Penguin Cafe Orchestra

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Penguin Cafe Orchestra
Origin England
Genre(s) Chamber jazz, folk
Years active 1972-1997
Label(s) Obscure Records, E.G. Records
Website www.penguincafe.com

The Penguin Cafe Orchestra was the creation of classically-trained guitarist, composer and arranger Simon Jeffes (Crawley, Sussex, England, 1949-1997). Jeffes and cellist co-founder Helen Liebmann were the only core members throughout its life; a number of other musicians appeared on the PCO's six studio albums according to the requirements of particular pieces. The PCO also toured extensively during the 80's and early 90's, and two albums, "When in Rome" (1988) and "Concert Program" (1995) captured the sound of the live ensemble. The Penguin's sound is not easily categorized, but has elements of exuberant folk music and a minimalist aesthetic occasionally reminiscent of composers such as Philip Glass.

The Penguin Cafe Orchestra recorded and performed for 24 years until Jeffes died of a brain tumour in 1997.

Contents

[edit] History

After becoming disillusioned with the rigid structures of classical music and the limitations of rock music, in which he also dabbled, Jeffes became interested in the relative freedom in ethnic music and decided to imbue his work with the same sense of immediacy and spirit.

Describing how the idea of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra came to him, Jeffes said:

“ In 1972 I was in the south of France. I had eaten some bad fish and was in consequence rather ill. As I lay in bed I had a strange recurring vision, there, before me, was a concrete building like a hotel or council block. I could see into the rooms, each of which was continually scanned by an electronic eye. In the rooms were people, everyone of them preoccupied. In one room a person was looking into a mirror and in another a couple were making love but lovelessly, in a third a composer was listening to music through earphones. Around him there were banks of electronic equipment. But all was silence. Like everyone in his place he had been neutralized, made grey and anonymous. The scene was for me one of ordered desolation. It was as if I were looking into a place which had no heart. Next day when I felt better, I was on the beach sunbathing and suddenly a poem popped into my head. It started out 'I am the proprietor of the Penguin Cafe, I will tell you things at random' and it went on about how the quality of randomness, spontaneity, surprise, unexpectedness and irrationality in our lives is a very precious thing. And if you suppress that to have a nice orderly life, you kill off what's most important. Whereas in the Penguin Cafe your unconscious can just be. It's acceptable there, and that's how everybody is. There is an acceptance there that has to do with living the present with no fear in ourselves.[1] ”

The first album, Music From The Penguin Cafe, was released in 1976 on Brian Eno's experimental Obscure Records label, an offshoot of the EG label; a collection of pieces recorded in the years 1974-1976, it was followed in 1981 by Penguin Cafe Orchestra, after which the band settled into a more regular release schedule.

The band played its first major concert on October 10 of 1976, supporting Kraftwerk at The Roundhouse. The PCO went on to tour the world and play at a variety of music festivals as well as residencies on the South Bank in London. Between 1976 and 1996 they played in the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, and throughout Europe and the UK. In March 1987 the group was the subject of an episode of the ITV arts series The South Bank Show[2], on which they performed "Air", "Bean Fields", "Dirt" and "Giles Farnaby's Dream".[3]

[edit] Evolution

Simon Jeffes experimented with various configurations both live and in the studio, including an occasional 'dance orchestra' and a quintet of strings, oboe, trombone and himself on piano. On the studio albums he sometimes played many of the instruments himself, and brought in the other musicians according to the needs of a particular piece.

There were a number of incarnations of the live band. Original members Gavyn Wright and Steve Nye left in 1984 and 1988 respectively. Bob Loveday replaced Gavyn Wright on violin. Gradually, a regular line-up evolved around Simon Jeffes and Helen Liebman: Neil Rennie, who joined in 1975 on ukulele; Geoffrey Richardson who had joined in 1976 and co-wrote three pieces on 'Broadcasting from Home' (1984), played viola, cuatro, guitar, clarinet, mandolin and ukulele; Julio Segovia answered an advert in the 'Melody Maker' and joined in 1978 on percussion; Jennifer Maidman joined in 1984 on percussion, bass, ukulele and cuatro; Steve Fletcher replaced Steve Nye in 1988 on piano and keyboards and Annie Whitehead, who had also appeared on 'Broadcasting from Home' (1984), joined the live band in 1988 on trombone. Finally, Peter McGowan took over from Bob Loveday on violin and Barbara Bolte joined on oboe. Doug Bevridge also became a regular fixture at the live mixing desk. The album 'Concert Program' (1995) is the definitive recording of this line up, and includes many of the Penguins' best known pieces.

After Simon's death, members of the orchestra continued to meet up occasionaly to play together, but there were no recordings or public appearances for over ten years. In 2007 the band briefly re-appeared, with the same line up minus Julio Segovia, but joined by Simon Jeffes' son Arthur on percussion and piano, to mark the 10th anniversary of its dissolution, playing three sold-out shows at the Union Chapel in London. There are no plans for the band to perform in public again as the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. However, after the Union Chapel 'farewell concerts', a core of longtime members, the multi-instrumentalists Geoffrey Richardson and Jennifer Maidman, trombonist Annie Whitehead and pianist Steve Fletcher felt they wanted to continue playing the Penguin's music. They have formed a new group and have been joined by percussionist Liam Genockey. Best known as a member of Steeleye Span, Liam had also played live with the Penguins in Italy. The ensemble are called "The Anteaters". The name stems from an incident on the 1983 PCO tour of Japan. Simon Jeffes discovered there was at that time a craze for penguins in the country. Simon joked that, if the fashion changed, perhaps the orchestra would have to change its name to "The Anteater Cafe Orchestra". (The Anteaters are playing at the 2009 Broadstairs Folk Week.)

Simon's son Arthur will be playing at festivals in 2009 with his chamber group under the name Music From The Penguin Cafe. He will combine Penguin Cafe numbers by his father and new pieces.

[edit] Famous pieces

The Penguin Cafe Orchestra's most famous piece may be "Telephone and Rubber Band", which is based around a tape loop of a UK telephone ring tone intersected with an engaged tone, accompanied by the twanging of a rubber band. The piece is featured on the soundtracks of Nadia Tass's film comedy Malcolm (1986) and Oliver Stone's film Talk Radio (1988), and in a long-running advertising campaign for the German-based multinational telecoms company One2One (now T-Mobile). The 1996 single "In The Meantime" by English rockers residing in New York City, Spacehog, featured a tweaked and fine-tuned sample of "Telephone and Rubber Band". The tape loop was recorded when Jeffes was making a phone call, and discovered that he was hearing a combination of a ring tone and an engaged signal at the same time, due to a fault in the system. He recorded it on an answering machine.

Another famous tune featured in Malcolm, along with other films, is "Music For A Found Harmonium", which Jeffes wrote on a harmonium that he had found dumped in a back street in Kyoto, where he was staying in the summer of 1982 after the ensemble's first tour of Japan. He wrote that after installing the found harmonium "in a friend's house in one of the most beautiful parts at the edge of the city", he "frequently visited this instrument during the next few months, and I remember the time fondly as one during which I was under a form of enchantment with the place and the time".[4] The piece gained exposure when it was released on the first Café del Mar volume in 1994. Its rhythm, tempo and simple structure made it very suitable for adaptation into a reel, and it was subsequently recorded by many Irish traditional musicians, including Patrick Street, De Dannan, Kevin Burke and Sharon Shannon. An Irish traditional version was used on the soundtrack of the film Hear My Song, made in Ireland in the early 1990s. In 2004, Patrick Street's cover of "Music For A Found Harmonium" was featured in the film Napoleon Dynamite and the following year in the film It's All Gone Pete Tong. It had been featured as far back as 1988, though somewhat obscurely, as music for the trailer and promotional features for John Hughes's film She's Having A Baby.

Simon Jeffes also composed the music for the ballet Still Life at the Penguin Cafe, largely based on earlier compositions for the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. The piece was first performed by the Royal Ballet in 1988 and released as an album under Jeffes' name.

[edit] Uses by others

[edit] Covers and sampling

  • "Music For A Found Harmonium" was covered by the California Guitar Trio on their Echoes album (2008), and by Irish accordion player Sharon Shannon on her first album.
  • A section of "Music For A Found Harmonium" was used by record producer Steve Mac for his dance track "Paddy's Revenge".[5] The promo has been played regularly on BBC Radio 1 since May 2008 and DJs have invented a dance to accompany it.[6]
  • The song Telephone and Rubber band was sampled by Spacehog in their 1995 hit In the Meantime, from the Album Resident Alien.

[edit] Film

The song "Nothing Really Blue" was used during the final scene of the German film The Princess and the Warrior (2000), and the song "Perpetuum Mobile" was used at various moments in the animated Australian film Mary and Max (2009) and in the Swedish movie "Smala Sussie".

Penguin Cafe Orchestra music featured on the 1986 Australian cult film Malcolm, written by David Parker and directed by Nadia Tass. The film won the 1986 Australian Film Institute Award for Best Film.

[edit] Radio / Podcasts

[edit] Television

[edit] Advertising

The music of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra has been used in advertisements for Eurotunnel, The Independent, Hewlett Packard, MFI, Knorr and One2One.

[edit] Personnel

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

[edit] Discography

[edit] Albums

[edit] Collections

  • Preludes, Airs & Yodels (A Penguin Cafe Primer) (1996)
  • A Brief History (2001) CDV 2954
  • History (2001) Virgin Records LCO 3098
  • The Second Penguin Cafe Orchestra Sampler (2004)

[edit] Simon Jeffes albums

[edit] Soundtracks

  • Night Shift (1982) ("Cutting Branches for a Temporary Shelter")
  • Malcolm (1986)
  • Oskar und Leni (1999) (10 songs, all previously released)
  • Slim Susie (2003) ("Perpetuum Mobile")
  • The Good Girl (2002) ("Air" and "Steady State")
  • Napoleon Dynamite Official Soundtrack (2005) ("Music For A Found Harmonium")
  • It's All Gone Pete Tong Official soundtrack (2005) ("Music For A Found Harmonium")
  • Hewlett Packard - Advert (2006) ("Perpetuum Mobile")
  • 3 lbs - "Lost For Words" (2006) ("Perpetuum Mobile")
  • Year of the Dog (2007) ("Music for a Found Harmonium")
  • All the Little Animals Music written by Simon Jeffes, performed and recorded by PCO members Geoffrey Richardson, Jennifer Maidman and Steve Fletcher

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ "The Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Simon Jeffes". The Penguin Cafe Orchestra's official website. http://www.penguincafe.com/simon.htm. Retrieved on 2008-08-03. 
  2. ^ epguides.com - The South Bank Show
  3. ^ locatetv.com - The South Bank Show
  4. ^ Template:Cite liner notes 'Preludes Airs and Yodels (A Penguin Cafe primer) Virgin Records Ltd 1996
  5. ^ "Steve Mac, Paddy's Revenge". Xpressbeats.com. http://www.xpressbeats.com/release/paddy-s-revenge-32126. Retrieved on 2008-08-03. 
  6. ^ "BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend - The Outdoor Stage". BBC. 2008-05-11. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/bigweekend/2008/outdoorstage/. Retrieved on 2008-08-03. 
  7. ^ Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19th ed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. p. 422. ISBN 1-904994-10-5. 

[edit] External links

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