Robert "Baabe" Irving III
Musician and Artist
www.robertirvingIII.com
Robert "Baabe" Irving III is best known for his eight-year association as keyboardist, producer, and musical director for Miles Davis. As a composer/producer, Mr. Irving has scored three films and produced three Grammy Award nominated projects. As a writer he has written for Down Beat Magazine and is music research columnist and Art Director for The Rising Firefly Magazine. Despite a busy schedule as a producer, Irving, the visual artist, has exhibited paintings in Chicago, New York and France while conducting interdisciplinary Artist-in-Residence programs, which explore the connections between art and music.
Session 1: Interdisciplinary Artist ? Being a "Jack-of-All-Trades" and Master at Each
After seventeen years as a music business entrepreneur (with three Grammy Award nominated productions including projects with Miles Davis, Ramsey Lewis and Carlos Santana), Mr. Irving expanded his career to include work as a visual artist and as a music journalist/art director for an internationally distributed magazine. Irving implores the multifaceted artist, "don't view divergent artistic pursuits as being disparate; but, instead make them into one contiguous creative fabric in which each nourishes the other."
Session 2: Diversification Within Your Field of Expertise
Just as companies diversity their business and stock portfolios, Mr. Irving shares how diversification helped him maintain success for 23 years in a changing music industry: "Adaptation of various interrelated skills in support of one's main career focus in an investment that pays big dividends." His work includes music arranging, consulting, composition, editing, film scoring, mixing, performance, production, publishing, teaching and workshops while developing businesses that specialize in music therapy for nursing homes and sound healing products.