Singer Bobby McFerrin’s Not Worried; He’s Happy With New Moves

“Airrrrr!”

The word is delivered as a joyous high note as singer Bobby McFerrin leaps to his feet when a window in this backstage room at UCLA’s Royce Hall is finally opened, admitting a fresh spring breeze.

McFerrin has been conducting one press interview after another on this recent Monday, and the windows have been closed because a radio show was being taped in an adjoining room.

Suddenly animated, McFerrin begins to bound up and down, first from one leg to the other, then in a pogo-ing series of jumping jacks.

“I gotta move, or I’m going to fall asleep right on the spot,” says the Grammy winner for 1988’s Song of the Year, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” between bounces. The Bay Area resident is in town for an unusually long run at Royce Hall, where he appears Tuesday-Sunday evenings, with matinees on Saturday and Sunday.

McFerrin’s fans will not see the one-man show that’s been his mainstay for the last seven years. Instead, he will perform, with his new 10-member a cappella vocal ensemble, Voicestra--pronounced, according to McFerrin, as “Voice-estra.”

It’s a risky professional move, especially for a performer who is best known to the public as the composer and singer of the buoyantly optimistic hit song.

But McFerrin is true to the words of his song. “Oh, I think I may have felt the pressure a year and a half ago to do a follow up to ‘Don’t Worry,’ ” he says, now seated in an easy chair, his fingers dancing in brisk rhythms across his knees. “But I didn’t want to pander to an audience for the rest of my life.

“And you know, it’s funny, because on the one hand I think an audience wants to hear you do the thing that made you popular. Yet, at the same time, when you do the same thing over and over again, they get bored, because they want you to do something new, too.”

McFerrin says he knew from the beginning of the solo (act) that he wouldn’t be doing it for the rest of his life.

“I started thinking, very early on, what I would be following up solo work with, and Voicestra seemed to be the most logical progression. It’s working with other singers, and it gives me a chance to work with my writing and my improvising with a group who is just as interested in these things as I am.”

Voicestra is made up of 10 talented singers from the San Francisco area--”I must have auditioned over a hundred people before I found them,” says McFerrin--who bring to the ensemble an enormous range of performing arts experience.

“We’ve got people who can do almost every kind of singing,” he explains. “And the program will reflect that. We’re doing a couple of classical pieces--one by Bach and one by Vivaldi. We’ll also be singing duets, bebop, gospel music, African chants, Gregorian chants and wild, off-the-wall improvisations. Honestly!”

Never one to use a verbal explanation when a musical illustration is available, McFerrin rips off a little improvisational vocal demo, accompanying himself with crisp hand claps on his chest--”thump, dubba, dubba thump.”

“The full ensemble won’t be on stage for every number,” he says. “We’ll have different combinations, everything from solo pieces to the full 11 voices. In addition, one of our performers is adept at solo improvisational story telling, so we’ll be doing some audience interaction, too.”

Does the arrival of Voicestra mean that the McFerrin solo career is a thing of the past?

McFerrin pauses, then smiles and nods.

“As of this moment, yes,” he says. “Because I have no plans to perform again as a soloist. In fact, in five years I’m planning to stop touring entirely. I’ll just run Voicestra, write music for it, and devote myself to composing and conducting.”

McFerrin pauses again, a mischievous look crossing his ever-mobile face. “But, on the other hand,” he says, “I hate to say never , because all the things I’m learning with Voicestra might stimulate me to go back to do some solo performance and bring everything I’ve learned to it, to see how different it’ll be.

“So I’m not totally closing the door. But right now I’m looking forward to a good 10 years of collaborative work--theatrical things, dance things, film, performance things.”

Toward that end, McFerrin plans to use Voicestra as the basis of a permanent San Francisco vocal organization patterned after a dance company.

“I’m very interested in theater,” he explains, “and I see Voicestra becoming a group that uses costume changes, lighting design, choreography--bringing all those elements together into a genuine vocal performance/art/theatre group--whatever you want to call it. Sort of like a small contemporary opera company.”

Remarkably complex plans for a performer who has spent most of his career touring as a solo act--”Just me and my road manager/sound man, that was it,” laughs McFerrin. But with two classical singers--his mother and father--in the family, and a sister who is a pop singer and vocal coach, there is a certain inevitability in McFerrin’s plans for the Voicestra.

“I guess as I look back I can say, ‘Oh yeah, with those genes and all the influences, it just makes sense that I’m singing,’ ” McFerrin says. “But I stayed away from it for a long time, for reasons that I’m not quite clear on. It may be that God, in his wisdom knowing the gift I had and how I was going to use it, just made me wait until I was mature enough to use it. I like to think that.”