Patrick O'Hearn

Patrick O'Hearn (b. September 6, 1954) is an American multi-instrumentalist musician, composer and recording artist. While his musical repertoire spans a diverse range of music, he is an acclaimed New Age artist in his solo career. To date in his career, he has released 13 solo albums.

Formative years

Born in Los Angeles and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Patrick O'Hearn began his professional music career at age 15 when he joined the Musicians Union and began playing night clubs in Portland, Oregon. Upon graduating from Sunset High School in 1972, he moved to Seattle. There, he briefly attended Cornish College of the Arts and, as well, studied privately with bassist Gary Peacock.

In 1973 he moved to San Francisco and soon became involved in the vibrant Bay Area jazz scene of that time, playing bass for well-established artists Charles Lloyd, Joe Henderson, Dexter Gordon, Joe Pass, Woody Shaw, Eddie Henderson, and Bobby Hutcherson, as well as with other like-aged young musicians, including Terry Bozzio, Mark Isham and Peter Maunu.

While on tour in Los Angeles in 1976, O'Hearn met musician Frank Zappa, who offered him a job as bass player in his band - a position he held for over two years. During this period, O’Hearn shifted from the acoustic bass to the electric bass guitar (given the requirements of Zappa's arrangements), and also became increasingly interested in electronic music. Zappa encouraged O’Hearn to explore his premium collection of synthesizers, and also introduced him to the technical aspects of intricate physical tape editing as a way of producing compositions (in an era prior to home computers), audio engineering, and home studio audio recording equipment.

In 1979, O'Hearn teamed with trumpet player Mark Isham and guitarist Peter Maunu to form Group 87, an ensemble heavily influenced by the instrumental jazz fusion of Weather Report, as well as the electronic stylings of Kraftwerk and the ambient minimalism of Brian Eno. Although they only produced two LPs — Group 87 in 1980, and A Career in Dada Processing in 1984 — Group 87 would help establish the musical direction of O'Hearn's solo career. Both Isham and Maunu would continue as important collaborators on several of O'Hearn's subsequent solo releases.

In 1981, drummer and former Zappa bandmate Terry Bozzio invited O’Hearn to join his emerging rock/new wave band, Missing Persons along with guitarist and fellow Zappa alumnus Warren Cuccurullo and Dale Bozzio, who had performed vocals in several Zappa productions and recently married Terry. The nature of the music called for O'Hearn to make a further shift — this time, from electric bass to synthesizers. Missing Persons recorded three albums for Capitol Records: Spring Session M (1982), Rhyme & Reason (1984), and Color In Your Life (1986). The band dissolved in early 1986; subsequently, O'Hearn and Terry Bozzio joined with former Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor and former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones for one album, Thunder (1987), and a brief tour. Although both Terry Bozzio and Warren Cuccurullo later contributed to several of O'Hearn's solo albums, O'Hearn declined to take part in the 2001 Missing Persons reunion.

Solo career

Private music

O'Hearn's solo career was spurred in large part by former Tangerine Dream member Peter Baumann, who had been conceiving of a new music label that would showcase progressive instrumental music - a niche earlier explored by Group 87. Baumann formed the Private Music label in late 1984, and signed O'Hearn as a charter artist (along with Mahavishnu Orchestra violinist Jerry Goodman, Roxy Music keyboardist Eddie Jobson, and later, New Age notables Yanni and Suzanne Ciani), and produced O'Hearn's debut solo album, Ancient Dreams (1985).

Signature elements readily manifest in Ancient Dreams: found percussion instruments, hypnotic bass guitar patterns, synthesized pads, and minimalist harmonies. Perhaps biased by his preferred instrument, O'Hearn often adds jazz elements, particularly in his frequent use of the bass guitar (often a fretless bass) as the lead voice.

O'Hearn followed Ancient Dreams with two more albums - Between Two Worlds (1987), which earned the artist his first Grammy nomination, and Rivers Gonna Rise (1988). Notably, the albums gradually became brighter in tone as O'Hearn began to receive greater airplay on jazz and new age radio stations. O'Hearn also co-produced several tracks for guitarist Colin Chin's Intruding on a Silence, featuring Mark Isham on trumpet - as such, the output strongly echoes Group 87's earlier work.

The fourth album, Eldorado (1989), ventured decidedly into the World Music genre - infusing O'Hearn's signature sound with rhythms and timbres drawn from disparate sources such as South America and the Middle East. As such, O'Hearn's arrangements accommodated a wider array of instrumentation - such as human singing and the solo violin (most notably on "Black Delilah".) Commercially, Eldorado performed well among New Age audiences - some tracks remain popular on jazz stations today.

He was also composer of the ninth and last season of Falcon Crest television show on CBS from 1989-90.

An album of techno remixes called Mix Up was released by Private Music in 1990, featuring contributions from popular music producers, including David Frank, Joe "The Butcher" Nicolo, and Carmen Rizzo Jr. However, Mix Up was panned by critics and fans, and remains long out of print. The album was released without O'Hearn knowing about it. He had only agreed to allow some remixes of his material to be experimented with in dance clubs. In a 2001 interview, O'Hearn said that the album was "the brainchild of the A&R department of Private Music ... some of the stuff makes me cringe to this day."

Yet another major turning point in O'Hearn's music career was marked with the release of Indigo (1991). Ostensibly billed by the label as being "In the tradition of Ancient Dreams", O'Hearn downplayed the use of synthesizers and instead focused on manipulating space, acoustics, and textures to create an album with a cohesive consistency of tone.

Following the commercial success of Yanni's compilation albums, Private Music issued a retrospective, The Private Music of Patrick O'Hearn, in 1992. This contained three previously unreleased tracks that have a similar feel and ambience to Rivers Gonna Rise, and are likely to have been recorded around the time of that album. Also in 1992 O'Hearn composed and performed the music score for White Sands, a police thriller starring Willem Dafoe and Samuel L. Jackson. (The movie was directed by Roger Donaldson, of Cocktail fame.)

Deep Cave/Paras Recordings

After a four year absence of solo album recording, a period primarily focused on composing film scores, O'Hearn released Trust in 1995 under the newly formed Deep Cave record label. Featuring contributions from David Torn and former bandmates Terry Bozzio and Warren Cuccurullo, Trust earned O'Hearn his second Grammy nomination. Shortly after the release of his next album, Metaphor (1996), the Deep Cave record label folded.

O'Hearn's next project, So Flows the Current (2001), was recorded over a three year period from 1997 to 2000. The album saw O'Hearn move away from the MIDI-centric style of music production and performance, relying more on musicians playing live together in the studio. The result is a rich tapestry of earthy and yet atmospheric music, which actually yielded a subsequent album in 2006 (see below). So Flows the Current is O'Hearn's only album released on the Paras Recordings label.

Patrickohearn.com

Beautiful World was O'Hearn's next release in 2003, and it was voted the #1 album on the nationally syndicated radio program Echoes. This was followed by Slow Time in 2005, which marked a departure for O'Hearn, in that he ventured into the experimental realm characterized by musical movements of the 20th century - including references to Steve Roach and Pierre Boulez.

In 2006, O'Hearn released three recordings via online delivery only. These are The So Flows Sessions (previously unreleased material from the same recording sessions in 1997-2000 that produced So Flows The Current). Very often, tracks recorded but excluded from an album's release are somewhat inferior in quality to the songs that made the album, but the material on The So Flows Sessions is very strong indeed and it stands up as an album on its own. Also released in 2006 was the soundtrack to the stage play Simpatico (originally recorded in 1994), as well as the soundtrack EP to the short film The Wheelhouse. The next year in 2007 O'Hearn released the CD Glaciation, which pays homage to the Earth's Arctic regions.

In 2008, he played bass on John Hiatt's "Same Old Man" studio release, and toured with Hiatt as a member of the "Ageless Beauties". 2009 saw O'Hearn recording again with John Hiatt and the Ageless Beauties. "Open Road" is due for release in March 2010 with touring to follow.

O'Hearn's 13th album Transitions was released digitally on August 23, 2011. The CD will be sold at record stores and online on October 4.

O'Hearn's daughter, Rachel is currently an electronic musician, performing under the name Chromatiq.

Discography

Solo albums

Release date	Title	Label
1985	Ancient Dreams	Private Music
1987	Between Two Worlds	Private Music
1988	Rivers Gonna Rise	Private Music
Aug 4, 1989	Eldorado	Private Music
Sep 24, 1991	Indigo	Private Music
July 25, 1995	Trust	Deep Cave
March 7, 1996	Metaphor	Deep Cave
Feb 20, 2001	So Flows the Current	Paras Recordings
Nov 4, 2003	Beautiful World	Patrick O'Hearn
June 28, 2005	Slow Time	Patrick O'Hearn
July 7, 2006	The So Flows Sessions	(iTunes)
Aug 22, 2007	Glaciation	Patrick O'Hearn
Aug 23, 2011	Transitions	Patrick O'Hearn

Compilations

Release date	Title	Label
1990	Mix-Up (Remixes by other producers)	Private Music
Nov 10, 1992	The Private Music of Patrick O'Hearn	Private Music
July 15, 1997	A Windham Hill Retrospective	Windham Hill

Soundtracks

Release date	Title	Label
1992	White Sands	Morgan Creek
1996	Crying Freeman	Ariola
2006	The Wheelhouse	(iTunes)
2006	Simpatico	(iTunes)

Film soundtracks not released

Film released	Title	Label
1988	The Destroyer	Unreleased
1991	Heaven is a Playground	Unreleased
1993	Father Hood	Unreleased
1994	Silent Tongue	Unreleased
1995	As Good As Dead (TV)	Unreleased
1999	Alien Cargo (TV)	Unreleased
2000	Border Patrol (TV)	Unreleased

See also

• Mark Isham
• Terry Bozzio
• Dale Bozzio
• Warren Cuccurullo
• David Torn
• Peter Baumann
• Sue G. Wilkinson

External links

• Official site
• Patrick O'Hearn at Allmusic
• Patrick O'Hearn at the Internet Movie Database