
Orchestra for Sony Classical in June of 1995, which remains on the Billboard
chart of classical bestsellers. A second Sony Classical album with the
orchestra featuring Chick Corea performing two Mozart Piano Concertos
was released the following year.
Since that time McFerrin has continued to tour and record extensively,
and has also added symphonic conducting to his broad range of musical
styles and forms. He has studied extensively with Gustav Meier, one of
America’s foremost conducting teachers. He has conducted many times
for the San Francisco Symphony, and has led nearly every major American
orchestra as well as many prestigious international ensembles.
"Conducting" takes on new meaning in the hands of Teresa Marrin
Nakra ‘92, a musician and inventor who has developed a device she
calls a Conductor’s Jacket. Founder of Immersion Music, a nonprofit
organization dedicated to the invention, development, and promotion of
new technologies for live performance, Nakra’s work enhances the
traditional performing arts with electronics. The jacket she has invented
contains sensors that detect a conductor’s heartbeat, as well as
the electrical impulses generated by the muscles of the back, arms, and
torso. During performance, each movement of the conductor wearing the
jacket can be translated into a change in the way that a pre-recorded
piece of music is actually interpreted by a computer. Light and video
images can also be generated and projected, adding a visual dimension
to the music.
Nakra is the Office for the Arts’ Clifton Visiting Artist for 2001-02,
and will participate in a residency February 4-23 based in the Adams House
Pool Theater. (This is a "full-circle" return of sorts for Nakra,
who, as a freshman at Harvard, participated in a performance orchestrated
by then visiting artist John Cage in the Pool Theater; at the time, it
actually was a swimming pool.) She will lead a series of workshops for
undergraduates, and deliver a lecture-demonstration, "The State of
the Art in Live Music Performance Technology," on Tuesday, February
12th at 4:00 pm in Adams House Pool Theatre. Admission is free and open
to the general public. The residency will culminate in a performance entitled
"An Evening of Immersion Music" on Saturday, February 23, at
8 pm featuring Nakra with student performers.
Nakra holds both Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology’s acclaimed Media Laboratory, where her professors
included Tod Machover, Rosalind Picard, John Harbison, and Marvin Minsky.
She also holds a bachelor’s degree with high honors in Music from
Harvard and has received numerous distinctions, including Research Fellowships
from IBM, Motorola, and Interval Research Corporation.
Nakra’s professional music experience has been varied and extensive.
As a conductor of contemporary and classical music, she currently holds
a position as the assistant conductor of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.
In May of 1999 she was a featured performer at the Boston Cyberarts Festival’s
"COAXIAL" music weekend at the Middle East Club in Cambridge.
She also has performed in numerous venues with sensor-based electronic
instruments, including 160 performances in the touring production of Tod
Machover’s Brain Opera, presented at the Lincoln Center Summer Festival,
the Ars Electronica Festival, the NexOpera Festival (Tokyo), the European
Cultural Capital Celebrations (Copenhagen), the Acarte Festival (Lisbon),
Walt Disney World, West Palm Beach, and Sao Paulo, Brazil. She has also
served as musical director and vocal coach for the magicians Penn and
Teller, and helped them discover a lost Houdini song from which a commercial
recording was made with Debbie Harry. As the culmination of her extensive
doctoral study with the Conductor’s Jacket, she created a live public
performance event with Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops Orchestra, during
which the conductor’s data was projected on a large screen above
the orchestra and his gestures and physiological changes animated a series
of abstract images.
Obie Award-winning theater artist Ping Chong and his collaborator, playwright/actor/director
Michael Rohd, have been named the Office for the Arts’ Peter Ivers
Visiting Artists for 2001-02—and in the process are part of a significant
new direction for undergraduate theater at Harvard. In a unique collaboration
with the Office for the Arts and Cambridge’s Market Theater, Chong
and Rohd are creating Reason, a performance piece featuring a cast of
Harvard students (Angela Mi Young Hur ‘02, Olga Fedorishcheva ‘03,
Johanna Karlin ‘05, and Susan Thompson ‘05) and professional
actors (Eliza Fichter, Ray Jeness, Ryan Keilty, Ray McDavitt, and Beth
Phillips). Reason will be presented as part of the Market Theater’s
spring season at its state-of-the-art venue at 1 Winthrop Square (across
from the House of Blues on Winthrop St.) with set, lighting, and projections
designed by Randy Ward; sound designed by Ben Emerson; and costumes designed
by Stefani Mar. Harvard undergraduates will have key production positions,
working side-by-side with professional artists, and students are also
engaged in dramaturgy, marketing, and other aspects of the production.
Reason will have two preview performances on February 23 and 24, with
an opening night of Wednesday, February 27. Performances continue through
March 17.
Ping Chong is a theater director, playwright, choreographer, and video
and installation artist. He was born in Toronto, Canada, and raised in
New York City’s Chinatown. He is recognized as a leading contemporary
theater artist and a seminal figure in the Asian-American arts movement.
In May 2000 Chong was awarded an Obie, his second, for Sustained Achievement.
He is also the recipient of six National Endowment for the Arts fellowships,
a Playwrights USA Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Theater Communications
Group/Pew Charitable Trust National Theater Fellowship, a National Institute
for Music Theater Award, and two Bessie Awards, one in 1992 for Sustained
Achievement, and one in 1999 for his collaborations with choreographer
Muna Tseng. A former Bellagio Fellow, Ping Chong held the Wynton Chair
at the University of Minnesota in 1994 and received an honorary doctorate
in fine arts from Cornish College in 1999. He was also artist-in-residence
at NYU’s Asian/Pacific/American Studies Programs during 1999-2000
and at University of Wisconsin-Madison Art Institute from January-March
2001.
Since 1972, Ping Chong has created more than 35 works for the stage, and
in 1975 Ping Chong & Company (aka Fiji Theater Company) was founded
to create innovative works of theater and art that explore the intersection
of race, history, culture, and technology in the modern world. Chong’s
work includes Nosferatu, Angels of Swedenborg, KIND NESS, Undesirable
Elements, and the acclaimed East-West quartet Deshima, Chinoiserie, After
Sorrow, and Pojagi. These and other works have been performed at major
museums, festivals, and theaters throughout the Americas, Europe, and
Asia. His puppet theater work, Kwaidan, premiered at the Atlanta Center
for Puppetry Arts, was presented at La MaMa ETC as part of the 1998 Henson
International Festival of Puppet Theater and has toured extensively in
the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. He is currently working on
his second puppet theater work, Obon: Tales of Rain and Moonlight, scheduled
to premiere in spring 2002.
Michael Rohd is Founding Artistic Director of Sojourn Theatre in Portland,
Oregon. He has collaborated with Ping Chong on Undesirable Elements/Washington,
D.C. and, at Virginia Tech School of the Arts and Theater Arts, on American
Gothic (later titled Truth and Beauty). He is an associate artist with
Cornerstone Theater Company (Los Angeles), and has directed for Cornerstone
at George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He is Founding
Artistic Director of Hope Is Vital, an international theater and community
dialogue resource organization, and is the author of Theater for Community,
Conflict and Dialogue (Heinemann, 1998).
For more information on these events contact Thomas Lee, Learning From Performers Program Manager.
