Home Page
Free Newsletter
What's New
eCatalog
Audio Clips
Reviews
To Order
Payment Options
Shipping Info
Search
Profiles
About eCaroh
Things Caribbean
Profiles of Caribbean Artistry
Mavis John
The
sterling and superbly talented artiste, Mavis John has obeyed her muse and is
back with a bang. After more than a decade away from show business, she gives
voice once more to the music that has been bubbling within her all these years.
Launching her album 'MAVIS SINGS' in November 2001, Mavis takes us on a journey of Jazz and Kaiso giving new life to classics like 'Education' by Mighty Sparrow and 'Calypso Rising' by Gregory Ballantyne. The powerfully moving 'The Time Is Now', written by John herself, gives thanks to the Giver of all gifts and is a fitting beginning for this marvelous encore as a solo artiste. Romantic numbers like 'How Can I Love Again', 'The Sun Didn't Shine' and 'You Are What Love Is' take us down the memory lane of John's pre-sabbatical era when she blazed a trail through the region singing with popular Caribbean and international artistes like Carla Thomas, Eddie Grant, Jean Knights and Percy Sledge.
Mavis' musical career began at 16 and she became known as the 'soul queen' of the Caribbean with songs such as 'Come By Here Boy', 'We Are Gonna Make It' and 'I'll Be Your Friend'. She paused for a while from her career as a singer to embrace marriage and motherhood and to focus on her much loved career as a schoolteacher. But in the 1980s the theatre sought her out and she lent her unique voice and abundant talents to a number of extremely successful musical productions like 'Marie La Veau' written and directed by Derek Walcott, 'A Nancy Story' produced by Trinidad Theatre Workshop and the wonderfully funny satire 'Cinderama' produced by the Little Carib Theatre and directed by Helen Camps. In the mid 1990s Mavis John helped to shape the powerful theatrical production - 'Shades of I-She' a celebration of women. Mavis' voice provided the music for the poems of Pearl Eintou Springer in a production that sold out halls around the Caribbean.
She then thought the time was right to continue her journey once more as a solo artiste and in 1998, she premiered in her first solo performance since the 70s in a concert aptly titled 'Overdue'. Now a grandmother of three, Mavis John has come full circle with her album 'MAVIS SINGS'. In a fabulous collection of eleven songs, Mavis seduces and mesmerises with a voice that has ripened and flowered but still remains innocent and pure. She gives new life to old favourites and birth to new selections like 'Slipping Away' by Andre Tanker and 'Will We Make It' by Tony Wilson.
The long awaited Mavis is back and here to stay and Caribbean music scene is only the better for it!
Her 2002 engagements are as follows:
- 26th April In Concert with Canadian Jean Pierre Berube hosted by the Alliance Francaise at Crowne Plaza.
- 2nd - 4th May in Concert at Central Bank Auditorium Port of Spain for the Brass Institute.
- 12th May - Toco Old Boys Association.
- 18th May - Panfest Concert in Barbados.
- 1st June - Jazz Festival Trinity College.
- 5th June - Jazz Festival in St. James.
- 15th June - Father's Day Function - La Joya Auditorium.
- 22nd June - Restoration Plaza - New York
