McFerrin

Wagner took more than a quarter-century to write the Ring cycle, and Beethoven revised his sole opera, Fidelio, continually over the course of a decade. But we live in a faster-paced world now. When the acclaimed vocal innovator Bobby McFerrin and a cast of international singers take the stage of Zankel Hall for the May 2 Young Artists Concert that’s being described as Instant Opera, the performers will have known one another only a week, and none of them—including McFerrin—will have a clue where the music is going.

That’s exactly how McFerrin likes it.

Long a champion of spontaneity, Bobby McFerrin is a natural choice to lead a Professional Training Workshop for Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute. A master of improvisation—whether performing solo or with other musicians or singers—McFerrin has only one predictable characteristic: his unpredictability. He arrived for the workshop with no preconceived ideas.

“We’re going to play around with creating an opera, just get together and hang out and sing together,” McFerrin says. “We’ll come up with the material and how long we’re going to stay in a particular section and move on to something else. The whole idea behind the workshop is inventing this opera as much as we can in the moment. Part of my job will be to make sure that we don’t get stuck anywhere, that we don’t come up with something we like so much that we won’t be able to get out of it.”

Ann Gregg, Director of Community and Professional Training Programs for The Weill Music Institute, adds, “The opera will be created with singers from all over the world who have diverse styles and training. The idea is to create an a cappella work on a libretto that’s based on the story of the Tower of Babel—to explore why we speak different languages, how we find common understanding, how we work together to create ways to communicate even if we don’t speak the same language. What better way to explore this than through music?”

Even audience members, sitting in Zankel’s cushy seats, won’t get off that easily. “One of the reasons for doing this project is to make everyone part of the opera. The audience has a role that it plays: part of the chorus. That’s easy for me to do,” says Bobby. “But I’m going to try an experiment.”