Bio:
A native Chicagoan, 29 year old Isaiah Sharkey spent his early years living in Cabrini Green. Perhaps as a precursor to his future career, he lived with his parents in a row house on a street that is now named for Curtis Mayfield.
Coming from a musical household, Isaiah was introduced to music at the age of four. He decided he wanted to be a guitarist and asked his parents to purchase one. Shortly thereafter, Isaiah started learning music under the close introduction of his father, Michael Sharkey. He would learn about different musical genres/styles from gospel music, which came from growing up in the church, to jazz, R&B, blues, rock and funk music. It wasn't long after that Isaiah would become noticed by other musicians in the Chicago area for being a young, new talent. Soon after, he started doing concerts in the church as well as sitting in local jazz club jams.
At the age of 14, Isaiah, along with his father and brothers, released their first album entitled, "Skyliner." This album displayed Isaiah's ability to play covers and some transcriptions from greats like Wes Montgomery and George Benson.
Subsequently, he started his recording career and served as a sideman for gospel artists such as Smokie Norful, Donald Lawrence and Vanessa Bell Armstrong. He also toured as lead guitarist with Ronald Isley and recorded two albums with him.
In 2009, Isaiah started working with artist D'Angelo on his third album, Black Messiah, which won the 2015 Grammy Award for Best R&B Album. Based on his work and contribution to the project, Isaiah received his first Grammy.
Isaiah also has worked, recorded, and toured with several world-renown and Grammy award winning artists including John Mayer, Patti LaBelle, Christopher Martin of Coldplay, Paul Simon, Corrine Bailey Rae, Mike Posner, Keith Urban, Brian McKnight, Boyz II Men, Lalah Hathaway, Raphael Saadiq, Chris Dave and the DrumHedz, Regina Bell, Ruben Studdard, Lupe Fiasco, Kelly Price, Faith Evans, Rance Allen, The Winans, The Clark Sisters and many others.
Isaiah Sharkey is poised to take center stage as he fuses together his background in rock, gospel, jazz, R&B, blues, and funk to create an original sound with an unmistakable dose of soul. His highly anticipated debut album Love.Life.Live. was released in September of 2017 and earned him the iHeart Radio Artist of the Month Award in November for his single “It’s a Shame” featuring DJ Jazzy Jeff.
You can see Isaiah on Cory Henry’s Revival trio tour this year, along with John Mayer and his all-star band. Isaiah will also be hitting the road with his own band this summer so look out for dates near you.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).