Perpetuum Mobile is one of PCO’s most famous pieces, and comes from their fifth album, ‘Signs of Life’ (1987).
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A number of their works are very familiar as they have been used in film, tv and advertising. The music also contains references to South American and African music, and uses a variety of instruments including strings, pianos, harmoniums, slide guitars, cuatros, kalimbas, experimental sound loops, mathematical notations and more. It is hard to categorise their music, but it combines elements of exuberant folk music, and the minimalist music of composers such as Philip Glass or Michael Nyman.
The Penguin Café Orchestra (PCO) was a collective of musicians, founded by Simon Jeffes in the 1970s. With the Orb's Alex Patterson at the mixing desk, "Music for a Found Harmonium" became the trippy "Pandaharmonium" while, in the dextrous hands of the Irish folk musician Patrick Street, the same track took on a completely different flavour.Several of my students have been learning and enjoying this well-known piece by the Penguin Café Orchestra, and so I thought it might be helpful to have some background about the band and the music. Preludes, Airs and Yodels - A Penguin Cafe Primer, a fine collection released last year, put the Penguin Cafe Orchestra's pervasive influence on ambient, new age and trip-hop into perspective. Even when he realised a year ago that he had a brain tumour, and when his speech and sight were affected, he carried on developing new ideas. With his partner Helen Liebman, he built a new studio and began working on new material. Having re-recorded some of his favourite tracks on Concert Program (1995), Jeffes moved to Somerset. The 1993 album Union Call saw him draft in the violinist Nigel Kennedy, with Kathryn Tickell on the Northumbrian small pipes, in jokey reworkings of some traditional American melodies on Discover America. Jeffes then went back to some of his unusual roots and worked with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Baaba Maal. The Penguin Cafe Orchestra grew in popularity around Europe and the 1988 live album (recorded at the Festival Hall in London) was ironically called When In Rome. Choreographed by David Bintley, the production proved a great success and further enhanced Jeffes's status in the art world.
Perpetuum mobile penguin cafe orchestra full#
The following year, Jeffes's classical training stood him in good stead when he wrote full orchestral arrangements to eight of his compositions which the Royal Ballet used to stage Still Life at the Penguin Cafe. In 1987, Melvyn Bragg devoted an edition of The South Bank Show to the Penguin Cafe Orchestra and the Signs of Life album drew many plaudits (the Sunday Times critic Robert Sandall described it as sounding "roughly like a string quartet letting its hair down at some mysterious located barn dance of the future"). In concert, with the often extended line-up of the orchestra stretching across the stage, the breadth and variety of styles was a wonder to behold and listen to. Jeffes's lovely compositions ran the whole gamut from pastoral to whimsical via minimal and he wasn't averse to designing his own instruments to obtain the sound he wanted (indeed, he conceived the electric Aeolian harp with the help of Richardson and Mike Lesser). When Adam Ant's backing band departed to form the nucleus of Bow Wow Wow in 1980, Dave Barbarossa's tribal drumming and Jeffes's influence as musical director were still at the core of hits like "Go Wild in the Country" and "I Want Candy".īy the mid-Eighties, the Penguin Cafe Orchestra had released two more albums (Penguin Cafe Orchestra in 1981 and Broadcasting From Home, featuring the original recording of "Music for a Found Harmonium", in 1984) and evolved from a loose ensemble to a fully fledged outfit featuring musicians such as the violinist Geoffrey Richardson, formerly of the progressive rock outfit Caravan. As the punk sell-out continued, Jeffes taught Adam and the Ants the delights of Burundi drumming: the improvement in style and content was noticeable between the band's cheesy "Young Parisians" and the more muscular "Kick", "Zerox" and "Dog Eat Dog".
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