Robert Irving III Compositions Collage


Humble Beginnings

Music Bio

Started playing bugle at 11, marching in Chicago's historic Bud Biliken Parade...

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Chronology

Produced 1st Recording at age 17 in North Carolina for a church choir...

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Memoir

American Song Festival Award at age 18 gave me confindence to pursue music...

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Work As Visual Artist

A few of my paintings

Acrylic on Canvas

Spanish Key

Spanish Key is a composition from the Miles Davis 1970 Bitches Brew album.  The “Spanish” guitar in the lower right corner provides relief from an otherwise dark painting with ostensibly obscure imagery. This experimental work contains flames rising from a hand drum and African masks with one playing a saxophone.

Acrylic on Canvas

Window Of The Winter Solstice

A dream on the day of the winter solstace, December 21, 1997 by, guitarist/artist Daryl Thompson, aka Maha Krisna Nanda (son of legendary saxophonist, Lucky Thompson) inspired this painting.  He had studied Kriya Dream Yoga with Sri Goswami Kriyananda and practiced lucid dream every morning before awakening. This particular lucid

Acrylic on Canvas

Midnight Dream 3-D

This mix media creation is more than a painting that includes a CD, various crystals, a guitar bridge with strings attached to ‘pegs’, Emory boards (as black keys of the piano), checkers game chips (as flying notes) and gesso medium to sculpt the lips and nose of the figure. This

Acrylic on Canvas

Seven Steps To Heaven-Miles Davis Portrait

Seven Steps To Heaven is the title of my portrait of Miles Davis. The larger image of Miles is from the cover of the album Decoy, the first project I produced for him. The other image is from a live concert photo, which finds Miles in the archetypal posture he

Other Labors of Love

"What we are passionate about, we give our attention to; and there to, our energy flows as the sunshine and rain our garden requires." Ri3

Educator-Mentoring

Irving states, “Just as Dizzy Gillespie mentored Miles Davis, Miles mentored me and I am obligated to mentor the next

Record Label

Sonic Portraits Entertainment an Atlanta, Georgia based LLC co-founded by Robert Irving III, Terri Lyne Carrington, Robert Hebert Esq. and

Sonic Portraits Orchestra

Robert Irving III founded Sonic Portraits Orchestra in 2009 as the vehicle for his commissioned suited Sketches of Brazil. This

Documentary Films

Ri3 Reels is Not-for-Profit documentary film company formed by Robert Irving III to begin the work of historical archive of

Writer-Publishing

More info will be forthcoming about Real Life Stories Publishing. In the meantime you can read the introduction of Robert

REIKI MASTER

Soundtrack: Somatic Scenes composed by Robert Irving III Robert Irving III has been a Reiki energy work practitioner since 1995

Latest News

Irving's Activities as a teacher, mentor and producer has continued throughout the global pandemic