All That Jazz : Don’t Worry, McFerrin’s Very Happy

“Renaissance man,” “jack-of-all-trades,” “multi-hyphenate.” Take your choice. Any and/or all apply to Bobby McFerrin, who has been, variously, a jazz pianist, a jazz singer, a solo vocalist, the leader of a vocal ensemble, a symphony conductor and a hit songwriter. And McFerrin himself, the father of three children, would probably add “happy family man” to the list.

Approaching his 50th birthday next March, McFerrin is now reviving one of the most remarkable aspects of his many-faceted talents: solo concertizing. On Thursday, at Royce Hall in the opening event of the UCLA Performing Arts 1999-2000 schedule, he will make his first such Los Angeles performance in years.

“It’s been a long time,” McFerrin says. “I really stopped doing solo concerts exclusively around ‘88, because I was sort of falling into this trap where I found myself repeating patterns because they were working. Even though, on the one hand, they were gratifying and the audience really seemed to enjoy what I was doing, at the same time I felt that I wasn’t living up to my ideal, which was to do completely improvised concerts in which nothing was ever repeated.

“So I stopped doing them when I realized that I wasn’t nervous about them anymore and that I could sort of do them on automatic. I felt that wasn’t fair to the audience or myself, to go out there with a sort of blase attitude about it.”

It’s unlikely, however, that any of McFerrin’s audiences ever picked up anything remotely “blase” about his solo performances, which--despite his sense of “repeating patterns”--were remarkable examples of an extraordinary talent at work. His ability to move through the audience, engage his listeners and entertain them with his astonishing vocal range was one of the more striking musical accomplishments of recent memory.

Fortunately, McFerrin has now found a way to revive his interest, and specifically his desire to be completely spontaneous.

“Up until about three months ago,” he explains, “I thought that I really wouldn’t be able to do it. But this past summer I put together a new band, a trio with Jeff Carney on bass, Danny Gottlieb on drums and Danny’s wife, Beth, on percussion, and my voice. It was completely improvised from start to finish, every concert--and we did about seven or eight in Europe.”

Still, spontaneous improvising with three other musicians--an environment in which themes can be tossed back and forth, and no one is completely responsible for carrying the ball at all times--is not quite the same as walking out alone in front of an audience and making something happen.

“That’s true,” McFerrin says. “But what those trio programs did was to sort of inadvertently open up some new spaces in my head and knock down some walls. I did a solo concert after the trio tour that was much in the same spirit, completely improvised, start to finish. That was when I realized that what had happened was that it had become audience art, and the audience all of a sudden became this band that I had taken on the road with me.

“And instead of telling them to sing, I would just give them little musical cues--a pattern or a note or a phrase or a sound or a mood. I would give it to them, and they would take it. They got the idea: ‘OK, this is our part.’ Then I’d rove around the audience with my microphone and find little sections, little groups, and play with that, and it really became audience art. It wasn’t a solo concert anymore, I was just the facilitator.”

It’s a role similar in spirit--if dramatically different in context--to McFerrin’s work as a classical conductor. But it also is a role much closer to the jazz roots that have been part of his music since the release of his first album, “Bobby McFerrin,” in 1982, at a time when he was best known as a straight-ahead jazz singer. Two years later, with the arrival of “The Voice,” the first all-solo vocal album in jazz history, McFerrin’s idiosyncratic role as a musical creator was firmly established.

“But, you know,” he says, “despite all the things I’ve been through, it’s all part of the same essential process. So when I realized that there was a way in which I could do this kind of performing with the spontaneity that I wanted, I thought, ‘Yeah, OK, I’m ready.’

“I’m going to be 50 years old on my next birthday, and it’s about time. This is exactly what I’ve been thinking about since I started singing when I was in my late 20s and early 30s.”

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* Bobby McFerrin at UCLA’s Royce Hall, Thursday at 8 p.m. Tickets $16 (for students with valid ID) to $50. (310) 825-2101.