WOMAD

Music from the Penguin Café

From United Kingdom

Arthur Jeffes has brought together Music From The Penguin Cafe, playing the music of his father Simon Jeffes and the Penguin Cafe, and combining it with their own new music. The ensemble that Arthur has drawn together around him are about the same age as the original members of PCO were when Simon first formed the group - and they will be touring from May this year into the early autumn, playing festivals, concert venues, clubs and parties.
"The Penguin Cafe's quintessentially English music was informed by a celtic, bluegrass and South American music. Giles Farnaby's Dream, a superb finale at the concerts, was a 16th century tune given a hoedown treatment. Probably their best-known numbers were the oddly addictive Telephone and Rubber Band, a tune which inevitably ended up on an ad for mobile phones, and the wonderful Music for a Found Harmonium." (The Guardian)
"Penguin Cafe enjoyed something of a cult status in the 1980s and 1990s - signed to Brian Eno's record label, their sound was experimental and minimalist in a Philip Glass kind of way, yet melodic and catchy. Their work has been far-reaching - you will have heard them in countless commercials and films. The PCO were abruptly decommissioned after the sudden death of their founder, the talented and eccentric composer Simon Jeffes. Reconvening to commemorate the 10th anniversary of his death, with Jeffes's son Arthur taking his parts on harmonium, the ensemble filled the hall with a warm musical glow. The "hits" were all there - Music for a Found Harmonium used in the film Napoleon Dynamite, the wonderful Telephone and Rubber Band that is written round the tape loop of an engaged and ringing telephone sound, Perpetuum Mobile, and the delicate Paul's Dance, a duet for ukelele and Venezuelan cuatro. But it was the evening as a whole, rather than individual numbers, that was a musical knock-out: melodic, nostalgic and movingly tender - a very special show." (Evening Standard)
(Biography supplied
(Photograph by Emile Holba)