Vebjørn Mamen

As if playing Charlie Parker's songs isn't hard enough, Vebjørn Mamen also adds lyrics to the wild solos and sings the Bird's timeless bop compositions. In a quartet format, both vocals and improvisation emerge in a way that creates something completely unique.

Vocalese

Vocalese is the art of putting lyrics to instrumental solos. One of the first examples of this can be heard by vocalist King Pleasure on the song Parker ´s Mood from 1953. King Pleasure has put lyrics on a Charlie Parker solo over the same song from 1948. Despite the fact that vocalese has since been adopted by singers such as Kurt Elling and Al Jarreau, it is a very rare art form, with few practitioners.

Vebjørn Mamen Sings ‘Bird’ is a continuation of King Pleasure's idea of putting lyrics on recordings of Charlie Parker's saxophone playing. Charlie Parker, often nicknamed ‘Bird’, revolutionised jazz in the 1940s and 50s with his virtuoso playing, fast tempo and advanced harmonies. This makes the task of performing and writing vocals over his solos a very complicated task. But with his rare talent, Vebjørn Mamen does just that on several of Parker's most famous solos. With the rest of the band in Vebjørn Mamen Sings ‘Bird’, he tackles recordings such as ‘Just Friends’, ‘Yardbird Suite’, ‘April in Paris’ and ‘Everything Happens To Me’?

Vebjørn Mamen is one of Norway's young and up-and-coming jazz talents educated at the Music Conservatory in Trondheim. He has extensive experience as a musician, arranger and composer, including as a pianist and singer in the band Swing'it, which came third in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2023. He was behind Vebjørn Mamen VS Astrid S m/NTNU Jazzensemble in 2022, which was well received by critics, and he went viral during the corona pandemic with humour videos such as the song Karantena Mi.