Robert Irving III

Robert Irving III

Robert "Baabe" Irving III (* 27. October 1953 in Chicago , Illinois) is an American jazz - pianist and - keyboardist , composer and arranger . He leads his own bands and works as a producer . He was instrumental in developing the sound of the late Miles Davis in the 1980s and 1990s.

Life

Irving's musical career began as a wind player. His first instrument was the Clairon natural trumpet , followed by a number of wind instruments, including the cornet , French horn and valve trombone . While playing wind instruments, he also learned to play keyboard instruments to improve his theoretical knowledge of music.

Irving's family moved to North Carolina from 1969 to 1978 . There Irving pursued his music studies, played the trombone in concert bands, keyboard for pop, funk and fusion bands, as well as organ and piano for gospel groups . Hammond organ and keyboards now became his main instruments.

When he returned to Chicago in 1978, Irving teamed up with a number of musicians, including Vincent Wilburn Jr. and Darryl Jones , who later joined the Miles Davis Band with him . These musicians formed a series of bands including Data and AL7 . In 1979 AL7 was invited by arranger and producer Tom Tom 84 to do demo recordings for Maurice White (of Earth Wind and Fire ).

Irving joined Miles Davis in 1981. Through the long and formative time with Miles Davis (until 1988) Irving became a practically fully trained acoustic jazz pianist, as can be seen in his current work.

Collaboration with Miles Davis

Miles first became aware of Irving through his recording Space (which he made with his talented Chicago-based band for Vince Wilburn's uncle). As a result, Miles Davis invited him and his musicians to New York for his first recording session in years. In fact, it turned out that Irving's music provided the impetus and motivation to induce Davis to resume his musical development, which had fallen asleep from 1974 to 1979, in the last phase of his career from 1979 to 1991.

Some of the results of these sessions are included on the 1981 album The Man with the Horn , Davis' comeback album. The title track The Man With the Horn was written and arranged by Irving, who also co-wrote and arranged the other track Shout . In 1983 Miles Davis asked if Irving wanted to work as composer, keyboardist, arranger and co-producer for the recording sessions that would make the album Decoy . He also invited Irving to join his touring band, with whom he stayed for five years, and where he took on the role of musical director alongside the piano. Irving was responsible for the musical arrangements, rehearsals (which Davis never attended) and the musical interaction between Davis and his band members, including musicians such as John Scofield , Bill Evans , Mike Stern , Kenny Garrett and Darryl Jones . As musical director, Irving would listen to the recordings every night to pick up ideas that would become an integral part of the band's arrangements.

In 1982 Robert Irving also took on the duties of musical director and pianist for the Kuumba theater production The Little Dreamer ... a Nite in the Life of Bessie Smith , learning stride piano from the legendary Little Brother Montgomery , who composed the music for the show .

In addition to Decoy, Irving worked as a composer, producer, and arranger on the 1985 recording You're Under Arrest . This album included the Grammy nominated version Time After Time and the track Human Nature . While working on You're Under Arrest , Irving was studying arrangement with Gil Evans , who decades earlier had arranged some of his most famous pieces for Miles Davis. Irving and Miles later expanded their collaboration to include projects such as the music for the film Street Smart .

Career after Miles

Irving left Miles Davis' band in 1988 and began his own musical career. At the time of their separation, his musical mentor gave him one last piece of advice that he should share with him: “ Music is a painting that you can hear and painting is music that you can see. It's time you started working on your own pictures. "

In 1988 Irving released his solo album, Midnight Dream , for the Verve Forecast / Polygram Records label. Then John Scofield, Darryl Jones, Buddy Williams and Phil Perry played. In the further 1990s Irving worked rather inconspicuously with labels such as DIW in Japan and Europe, which are hardly noticed in the USA because of the small editions, while the successor musicians of the Davis Band have been busily marketing themselves there since 1985 (Marcus Miller).

Since leaving the Davis Band, Irving has lived in Chicago and pursued a successful career as a touring musician, composer, arranger, producer and teacher. In the Chicago jazz scene, Irving has taught at numerous schools, workshops, and community events, and he founded Chicago's African Arts Ensemble . Irving composed the score for Gregory Tillman Jr.'s 1995 feature film Scenes for the Soul , as well as a concert for jazz harp and orchestra with Mademoiselle Mandarin for the Miami Chamber Orchestra , which premiered with Swiss musician Markus Klinko . Over the years he has recorded either as a leader of his own bands or as a sideman with a long list of well-known jazz musicians, including working with David Murray , Wallace Roney , Eddie Henderson , Lenny White and Davis-day colleagues Darryl Jones, Vince Wilburn Jr. and Al Foster; also with Ramsey Lewis , Randy Hall , Chick Corea , Pharoah Sanders , Terri Lyne Carrington , Gary Bartz , Buster Williams , Regina Carter and Kirk Whalum . He worked as a composer, arranger and pianist.

Additionally, at Davis' urging, Irving began painting. He has been painting regularly since 1997 and his work has been exhibited in several galleries.

Irving also took on former Miles Davis musicians ESP and ESP2 as the band's leader and music director, played on a number of David Murray's albums and tours, as a member of the Kahil El'Zabars Juba Collective, and with Wallace Roney . He has produced albums for Terri Lyne Carrington (Real Life Story, 1990) and Susan Osborne (Wabi 1991, received the Nippon Music Award for best creative concept), among others.

In 2007, the Sonic Portraits label released a current trio album, New Momentum , on which Irving plays the acoustic piano.

His way of playing

It fulfills its function as a companion with restraint and structure, no matter how "electric" or wiry its keyboard sounds are. In the restraint he is not easy to hear from the overall sound on the Miles Davis albums and he gives few solos there. He can build up music "monumentally", which he easily dissolves again with his rhythmically neatly delimited tempo changes. He can play gospel styles with just such ease and force. On the acoustic piano it has a full sound, it plays with full chords at octave intervals, on the keyboards it sounds rather wiry, spotted with rudimentary hints, it sets accents and sticks to simple chords. He moves complicated “jazz chords” in backsliding over larger intervals, while he alternates more simple “gospel triads” rhythmically percussively between right and left hand.

Selected discography

with Miles Davis:

• Miles Davis, The Complete Miles Davis at Montreux 2002 - composer, producer, keyboards
• Miles Davis, You're Under Arrest (Grammy Award nomination) 1985 - composer, arranger, keyboards, producer
• Miles Davis, Decoy (Downbeat Album of the Year) - composer, arranger, keyboards, producer
• Miles Davis, The Man With the Horn 1981 - composer, arranger, keyboards, producer

under his own name and with Miles Davis' successor band:

• Robert Irving III, Midnight Dream 1989 - composer, arranger, keyboards, producer
• Robert Irving III, New Momentum (Sonic Portraits Entertainment) 2007 - band leader, piano, composer, arranger and producer (with Terri Lyne Carrington)
• ESP, ESP (Robert Irving III, Darryl Jones, Bobby Broom , Kirk Whalum, Toby Williams) 1992 - composer, arranger, keyboards, producer

as a sideman:

• Juba Collective (Khalil El'Zabar), Juba Collective 2002 - piano, (Hammond) organ, keyboards
• Wallace Roney, Village 1997 - keyboards
• David Murray, Fo Deuk Revue , enja 1997 - piano, composer
• David Murray, Dark Star (# 1 on Billboard Charts) 1996 - organ, piano, synthesizer
• David Murray, Jug-a-Lug , DIW 1995 - organ, synthesizer.
• David Murray, The Tip 1994 - organ, synthesizer

(Note, after - , Irving's are functions.)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See on this [1]
2. ↑ Morgan Freeman played there in his first Oscar-nominated role and Miles Davis trumpet.

Web links

• Irving's MySpace page
• The Last Miles
• To the current publication