Laron
QHHT & Past Life Regression
Staff member
Administrator
Creator of transients.info & The Roundtable
In 1974, Simon Jeffes (English classically trained guitarist, composer and arranger) founded The Penguin Café Orchestra, a British classical ensemble.
The style of music is ethnic with austerity of Western chamber music. The sounds of this orchestra are elegant and fatuous, unaffected by the turmoil of modern life. Their music is said to be as abstract as it is concrete: cabaret and ethnic folk elements are injected into baroque and renaissance music skeletons.
Old-fashioned, nostalgic, theatrical and lofty, calligraphic but never parodistic, this exercise in revival aims to rebuild an atmosphere (the one of bourgeois families from the end of past century strolling to the city centre on Sundays) more than a sound. Every composition is a synthesis of music from certain period and exotic arrangements.
The group recorded and performed for 24 years until Jeffes died of an inoperable brain tumour in 1997. Several remaining members of the original group reunited for three concerts in 2007. Since then, five original members have continued to play concerts of PCO's music, first as The Anteaters, then as The Orchestra That Fell to Earth. In 2009, Jeffes' son Arthur founded a distinct successor band simply called Penguin Cafe. Although it includes no original PCO members, it features many PCO pieces in its live repertoire, and records and performs new music written by Arthur.
Sources
http://www.scaruffi.com/vol3/penguin.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_Cafe_Orchestra
The style of music is ethnic with austerity of Western chamber music. The sounds of this orchestra are elegant and fatuous, unaffected by the turmoil of modern life. Their music is said to be as abstract as it is concrete: cabaret and ethnic folk elements are injected into baroque and renaissance music skeletons.
Old-fashioned, nostalgic, theatrical and lofty, calligraphic but never parodistic, this exercise in revival aims to rebuild an atmosphere (the one of bourgeois families from the end of past century strolling to the city centre on Sundays) more than a sound. Every composition is a synthesis of music from certain period and exotic arrangements.
The group recorded and performed for 24 years until Jeffes died of an inoperable brain tumour in 1997. Several remaining members of the original group reunited for three concerts in 2007. Since then, five original members have continued to play concerts of PCO's music, first as The Anteaters, then as The Orchestra That Fell to Earth. In 2009, Jeffes' son Arthur founded a distinct successor band simply called Penguin Cafe. Although it includes no original PCO members, it features many PCO pieces in its live repertoire, and records and performs new music written by Arthur.
http://www.scaruffi.com/vol3/penguin.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_Cafe_Orchestra
