Penguin Cafe Orchestra

This article is about the band. For their self-titled 1981 album, see Penguin Cafe Orchestra (album).

Penguin Cafe Orchestra
Origin	England
Genres	Avant-pop
Years active	1972–1997, 2007
Labels	Obscure, E.G., Virgin/EMI
Website	www.penguincafe.com

The Penguin Cafe Orchestra (PCO) was an avant-pop band led by English guitarist Simon Jeffes. Also founded by Jeffes with cellist Helen Liebmann, the band toured extensively during the 1980s and 1990s. The orchestra's sound is not easily categorized, but has elements of exuberant folk music and a minimalist aesthetic occasionally reminiscent of composers such as Philip Glass.

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.

History

After becoming disillusioned with the rigid structures of classical music and the limitations of rock, in which he also dabbled, Simon 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:

In 1972 I was in the south of France. I had eaten some bad fish and was in consequence rather ill. As I lay in bed I had a strange recurring vision, there, before me, was a concrete building like a hotel or council block. I could see into the rooms, each of which was continually scanned by an electronic eye. In the rooms were people, everyone of them preoccupied. In one room a person was looking into a mirror and in another a couple were making love but lovelessly, in a third a composer was listening to music through earphones. Around him there were banks of electronic equipment. But all was silence. Like everyone in his place he had been neutralized, made grey and anonymous. The scene was for me one of ordered desolation. It was as if I were looking into a place which had no heart. Next day when I felt better, 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.

The group's debut album, Music from the Penguin Cafe, a collection of pieces recorded in 1974–76, was released in 1976 on Brian Eno's experimental Obscure Records label, an offshoot of the EG label. It was followed in 1981 by Penguin Cafe Orchestra, after which the band settled into a more regular release schedule.

The band played its first major concert on 10 October 1976, 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 the South Bank in London. From 1976 to 1996 they played in the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, and throughout Europe and the UK. In March, 1987 they were the subject of an episode of the ITV arts series The South Bank Show, on which they performed "Air", "Bean Fields", "Dirt" and "Giles Farnaby's Dream".

Evolution

Simon Jeffes experimented with various configurations live and in the studio, including an occasional 'dance orchestra' and a quintet of strings, oboe, trombone and himself on piano. On the studio albums, he sometimes played several instruments himself, and brought in other musicians according to the needs of each piece.

There were a number of incarnations of the live band. Original members Gavyn Wright and Steve Nye left in 1984 and 1988 respectively. Bob Loveday replaced Gavyn Wright on violin. Gradually a regular line-up evolved around Simon Jeffes and Helen Liebman: Neil Rennie, who joined in 1975 on ukulele; Geoffrey Richardson, who had joined in 1976 and co-wrote three pieces on Broadcasting from Home (1984), played viola, cuatro, guitar, clarinet, mandolin and ukulele; Julio Segovia answered an advert in the Melody Maker and joined in 1978 on percussion; Paul Street joined in 1984 playing guitar, cuatro and ukulele, leaving in 1988; Jennifer Maidman joined in 1984 on percussion, bass, ukulele and cuatro; Steve Fletcher replaced Steve Nye in 1988 on piano and keyboards and Annie Whitehead, who had also appeared on Broadcasting from Home (1984), joined the live band in 1988 on trombone. Finally, Peter McGowan took over from Bob Loveday on violin and Barbara Bolte joined on oboe. Doug Beveridge also became a regular fixture at the live mixing desk. The album Concert Program (1995) is the definitive recording of this lineup, and includes many of the group's best-known pieces.

Later bands

After Simon Jeffes' death, members of the orchestra continued to meet occasionally to play together, but there were no new recordings or public appearances for over ten years. In 2007 the band briefly re-formed, with the lineup as featured on Concert Program (minus Julio Segovia), with Jennifer Maidman now handling Simon's guitar parts. The original members were joined onstage by Simon Jeffes's son Arthur on percussion and additional keyboards, and played three sold-out shows at the Union Chapel in London.

After those concerts, Arthur Jeffes wanted to form a new group without any of the original PCO members. He called it "Music from the Penguin Cafe", later shortened to simply "Penguin Cafe". This all-new ensemble, sometimes inaccurately billed as The Penguin Cafe Orchestra, played at a number of festivals in 2009, combining Penguin Cafe numbers with new pieces. In 2010 they appeared at the BBC Proms (with Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell).

With the 'Penguin Cafe' name now being used by Arthur, the original Penguin Cafe Orchestra members who wanted to continue playing their music needed an alternative title. Four of them, multi-instrumentalists Geoffrey Richardson and Jennifer Maidman, trombonist Annie Whitehead and pianist Steve Fletcher have since played some festivals under the name The Anteaters. They have been joined by percussionist Liam Genockey. Well known as a member of Steeleye Span, Liam had also played live with the Penguins in Italy in the 1980s. The name 'Anteaters' came from an incident on the 1983 PCO tour of Japan when Simon Jeffes discovered there was a craze for penguins in the country. Simon joked that, if the fashion changed, the orchestra would have to change its name to "The Anteater Cafe Orchestra". In October 2011 the same line-up also appeared at the Canterbury Festival in Kent, UK, performing two hours of original PCO music under another name "The Orchestra That Fell To Earth" and they have subsequently continued to perform under that name.

Famous pieces

The Penguin Cafe Orchestra's most famous piece may be "Telephone and Rubber Band", which is based around a tape loop of a UK telephone ringing tone intersected with an engaged tone, accompanied by the twanging of a rubber band. The piece is featured on the soundtracks of Nadia Tass's film comedy Malcolm (1986) and Oliver Stone's film Talk Radio (1988), and in a long-running advertising campaign for the telecoms company One2One (now T-Mobile). The 1996 single "In The Meantime" by New York City-based English rockers Spacehog featured a tweaked and fine-tuned sample of "Telephone and Rubber Band". It was also the trademark song of the Argentinean show dedicated to artistic animation Caloi en su tinta. The tape loop was recorded when Jeffes was making a phone call, and discovered that he was hearing a combination of a ring tone and an engaged signal at the same time, due to a fault in the system. He recorded it on an answering machine.

Another famous tune featured in Malcolm (among other films) is "Music for a Found Harmonium", which Jeffes wrote on a harmonium that he had found dumped in a back street in Kyoto, where he was staying in the summer of 1982 after the ensemble's first tour of 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 I remember the time fondly as one during which I was under a form of enchantment with the place and the time." "Music for a Found Harmonium" was used for a trailer as well as over the end-credits of the 1988 John Hughes movie She's Having a Baby where many film actors and celebrities of the time invent their favourite name for an imagined child, although it was not placed on the soundtrack accompanying the movie. The piece gained exposure when it was 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. An Irish traditional version was used on the soundtrack of the film Hear My Song, made in Ireland in the early 1990s. In 2004, Patrick Street's cover of "Music For A Found Harmonium" was featured in the film Napoleon Dynamite and the following year in the film It's All Gone Pete Tong. The Scottish folk rock band Rock Salt and Nails, from Shetland, also recorded a version for their debut album Waves in 1993.

In 2016, "Music for a Found Harmonium" was featured in the film The Founder.

Simon Jeffes composed music for the ballet Still Life at the Penguin Cafe, largely based on earlier compositions for the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. (Geoffrey Richardson co-wrote one of the pieces.) The ballet was first performed by the Royal Ballet in 1988 and released as an album under Jeffes' name.

Another of the group's well-known pieces is "Perpetuum Mobile" from their 1987 album Signs of Life. It has been used as theme music for several films, television and radio programmes, including the Australian stop motion animated film Mary and Max (2009) as the main theme, as well as the television adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale. It is even considered to be inspiration for the song "Fade into Darkness" by popular DJ artist Avicii. The song is unusual in that it was written with a 15/8 time signature. The melody appears to end and repeat one beat ahead of when it should, giving the piece the feel of a perpetual motion device.

Uses by others

Covers and sampling

• "Music for a Found Harmonium" was covered by the Galician band Matto Congrio in 1993, also by the California Guitar Trio on their Echoes album (2008), and by Irish accordion player Sharon Shannon on her first album. The tune was also covered by the pan-celtic violin ensemble Celtic Fiddle Festival in 1993, at the time consisting of former Silly Wizard fiddler Johnny Cunningham, Bothy Band fiddler Kevin Burke, and Kornog fiddler Christian Lemaitre, on their self-titled debut album.
• A section of "Music for a Found Harmonium" was used by record producer Steve Mac for his dance track "Paddy's Revenge".
• "Music for a Found Harmonium" was the basis for a mix on The Orb's 2001 remix compilation "Auntie Aubrey's Excursions Beyond the Call of Duty - The Orb Remix Project, Volume 2". The title was given as "Music for a Found Harmonium (Pandaharmoniumorb mix)".
• The song "Telephone and Rubber Band" was sampled by Spacehog in their 1995 hit "In the Meantime", from the album Resident Alien.
• Avicii samples a section of "Perpetuum Mobile" in his dance track Fade Into Darkness (previously known as Penguin); the Leona Lewis/Avicii collaboration Collide uses the same piano hook.
• A portion of "Perpetuum Mobile" is sampled on the track "Missed Calls" by rapper Mac Miller.
• "Music for a Found Harmonium" was used as part of a tune set ("Guns") by Roving Crows on their Deliberate Distractions album (2013)
• The main theme of "Music for a Found Harmonium" was used by Earl 16 on his 1997 track "Steppin' Out".
• The Egg sample "Rosasolis" on their 1998 track "Willow".

Film

• Penguin Cafe Orchestra music featured on the 1986 Australian cult film Malcolm, written by David Parker and directed by Nadia Tass. The film won the 1986 Australian Film Institute Award for Best Film. The opening theme is "Music for a Found Harmonium", and during the film features "Paul's Dance", "Yodel 1", "Yodel 2" and "Telephone and Rubber Band". The closing theme is "The Ecstasy of Dancing Fleas".
• "Telephone & Rubber Band" was used during the final scene of the Oliver Stone's film Talk Radio (1988)
• Penguin Cafe Orchestra music featured on the Petra Katharina Wagner film Oskar und Leni (1999). The music was also issued on a separate CD.
• "Music for a Found Harmonium" was used in John Hughes's She's Having a Baby, starring Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern (1987)
• "Nothing Really Blue" was used during the final scene of the German film The Princess and the Warrior (2000).
• "Air á Danser", "Paul's Dance", "Prelude and Yodel" and "Nothing Really Blue" was used in the Miguel Arteta's Chuck & Buck (2000), written and starred by Mike White (filmmaker).
• "Perpetuum Mobile" was used the main theme for the documentary The Union: The Business Behind Getting High (2007), the animated Australian film Mary and Max (2009), the Swedish movie Slim Susie (2003) and the documentary Project Nim (2011).
• "Music For A Found Harmonium" is featured in Michael Moore's documentary film Capitalism: A Love Story (2009), as he wraps several Wall Street banks and the New York Stock Exchange in crime scene tape; in 2004's It's All Gone Pete Tong; for the ending montage in Napoleon Dynamite (2004), but not included on the motion picture soundtrack; and in 2011's Goodbye First Love.
• "Music For a Found Harmonium" is featured in 2016's film The Founder

Radio/podcasts

• This American Life, a popular show on public radio in the United States, has often used the band's "Perpetuum Mobile" to accompany its stories, and news programs on National Public Radio have at times used the ringtone from "Telephone and Rubber Band" as bumper music between pieces.
• The Economist magazine has used "Perpetuum Mobile" in its weekly podcasts.
• The Australian ABC Radio National weekly broadcast of The Music Show uses "Perpetuum Mobile" as its theme music.
• "Scherzo and Trio" is the theme music for BBC Radio 4's Round Britain Quiz.
• "Pythagoras's Trousers" was the theme music for CBC Radio's Basic Black.
• "Paul's Dance" and "The Ecstasy of Dancing Fleas" was the theme music for CBC Radio's Eclectic Circus.

Television

• "Music for a found harmonium" was used in the 2007–13 documentary Belga Sport on Canvas about the biggest impacts in sports in Belgium including the 1982 Gilles Villeneuve crash at Zolder.
• "Music for a found harmonium" was adapted into a string quartet version for the 2017 Japanese TV drama Quartet (karutetto).
• "Perpetuum Mobile" was used in The Big Bang Machine, a 2008 BBC documentary about CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
• "Perpetuum Mobile" was used in the 1997 award-winning BBC Horizon documentary "Fermat's Last Theorem" directed by Simon Singh (shown in the United States as part of the PBS series Nova entitled "The Proof"). The documentary relates Andrew Wiles's successful attempt to prove Fermat's Last Theorem.
• "Perpetuum Mobile" was used in episode 8 of New York: A Documentary Film, a 2003 PBS documentary about the World Trade Center.
• "Perpetuum Mobile" was also used in the pilot episode (entitled "Lost For Words") of the American television show 3 lbs starring Stanley Tucci, and in an episode ("Touch of Greatness") about the American educator Albert Cullum in the ITVS/PBS series Independent Lens.
• "Telephone and a Rubber Band" was the theme music for the Argentine show Caloi en su Tinta.
• "Perpetuum Mobile" was also used in the fifth-season finale of the UK version of The Apprentice.
• "Perpetuum Mobile" has been used in Adult Swim's Off the Air season 2 episode "Color".
• "Pythagoras Trousers" was used as the theme for the Spanish TV show Juego de Niños.
• Both "Perpetuum Mobile" and "Music for a Found Harmonium" appeared in the first episode (of three) of a 2012 BBC documentary about Art Nouveau called Sex and Sensibility.
• "Air" was used as the opening music for the Avro Shackleton episode of the BBC documentary series Perpetual Motion.
• "Perpetuum Mobile" was also used in the fourth episode of the Hulu TV show, The Handmaid's Tale in 2017.

Werbung

The music of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra has been used in advertisements for Eurotunnel, The Independent, Hewlett Packard, MFI, Knorr, One2One, Origin Energy, Ford and Bradesco.

Personnel

• Simon Jeffes – acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano, cuatro, ukulele, bass, voice, Omnichord, Dulcitone, penny whistle, pitch pipes, harmonium, shakers, drums, ring modulator, rubber band, electronic organ, milkbottles, triangle, violin, drum, Linn Drum computer, soloban, spinet, Prophet V, fretless guitar, Bluthner and Bosendorfer pianos, zebra drum, tape, pianica, mandolin, electric aeolian harp
• Helen Liebmann – cello
• Steve Nye – electric piano, cuatro, Bluthner piano, Wurlitzer piano, harmonium
• Gavyn Wright – violin
• Geoffrey Richardson – viola, slide guitar, bass, bongos, metal frame, ukulele, mandolin, electric guitar, penny whistle, clarinet
• Ian Maidman (later Jennifer Maidman) – percussion, bass guitar, ukulele, cuatro, electric guitar, zebra drum.
• Emily Young – vocals
• Michael Giles – drums
• Dave DeFries – trumpet, fluegelhorn
• Annie Whitehead – trombone
• Nigel Kennedy – violin
• Naná Vasconcelos – clay pot, twigs
• Kathryn Tickell – Northumbrian small pipes
• Chris Laurence – bass
• Wilfred Gibson – violin
• Roger Chase – viola
• Braco – drums
• Marcus Beale – violin
• Kuma Harada – bass
• Barbara Bolte – oboe
• Stephen Fletcher – piano
• Peter McGowan – violin
• Giles Leaman – woodwinds
• Bob Loveday – violin
• Neil Rennie – ukulele
• Julio Segovia – percussion
• Jill Streater – oboe
• Peter Veitch – accordion
• Fami – drums
• Trevor Morais – drums
• Danny Cummings – percussion
• Paul Street – guitar
• Elisabeth Perry

Discography

Studio albums

• Music from the Penguin Cafe (1976) OBSCURE 7, later EEGCD 27
• Penguin Cafe Orchestra (1981) EEGCD 11
• Broadcasting from Home (1984) EEGCD 38
• Signs of Life (1987) EEGCD 50 - UK #49
• Union Cafe (1993) ZOPFD 001

Extended play

• The Penguin Cafe Orchestra Mini Album (1983) EGMLP 2 – Six-song mini-LP consisting of 2 previously released tracks, 2 live tracks, and 2 new compositions.

Live albums

• When in Rome... (1988) EEGCD 56
• Concert Program (1995) ZOPFD 002

Collections

• Preludes, Airs & Yodels (A Penguin Cafe Primer) (1996)
• A Brief History (2001) CDV 2954
• History (2001) Virgin Records LCO 3098
• The Second Penguin Cafe Orchestra Sampler (2004)

Simon Jeffes albums

• 'Still Life' at the Penguin Cafe (1990) DECCA 425 218-2
• Piano Music (2000) ZOPFD 003 – Solo pieces, collected after Jeffes' death.

Related album

• Arcane (1994), credited to 'Assorted Artists'

Arcane consists of recordings by diverse musicians brought together in August 1992 at the Real World studios in Wiltshire for a week of spontaneous collaborations and performances. No one musician appears on every track, but Jeffes is one of the more constant presences on this album. Amongst the many other collaborators are Billy Cobham, Andy Sheppard, Jane Siberry, Ayub Ogada, Nigel Kennedy, and Nana Vasconcelos.

Soundtracks

• Night Shift (1982) ("Cutting Branches for a Temporary Shelter")
• Malcolm (1986)
• She's Having A Baby Trailer (1988) ("Music For A Found Harmonium")
• Oskar und Leni (1999) (10 songs, all new recordings of previously released tracks from back catalogue)
• Chuck and Buck (2000) ("Air a Danser," "Paul's Dance," "Prelude and Yodel," "Nothing Really Blue")
• Slim Susie (2003) ("Perpetuum Mobile")
• The Good Girl (2002) ("Air" and "Steady State")
• The Princess and the Warrior Official Soundtrack (2000) ("Nothing Really Blue")
• Napoleon Dynamite Official Soundtrack (2005) ("Music For A Found Harmonium")
• It's All Gone Pete Tong Official soundtrack (2005) ("Music For A Found Harmonium")
• Hewlett Packard - Advert (2006) ("Perpetuum Mobile")
• 3 lbs - "Lost For Words" (2006) ("Perpetuum Mobile")
• Year of the Dog (2007) ("Music for a Found Harmonium")
• All the Little Animals Music written by Simon Jeffes, performed and recorded by PCO members Geoffrey Richardson, Jennifer Maidman and Steve Fletcher
• Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) ("Music For A Found Harmonium")
• Mary and Max (2009) ("Perpetuum Mobile"; "Prelude and Yodel")
• Origin Energy 'Sustainability Drive' advert ("Perpetuum Mobile")
• The Handmaid's Tale (2017) ("Perpetuum Mobile")

External links

• Official Site
• Unofficial Site
• Official Youtube Channel
• Official Site of The Orchestra That Fell To Earth (musicians of the original PCO
• Penguin Cafe Orchestra at AllMusic
• Penguin Cafe Orchestra discography at MusicBrainz