Hot off the heels of his first-ever Grammy® nominations, Michael Mayo is headed to Walton Arts Center on Saturday, Feb. 21 at 7:30 pm. Mayo was nominated for best jazz vocal album for his 2024 album Fly and best jazz performance for the track “Four.” Don’t miss your chance to see him live in the intimate Starr Theater.
Mayo leans on his intuition as a vocalist, composer, songwriter and arranger. He stretches his voice through layers of heavenly harmonizing, hard-hitting beatboxing and heartfelt crooning without filter or pretense. This allows his voice to transmit raw emotion above an ever-evolving backdrop of jazz, neo-soul and R&B. He unveiled his full-length debut, Bones, in 2021 and cumulatively generated millions of streams. JAZZIZ raves, “Mayo has developed his own lush, neo-soul sound that adroitly showcases his clear tenor, which glides over luxuriant clouds of his multi-tracked vocals.”
“As improvisers, we sometimes talk about leaving space and following your second or third instinct,” Mayo notes when speaking about his latest album, Fly. “Lately, I’ve been trying to challenge myself by going with my first instinct and seeing what sticks. Fly has been a fun experiment in that. There were different emotional zones I wanted to occupy, but I started a lot of those sounds with improv and followed that thread. I have a tendency to overthink. I decided to stop that before it began. I didn’t rush, but I treated everything with an immediacy—which goes against my nature as an overthinker. To me, this album feels very, ‘Let’s go’.”
“Every once in a while, I hear a musician whose voice is so compelling that from the first few notes I am completely captivated, and I know they are designed for stardom,” Robert Ginsburg, local KUAF host of Shades of Jazz, comments on Mayo. “The last time this happened was with singer, Samara Joy, and we brought her to Walton Arts Center the year before she won multiple Grammy awards. Since first hearing Michael, I have experienced the same ‘awe struck’ feeling as I did with Samara.”
Born and raised in Los Angeles, music has quite literally surrounded Mayo. His mother was a sought-after background vocalist, working alongside Beyoncé, Diana Ross, Luther Vandross and Whitney Houston. His father not only sang, but he performed saxophone for Earth, Wind & Fire and horns for Sérgio Mendes.
In October 2023, he relocated from Brooklyn back to L.A. Getting into a groove, he wrote the majority of what would become Fly at home. During January 2024, he retreated to Bunker Studio in Brooklyn, recording the album in just two days with pianist Shai Maestro as well as Linda May Han Oh on upright and electric bass and in-demand drummer extraordinaire Nate Smith. Together, the musicians collectively harnessed their incredible chemistry during the sessions, giving the music gravity, muscle and soul anchored by their performances.
The nominated single of Fly, “Four” delivers a lively arrangement of the original Miles Davis melody of the same name. Mayo alternates between fluttering vocals and a buoyant bebop-style harmony bouncing and surging with flare and finesse. A loose bassline propels the bridge, and his words strike a deep chord.
Ginsburg continues in his review of Mayo, “At the tender age of 23, Mayo has attended the New England Conservatory of Music, become the third vocalist to be accepted to the Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz, toured with Herbie Hancock and released two highly regarded CD’s. Witness his rising star at Walton Arts Center!”
