Simon Jeffes
Iain Stuart
Founder of Penguin Cafe Orchestra
Orchestra Arranger behind Sid Vicious's My Way.
Died recently of a brain tumour.
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Iain Stuart
JID
In article <EL+VLPA$O4m0...@big-iain.demon.co.uk>, Iain Stuart
<big-...@big-iain.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Founder of Penguin Cafe Orchestra
>Orchestra Arranger behind Sid Vicious's My Way.
>
>Died recently of a brain tumour.
<gasp> No! When did this happen? How tragic...I adore PCO and listen to it
frequently when not constantly. He must have been fairly young, yeah?
What sad news.
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Johanna (aka Joey): ow...@best.com
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"If you limit your actions in life to things that
*nobody* can possibly find fault with, you will not
do much!"
-- Charles Dodgson
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Rosencrantz and Guildenstern In Wonderland:
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American Gothic fanatic or just a tourist in Trinity?
The Trinity Guardian: http://www.best.com/~owls/AG/
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Iain Stuart
Using his favourites wax crayons, <owls-20129...@owls.vip.best.c
om>, JID <ow...@best.com> scrawled
>>Died recently of a brain tumour.
>
><gasp> No! When did this happen? How tragic...I adore PCO and listen to it
>frequently when not constantly. He must have been fairly young, yeah?
>
>What sad news.
>
>-------------------------------------------------------
>Johanna (aka Joey): ow...@best.com
>-------------------------------------------------------
Obit From "The Guardian".
When the term "world music" became fashionable during the 1980s, nobody
associated it with the Penguin Cafe Orchestra Yet the orchestra's debut
album in 1976, Music From The Penguin Cafe, had been a clear pointer
towards the eclecticism which the rest of the world, personified by the
likes of Peter Gabriel or Sting, would embrace a decade later. The
disc's mix of jazz, folk, echoes of Africa and Gregorian chant was
pinned together by the orchestra's whimsically provocative approach.
This was an eloquent expression of the personality of the group's
composer and arranger, Simon Jeffes, who has died of a brain tumour aged
48.
"How can I not be influenced by almost anything I have heard, even if it
is only to rejection'" Jeffes once asked, and his career was a quest
for a way of expressing the teeming mix of sounds swirling around in a
shrinking world, ignoring artificial musical boundaries. He was
occasionally accused of glib intellectualism, but be had a clear idea of
what he wanted to achieve. "There are lots of people who like lots of
different kinds of music and who won't live in the old categorical
ghettos." he declared. "It's very hard for the media and the record
companies to deal with."
Jeffes was born in Sussex, but spent a large part of his childhood in
Canada. After his family returned to England he attended school in
Devon. En route to becoming an avant-garde composer with minimalist
tendencies, he studied classical guitar at the Royal Academy with Julian
Byzantine and Gilbert Biberian, but he soon became disillusioned with
what he saw as the aridity of the contemporary classical establishment
He turned to ethnic music for inspiration, notably from Japan and
Zimbabwe. "A friend gave me a tape of African things," he remembered.
"Listening to it was like rediscovering the reason we play music -- not
to become professional, but because we are moved to do it."
The possibly apocryphal story goes that Jeffes conceived the Penguin
Café Orchestra in the south of France in 1972, while he was in a
delirious state caused by food poisoning. Recuperating on the beach, he
started writing a poem which began "I am the proprietor of the Penguin
Cafe. I will tell you things at random." Under the umbrella of the cafe.
Jeffes proposed to encourage the spontaneous and unpredictable elements
of creativity. He found an ally in Brian Eno, and the first PCO album
appeared on Eno's Obscure label.
Although Jeffes had established a loose nucleus of musicians for his
orchestra, he needed to take on outside projects to make ends meet
financially, and found a market for his abilities within pop music. He
collaborated with the Japanese techno-group Yellow Magic Orchestra,
wrote arrangements for Senegal's Baaba Mast, and concocted the string
accompaniment for Sid Vicious's disembowelling of My Way. The latter
prompted Malcolm McLaren to recruit Jeffes to teach Adam And The Ants
how to play Burundi music.
"I talked to them about the kinds of rhythms there were and how you can
approach playing your instruments in a way which breaks away from the
usual way you might play a guitar, for instance." Jeffes explained.
"They were kids, not professional musicians, but I think they grasped a
great deal of what I said."
The Penguin Cafe Orchestra released a second album in 1982, and
gradually began to reach a wider audience, thanks to growing interest in
world music (although Jeffes believed that the fad for ethnic sounds was
mostly "musical tourism"). Broadcasing from Home followed in 1984, while
critics were especially enthusiastic about the orchestra's fourth album,
Signs Of Life (1987). Its release coincided with a South Bank Show
devoted to the group, and Jeffes received a further stamp of cultural
approval in 1988, when the Royal Ballet staged still Life at the Penguin
Café choreographed by David Bintley around eight orchestrated PCO
compositions.
After making 1993's Union Cafe, Jeffes moved to Somerset and built
himself a new studio. Concert Program (1995) was a live studio
performance including the track Telephone and Rubber Band, currently
used in the Mercury One-2-One commercial. Last year a compilation disc,
Preludes, Airs and Yodels, which gathers together many of the PCO's most
memorable pieces, was released.
Jeffes was working on fresh material when he was diagnosed with a brain
tumour, and although it affected his speech and eyesight he was able to
work on his music until very recently.
He is survived by his partner, Helen Liebman, and his son. Arthur.
Simon Jeffes. composer, born February 19. 1949; died December 12. 1997
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Iain Stuart