Penguin Cafe Orchestra
The Penguin Cafe Orchestra was a loose assembly of various musicians headed by classically-trained guitarist, composer and arranger Simon Jeffes (Sussex, England, 1949-1997). Only Jeffes and cellist co-founder Helen Liebmann were core members and other musicians were drafted for the requirements of particular pieces or performances. Their sound is not easy to categorise but is similar to the music of the French multi-instrumentalist Yann Tiersen, sharing with it elements of exuberant folk music and a minimalist aesthetic occasionally reminiscent of Philip Glass.
The Penguin Cafe Orchestra recorded and performed for 24 years until Jeffes died of a brain tumour in 1997.
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:
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]
Their first album, Music From The Penguin Cafe, was released in 1976 on Brian Eno's experimental Obscure Records label, on off-shoot of the E.G. Records label; a collection of pieces recorded from 1974-1976, it was followed in 1981 by Penguin Cafe Orchestra, after which the band settled into a more regular release schedule.
They played their first major concert in 1977, supporting Kraftwerk at The Roundhouse. They went on to tour the world and play at a variety of music festivals as well as residencies on London's South Bank.
Famous pieces
Their most famous piece is "Telephone & Rubber Band", which is based around a tape loop of a telephone ring tone. The piece was featured in the soundtrack of Nadia Tass' 1986 Australian film Malcolm, Oliver Stone's 1988 release "Talk Radio" and in a long-running advertising campaign for telecoms company One2One. The tape loop was recorded when Jeffes was making a phone call and discovered he was hearing a combination of a ring tone and engaged signal at the same time. He recorded it on an answering machine.
Another famous tune featured on Malcolm is "Music for a Found Harmonium" which Jeffes wrote on a harmonium that he found dumped in a back street in Kyoto where he was staying in the summer of 1982 after the first PCO tour to 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 remember the time fondly as one during which I was under a form of enchantment with the place and the time." The piece gained exposure when 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. In 2004, the work was featured in the film Napoleon Dynamite and the following year in the film It's All Gone Pete Tong. It has been featured as far back as 1988, though somewhat obscurely, as music for the trailer and promotional features for the John Hughes film She's Having A Baby.
Currently, a successful Portuguese street theatre performer, Pedro Tochas (http://www.pedrotochas.com) uses Penguin Cafe Orchestra's "Southern Jukebox Music" as the background to his street theatre.
Trivia
Their music has been used in adverts for Eurotunnel, The Independent, Hewlett Packard, Knorr and One2One. This American Life, a popular show on public radio in the United States, has often used the Orchestra's "Perpetuum Mobile" to accompany its stories, and news programs on National Public Radio have at times used the ring tone from "Telephone & Rubber Band" as bumper music between pieces.
"Telephone & Rubber Band" is also heard in the intro to Spacehog's 1996 hit single, "In The Meantime".
Arguably the most famous Penguin Cafe is located in Aberystwyth, Wales which has coincidentally been celebrated in song by working relation of PCO, My Friend The Chocolate. It has been running for well over 30 years.
As of late 2006, The Economist newspaper has used "Perpetuum Mobile" from the album Concert Program as bumper music for its weekly podcasts.
Discography
- Music From The Penguin Cafe EEGCD 27 (1976)
- Penguin Cafe Orchestra EEGCD 11 (1981)
- The Penguin Cafe Orchestra Mini Album (1983)
- Broadcasting From Home EEGCD 38 (1984)
- Signs Of Life EEGCD 50 (1987)
- When In Rome... EEGCD 56 (1988)
- "Still Life" At The Penguin Cafe DECCA 425 218-2 (1990)
- Union Cafe ZOPFD 003 (1993)
- Concert Program ZOPFD 002 (1995)
Soundtracks
- Malcolm (1986)
- Oskar und Leni (1999)
- Napoleon Dynamite Official soundtrack (Music For A Found Harmonium) (2005)
- It's All Gone Pete Tong Official soundtrack (Music For A Found Harmonium) (2005)
- Hewlett Packard - Advert (Perpetuum Mobile) (2006)
- 3 lbs - Lost for Words (Perpetuum Mobile) (2006)
Collections
- Preludes, Airs & Yodels (A Penguin Cafe Primer) (1996)
- A Brief History CDV 2954 (2001)
- History LCO 3098 (2001) Virgin Records
- The Second Penguin Cafe Orchestra Sampler (2004)
Also
- Piano Music ZOPFD 003 (2003) - Simon Jeffes solo pieces collected after his death