PERPETUUM MOBILE PENGUIN CAFE ORCHESTRA SERIES

This was to be followed by appearances at Port Eliot Literary Festival, Glastonbury, Bestival, The Big Chill, Womad, Edinburgh Arts Festival, the Snape Proms, and the arts festivals of Galway and Milan. The first of these would be invitation from The Teenage Cancer Trust to perform at The Royal Albert Hall, to be filmed for a future charitable release.įollowing this, over the next six months, Music from The Penguin Cafe appeared at various festivals, venues and Arts events over the summer of 2009, initiated by a debut at The Manchester Royal College of Music.

PERPETUUM MOBILE PENGUIN CAFE ORCHESTRA SERIES

The reception to these concerts was an affirmation that the music held a vibrant life of its own and subsequently Arthur felt that it was appropriate to embark on a more extensive revisiting….Ĭommissioning a fresh set of musicians ranging from luminaries from The Royal College of Music to notable performers and members from bands such as Suede, Gorillaz, Delakota and Razorlight, the newly envisioned incarnation of the Penguin Cafe undertook a series of performances under the name Music from the Penguin Cafe. However, in 2007, to mark ten years since Simon's death, his son Arthur Jeffes, re-assembled the original musicians to perform a last run of concerts, spanning three nights at London’s Union Chapel, in tribute to both his father and the music that he created.

Sadly in 1997 Jeffes passed away, marking the closure of that period of Penguin Cafe’s history. The last official Penguin Cafe Orchestra release was Concert Program recorded 1995, a document of the touring set they were playing at the time. To realize this somewhat fevered dream, Simon utilized many different instruments and orchestrations including elements of African, Venezuelan, Brazilian, Classical & Minimalist music, using a variety of instruments from strings, pianos, harmoniums, slide guitars, cuatros, kalimbas, experimental sound loops, mathematical notations and more. The music of the Penguin Cafe, Simon broadly regarded as 'a very big yes to the survival of the heart in a time when the heart is under attack from the forces of coldness, darkness and repression.' When forced to describe it more precisely, he called his music 'imaginary folklore' and 'modern semi-acoustic chamber music.' He very much liked the comment of a Japanese girl who attended a Penguin concert in Japan and who said afterwards that the music sounded strange, because it was as if she'd heard it a long time ago. It began ‘I am the proprietor of the Penguin Cafe. Next day when I felt better, I went to the beach. And that kept them from being a problem or a threat to the cold order represented by the eye. It wasn't like they were prisoners, they were all active, but only within themselves. Everybody was taken up with self-interested activity which kept them looped in on themselves. In another room there was a musician with a bank of synthesizers, wearing headphones, and there was no sound. In another room there was somebody just looking at himself in the mirror, just obsessed with himself. In one room you had a couple that were making love, but lovelessly. There was an electronic eye which scanned everything. I had this one vision in my mind of a place that was like a modern hotel, with all these rooms made of concrete.

'I was laying in bed delirious, sort of hallucinating for about 24 hours. Their inception was as original, imaginative and idiosyncratic as the music they created…ĭuring the summer of 1972 the English composer Simon Jeffes had a dream, experienced during a severe bout of food poisoning in the South of France The Penguin Cafe Orchestra were a uniquely innovative, exploratory set of musicians who enjoyed a cherished period from 1972 to 1997, and continue to hold a special place in many hearts. Eccentric, charming, accommodating, surprising, seductive, warm, reliable, modest and unforgettable: it's a true friend” ∼ Brian Eno, February 2010 “Penguin Cafe continues to occupy a unique place in music: nothing else has ever sounded quite like it. The first album from the latest installment of the Penguin Cafe with Simon Jeffes' son, Arthur.

Perpetuum mobile penguin cafe orchestra