Bio:
His beginning was simple, a young kid with a school project that needed to be done. Tyler’s mom wanted him to pick something easy to execute but he begged her relentlessly to allow him to paint until she gave in and purchased the few art products that would change his life. That was a mere 4 years ago, and not only did he win but today Tyler’s artwork has taken the world by storm having painted and gifted many of today’s hottest celebrities and influencers since his humble beginnings including Janet Jackson, Jennifer Lopez, Missy Elliot and Kevin Hart to name a select few.
Not one to be confused as an overnight sensation, Tyler has worked hard his entire young life throughout the struggles and disparities that have plagued him. It was at the age of five that it was discovered that he was born deaf. After a life altering surgery a year later helped him to gain some of his hearing and allowed him to learn how to speak, he was left with a severe stutter that many of his peers used as ammunition to taunt and bully him. Later Tyler found himself facing another setback as he was left wheelchair bound for two years due to a vitamin deficiency.
But Tyler never let those circumstances define him and today he is a bonafide, artistic prodigy with his work being seen on a litany of outlets and platforms including the Today Show, Good Morning America, MSNBC, USA Today, CBS Nightly News, Essence Magazine. Steve Harvey’s Little Big Shots and much more.
Recently Tyler became a media phenom after he painted a photo of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris that quickly went viral being retweeted by a host of influencers including Chelsea Clinton and eventually resulting in VP Harris calling Tyler to personally thank him for creating the portrait in her honor.
Today, Tyler’s work has been featured in a host of galleries including being on display in Beverly Hills, California as part of the “Heirs To The Throne” art gallery exhibit presented by The Lost Warhols Museum as well as his outdoor art gallery exhibition in Tribeca, New York. He recently executed both a black history and women’s history month national campaign with Disney, contributed to the inauguration of President Joe Biden and will release his first book as an author in fall 2021.
Tyler was recently named a runner up in the TIME Magazine/Nickelodeon “Kid of The Year” campaign. He was also commissioned to paint the cover photo for the Lebron James’ cover story in TIME Magazine; an honor Tyler takes to heart as Lebron is one of his favorite athletes, and someone he greatly admires.
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).