Ben Marafino, JR Love Songs CD

A little bit of my history: I’m a biomedical researcher, and I’ve lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for almost my entire life. I’m not a professional musician. As many others have, I sang throughout grade school and high school in various choral groups. My junior year (1962 – 63) I played “Stewpot” in South Pacific, and in my senior year I was lucky enough to land the male lead in The King and I.But then, I went to college and majored in science, and for forty years never had another chance to sing in public. I did do one non-musical in the spring of 1983 at Hillbarn Theater in Foster City CA; it was a comedy, entitled Sheep on the Runway, and had a 14-show run. However, in 2003, I auditioned for and was accepted into the baritone/bass section of Berkeley Broadway Singers, known affectionately as “BBS”. We are a non-profit group that does public concerts twice a year, as well as singing for senior centers, women’s shelters and drug rehab houses. I had forgotten how much fun it was to sing in front of an audience! We do show tunes (from Broadway and the movies), jazz, Latin, standards, doo-wop and other popular music. Check out our website (www.berkeleybroadwaysingers.org)!The producer/arranger/pianist on this album is my good friend and mentor, Ms. Ellen Hoffman. She is Music Director for BBS, and a pretty damn good composer and arranger as well (www.ellenhoffmanmusic.com). She first got me involved in solo singing at Anna’s Jazz Island (www.annasjazzisland.com) in Berkeley about three years ago at the Open Mic Nites, where she regularly plays; I've also sung at Octavia Lounge in SF. And as a solo singer, I’ve been the “Featured Singer” at Anna’s on seven different Tuesdays so far, and I’m very much appreciative of club owner Anna de Leon for those votes of confidence. In addition to Ellen and Anna, I also want to express my sincere thanks to the talented percussionist Kent Bryson and superb bass player Peter Barshay (with whom I’ve worked over the years, both at Anna’s and at BBS concerts) and fabulous saxman and flautist Melecio Magdaluyo (first of many collaborations, I hope!) for their musical contributions, Bond Bergland and Cole Everingham for their engineering and technical contributions (very nice going, Bond!), and the multi-talented Tricia Lively for the awesome photography on the album.