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ARTS
AT ST. ANN'S
Susan Feldman, Artistic Director presents GREETINGS
FROM TIM BUCKLEY Co-Produced
with Hal Willner
Featuring: Friday,
April 26, 1991 PROGRAM
(Subject to change) Sharp, Coleman, Freeman, Cohen, Roberts, Gabay
Cafe (arr. Freeman)
Come Here Woman (arr. Sharp)
Song for Janie (arr. Andersen)
The Earth is Broken (arr. Reynolds)
Moulin Rouge (arr. Quine)
Jungle Fire
The Healing Festival (arr. Sharp)
Aren't You the Girl?
Sweet Surrender (arr. Sharp)
Tijuana Moon (arr. The Shams) Interlude (Coleman)
I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain (arr. Buckley)
The River (arr. Lucas)
Sefronia (The King’s Chain) (arr. Lucas)
Interlude (tape)
So Lonely (arr. Mazzacane/Langille)
Pleasant Street (arr. Sharp/Smith)
Morning Glory (arr. Hardwick)
Love from Room 109 at The Islander (on the Pacific Coast Highway) (arr. Reynolds)
Phantasmagoria in Two (arr. Reynolds)
Once I Was (arr. Buckley) TIM
BUCKLEY was born on Valentine's Day Washington, D.C. in 1947. He spent the first
ten years of his life in Amsterdam, NY, before moving to southern California,
first to Bell Gardens, then to Anaheim. “I was only about 12 years old, and I
had about five or six notes to my voice. I heard a recording of a trumpet player
playing things way up there. So I tried to reach those notes - Little Richard
got them. It was like a falsetto scream. I’d ride my bicycle around the
neighborhood screaming at the buses until I couldn't go any higher. Then one day
I heard the opposite end, a baritone sax ... I said, there's got to be a way to
do that. So I practiced and screamed until I finally ended up with a
five-and-a-half octave range.” As
a boy, he loved Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, and Hank Thompson, along with the
occasional Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis or Miles Davis albums his mother used to
play. By the time he graduated from high school, he and his poet friend Larry
Beckett had written some 20 songs together, which they took to Herb Cohen, who
signed Tim to Elektra. Tim was 18. Buckley
regarded his first release as naive, stiff, and innocent. Because he played a
guitar and sang, he was dubbed a “folkie”, a misnomer from which he never
freed himself. He began playing his 12-string in solo concerts at small clubs
and colleges on the East Coast. By the time he cut his second record, GOODBYE
AND HELLO, his musical style and point of view perfectly matched the searing
energy of the times. He had begun writing his own lyrics with a personal
commitment and vulnerability he had never shown before. “I Never Asked To Be
Your Mountain", in which he first incorporated asymmetrical rhythms, awed
his listeners not only with the round, seductive tonal qualities of his voice,
but the technical dexterity with which he was able to use it. Buckley
was an uneducated, lower-middle-class, street kid. He knew nothing about the
formal and academic aspects of music, nor could he even make a barre chord on
the guitar due to broken fingers warned during his stint as an unlikely high
school quarterback. But he inhaled knowledge, inhaled personalities. His
voracious creative and intellectual appetites made tremendous demands on the
people around him. After
GOODBYE AND HELLO, he began to move away from the "literary” world of He
turned his ears to jazz, listening to Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Thelonius Monk,
Charlie Mingus, Roland Kirk, Ornette Coleman. He was learning how to select
words not only for their meaning, but for their sound. HAPPY/SAD was the result
and included the beautiful ballad “Dream Letter”, written for his son,
Jeffrey Scott. In
performance, Tim began to improvise at exhausting length. The band no longer
rehearsed, just tried to keep up with him as he introduced new material onstage.
He wanted his musicians to stay close to their instincts. But even as he worked
at staying fresh and original, problem arose. “You're supposed to move on
artistically, but the way the business is ... you're supposed to repeat what you
did before ... It's very hard to progress.” Having
done his “folk”, “rock” and “jazz” things, he now wanted to delve
into areas virtually uncharted. He began to listen to Luciano Berio, Xenakis,
John Cage, Stockhausen, Ihlan Mimaroglu. His long-time guitarist, Lee Underwood,
introduced him to Cathy Berberian, “the musical friend [he’d] been looking
for.” After hearing Berberian, he no longer doubted himself. He regarded the
title cut of LORCA, recorded in 1969, to be his debut as a unique singer, an
original force. He held notes longer and stronger than anyone in pop music ever
had. He explored a wide range of vocal sounds, which in pop contexts were
revolutionary. He began his odyssey into odd-time signatures, which at that time
were unheard of. In the ballad, “Anonymous Proposition”, he composed one of
the most voluptuous and demanding personal ballads any singer had ever recorded. The
record bombed. Most of the critics regarded the music as being morbid,
“weird”, and decidedly uncommercial. After the first three records, still
embraced by the majority of Buckley fans to this day, his sales dropped, and
dwindling audiences demanded the old material and resented the new. At the
insistence of his advisors, Tim grudgingly dipped back into his past and pulled
out eight previously unissued songs, including “Blue Melody” and “Café”
(which he loved and continued to perform) and released the album, BLUE
AFTERNOON. But
the performances were perfunctory; his heart wasn't in them. With the imperfect
beginnings of LORCA, and the interruption of BLUE AFTERNOON behind him, Tim
threw himself with a passion into his magnum opus, STARSAILOR. STARSAILOR
was a pop monster of odd-time signatures, bizarrely dissonant criss-crossing
shrieks, moans and wails, and virtually unparalleled exoticism and sensuality in
the lyrics. “I even started singing in foreign languages - Swahili, for
instance - just because it sounded better. An instrumentalist can be understood
doing just about anything, but people are really geared for hearing only words
come out of the mouth. If I had my way, words wouldn't mean a thing.” When
STARSAILOR came out and proved to be a terrifying failure, Tim became furious,
then profoundly depressed. He could not produce his own records anymore;
eventually, he couldn't get any bookings. When he ran out of money, he took out
his anger on himself, descending into the depths of drug and alcohol abuse.
After two years, he was strapped in every way. He desperately needed the
adulatory recognition of his vanished public. For that reason, he came back with
three rock albums - GREETINGS FROM L.A., SEFRONIA, LOOK AT THE FOOL. He
did it “their” way, but it didn't work, primarily because he despised the
conventional r&b formats, the thin, canned arrangements and the necessity of
having to record other people's songs - with the exception of Fred Seaman's
“Dolphins”, which he dearly loved and remained a staple of his live
performances. He felt forced to endure the pitifully pedestrian, inadequate and
unfulfilling r&b context (though he was a fan of r&b), especially on
those few excellent songs that were for him achingly impassioned – “Sweet
Surrender”, “Because of You”, and “Who Could Deny You”. Ironically,
his voice never sounded better, more technically controlled or emotionally
capable. His
sense of isolation became excruciating. Although in his effort to regain an
audience, he had made effective and constructive strides in controlling his
substance abuse, he was still liable to binges. Following a gig in Dallas on the
weekend of June 28, 1975, he began one at a friend's house. With his system
relatively clean, the combination proved to be too much for him. On many
occasions, Buckley had ingested considerably more, and his friend, thinking he
was only drunk, took him home. As his friend discussed the situation with Tim's
wife, Judy, Tim lay on the floor with his head on a pillow. When the friend
knelt beside him to ask how he was feeling, Tim whispered quietly, “Bye-bye
baby,” and was gone. At the time, all he owned was his guitar and amplifier. Tim
Buckley held hands with the world for awhile. He gave in fire and fury and
perverse humor the totality of his life's experience, which was far beyond his
mere 28 years. He stood courageously on the stages of arenas, barrooms, and
auditoriums, singing from within his own flames like a demon possessed. He had a
beauty of spirit that etched the face of the lives of all who ever truly heard
him sing. -
excerpted from Lee Underwood's remembrances of Tim Buckley, downbeat, June
16,1977 This
was initially an idea for the show, “Night Music” -- one hour of different
interpretations of Tim Buckley's music on network television; just the type of
thinking that kept that show alive. Anyway, it didn't happen. Janine Nichols
heard about it and wanted to do the Buckley show here. For
some reason, I thought that Buckley's music (in this type of multi-artist
situation) would work better live than on lp. I agreed to do it thinking it
would never happen. It happened. Without
going into stories about why the current personnel only slightly resembles the
cast from two weeks ago, and the fun of putting on one of these things live, I
must say that this show may be alright! You'll probably go through a lot of
emotions, including wanting to confess, but stay through the whole show if you
can. You’ll leave a better person and we’ll have you out of here by
Chanukah. I’ll
be seeing you. Willner GREETINGS
FROM TIM BUCKLEY was Hal’s idea. It seemed like a good subject for an attempt
to bring one of his records to life in concert. All of Buckley's music had been
recently re-released by Enigma and Elektra, with the exception of TIM BUCKLEY
and LORCA, which was as obscure then as it is out-of-print now. We spent months
listening to the music on our own; then got together for several marathon
sessions to finalize a list for performance. A tape was made of the selected
songs in alphabetical order, and the skeleton of a running order was born from
some of the transitions revealed on the tape. We included music from every
aspect of Buckley’s career, including the experimental and more emotionally
exposed music, which we really like, that cost him most of his audience. Artists
were approached by our thinking they could do something interesting with the
music. In some cases, the artist was already a fan of Buckley’s. This was the
case with Shelley Hirsch, the Horse Flies (who had to drop out because of their
touring schedule), G.E. Smith. Loren Mazzacane and Suzanne Langille, known then
as Guitar Robert got wind of the project and got in touch with us. Other times,
the music was new to the artist but the affinity was instant -- Mary Margaret
O’Hara (who also had to withdraw in order to finish a film soundtrack) and
Richard Hell fell into this category. Herb Cohen, Buckley's manager, revealed
that Buckley had a son, now a young man and a remarkable musician in his own
right. Jeff Scott Buckley told me that he had never performed his father’s
music in public, and this seemed like a good time to finally do so. Listen and
be amazed. Our
intention was to reveal Buckley's courage and imagination as a composer, and
enormous continuing influence as singer. I hope we did him justice. Janine Nichols JEFF
SCOTT BUCKLEY (guitar/voice) When I was six, I found my grandmother’s old 6-string
guitar in a closet. I loved the thing. My mother, who was a classically trained
pianist/cellist, was married (at the time of the guitar-find) to an auto
mechanic, Ron, with amazingly right-on taste in music. Our house was always
jumping with sound: Bach, Chopin, Gershwin, Beatles, Zeppelin, Hendrix, Nat King
Cole. The auto-mechanic eventually found the woman he loved, and he and my Mom
divorced. My Mom began to tell me more about my father, Tim, and when I was 8,
she decided we should meet each other. The only other time I saw him was when I
was 2 years old. I got to see him play at The Golden Bear and met him
face-to-face backstage. I spent Easter vacation with him, his wife and their
adopted son. They had an apartment in Santa Monica and I stayed for a week, a
really good time. Somehow, in between my visit and Tim’s death, we lost touch
with him and Judy and I never saw Judy again until '88. I
got my first electric guitar at 13. Left home for L.A. at 17, spent some time in
a so-called music school, went on the road with some reggae acts. Escaped to NYC
in '90 for about 7 months; got into hardcore and Robert Johnson. Went back to
L.A., did a demo of some of my songs. I got a call from Carole King after she
heard my stuff through a mutual friend, very cool. We wrote a track together.
More to come. Right now my band is almost complete. I'm showing up at club jams
around town trying out new songs. My life is now complete and utter chaos. GREG
COHEN (bass)
grew up on Beachwood Drive (Los Angeles) during the 50's and 60's. There he
received his musical training playing chord organ for "Charleston
Grotto”. Being the youngest, eventually he was forced to play bass guitar. He
has also worked with Tom Waits, Marty Grosz, David Sanborn, Alan Watts, Crystal
Gayle, Harry Shearer, Teddy Edwards, Robert Wilson, Keith Richards, Woody Allen,
Freddie Moore, Odetta, and the Burbank Symphony. ANTHONY
COLEMAN (keyboards)
was born and raised in Brooklyn Heights. He is a pianist and general keyboardist
and composer whose works have been performed by his own and other ensembles
throughout the US, Canada and Europe. He has also performed and recorded with
John Zorn, Glenn Branca, Elliott Sharp and Marc Ribot's Rootless Cosmopolitans,
among others. CHRIS
CUNNINGHAM (guitar)
Chris likes to play things with strings and has done so since he was young and
carefree. He has written music for films, theatre and dance, and is always
playing with some band or seven. A native New Yorker, his frequent escape
attempts have often left him scrounging for adequate rations of cruelty and wit.
From the past to the present, his co-dependents have included James White and
the Blacks/The Contortions, The Lounge Lizards, Saqqara Dogs, Radiante, Gavin
Friday and the Man Seezer, Hubert Felix-Thiefane, Marianne Faithfull,
Annabouboula, and his current group, The Sirens. Mr. Cunningham plays primarily
for God, country and those who art down by law, but contributions are
appreciated. SHARON
FREEMAN (piano, French horn) Miss Freeman has worked and recorded with many jazz
greats: Gil Evans, Frank Foster, Charles Mingus, Don Cherry, Carla Bley, Richard
Muhal Abrams, David Murray, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Haden and the Liberation
Music Orchestra, of which she is the current Musical Director. She has also been
musical director for Don Pullen and Beaver Harris’ 360 Musical Experience. Her
name was submitted for a Grammy nomination for her arrangement of “Monk's
Mood” for five French horns and rhythm section for Hal Willner’s A&M
release, “That’s the Way I Feel Now: A Tribute to Thelonius Monk”. She has
been commissioned by the Jazz Composers’ Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic,
and the Harlem Piano Trio. She has been cited by Jazz Times as the
top-rated established jazz French horn player. She is currently music director
of both Nanette Bearden Contemporary Dance Theater and the Jazzmobile Workshop. YUVAL
GABAY (drums)
is a founder of the band, Bosho. In the last five years, he has been composing
music for choreographer Kumiko Kimoto; he will be performing his music for
Kimoto at LaMama from May 21-24. Other recent collaborations have been with Paul
Langland, David Zambrano and Sara Skaggs. Gabay is a member of David Linton's
“Owthaus” and the Fast Forward Ensemble. CHERYL
HARDWICK (piano)
is, with G.E. Smith, Musical Director of “Saturday Night RICHARD
HELL (guitar/vocals)
has recently published a new book, Artifact, on JULIA
HEYWARD (vocals)
Julia Heyward’s work centers around the orchestration of music, words and
images in the forms of performance art and music videos. In Heyward's early
career, she toured Europe and America as a solo performance artist. For the past
decade, Heyward has worked with music/performance ensembles, winning a Bessie
Award in 1984 for “No Local Stops”, written in collaboration with musician
Pat Irwin. Other notable full-length productions include “Mood Music”, a
cartoon opera written in collaboration with musician Robert FitzSimmons,
presented at The Kitchen in 1988. These projects were partially financed by
Heyward's commercial work as a music video director and producer. Heyward
created “The Visit”, an Art Break for MTV in 1989, and in 1990 she designed
and directed the Host segments for the TV series “Buzz” and for SHELLEY
HIRSCH (vocals)
is a vocalist, composer, and performer whose work has been seen worldwide from
CBGB’s to the State Opera of Stuttgart. Her musical passions originate from a
childhood fascination with The Reader's Digest Collection of Music of The World.
Last year her multi-media storytelling piece, "O Little Town of East New
York”, was produced by Dance Theater Workshop. She has worked extensively in
the downtown music community with musicians such as Fred Frith, Christian
Marclay, Ikue Mori, Elliott Sharp, John Zorn, Butch Morris, Mark Dresser, Zeena
Parkins and many others. Her main collaborator is electronic keyboardist David
Weinstein, with whom she released the CD “Haiku Lingo" on No Man's land.
She is widely known as the woman yodelling on a swing in an MTV clip. GARY
LUCAS (guitar)
Dubbed “Guitarist of 1000 Ideas" by The New York Times and LOREN
MAZZACANE & SUZANNE LANGILLE (guitar/voice)
In 1978, improvisational guitarist Loren Mazzacane released a series of albums
which sparked continuing controversial discussion about the relationship between
blues and “new” music. London's WIRE magazine has called him “the Eric
Satie of blues guitar”; Guitar World named him the “Best Blues
Guitarist” of 1990. Canadian critic Jurgen Gothe describes Suzanne Langille as
“a blending of Josephine Baker and Claudine Longet.” Sound Choice
observes that her vocals “merge uncannily with the guitar in a way that is
seamless in execution and deeply emotional.” A new CD entitled NEVER THE BLUES
will be produced on the Aerial label. They perform at the Knitting Factory on
May 11. WILBUR
PAULEY (vocal)
Mr. Pauley's credits include Broadway, television, film, music/theater,
opera/oratorio, and 12th century liturgical drama, to composers like
Schickele, Schoenberg, Penderecki and Elliott Carter. Mr. Pauley returned
yesterday from France, where he toured as Sarastro in The Magic Flute
with the Bulgarian Radio orchestra. Upcoming engagements include works by Harry
Partch (directed by Tom O'Horgan) and Michael Gordon at the Bang-on-a-Can
Festival, Meredith Monk's Atlas at the American Musical Theater Festival
and at least six roles with the New York City Opera, the Utah Opera and the San
Antonio Festival. ROBERT
QUINE (guitar)
was born in 1942 in Akron, Ohio. He first became known in the late 70's with his
appearance on Richard Hell & the Voidoids' “Blank Generation”. Between
1981 and'85 he played and recorded with Lou Reed (“The Blue Mask”,
“Legendary Hearts”). He has also played and recorded with John Zorn,
Marianne Faithfull, Tom Waits, Lloyd Cole, and others. BARRY
REYNOLDS (guitar/vocals)
Born in Kearsley, Manchester, he was a member of HANK
ROBERTS (cello)
is an improvising cellist and composer who plays and records extensively with
the groups Arcado, Miniature and the Bill Frisell Band, and his own group, Birds
of Prey. ELLIOTT
SHARP (guitar)
Composer/multi-instrumentalist Elliott Sharp leads the groups Carbon and
Terraplane, as well as performing with the cooperative groups, The Sync and
Semantics. He has been performing improvised music since 1969. Large ensemble
pieces include “Crowds and Power”, “Re/Iterations” (commissioned by
American Composers Orchestra), ”Sili/contemp/tations”, “Self-Squared
Dragon” and “Larynx” (for a 13-member version of Carbon, commissioned for
the 1987 Next Wave Festival). His string quartets have been performed by the
Soldier String Quartet, Kronos, and Finland's Avanti String Quartet. Other
recent activities include an appearance on the NBC-TV show “Night-Music”,
and over 30 performances with Carbon throughout Europe. In addition, he has
on-going collaborations with Korean komungo-player Jin Hi Kim and Rachir Attar,
a leader of the Master Musicians of Jahjouka from Morocco. He performed in NY
and Chicago with Czechoslovakia's Plastic People of the Universe/Pulnoc. Recent
recordings include Datacide (with Carbon) on Germany's Enemy label, and
K!L!A!V! (for keyboards) on Newport Classics. G.E.
SMITH (guitar/bass)
is, with Cheryl Hardwick, Musical Director of "Saturday Night Live”. He
first became widely known for his recordings and live appearances with Hall
& Oates. More recently, he toured the world as lead guitarist for Bob Dylan.
He is currently working on a record of his own music. HAL
WILLNER (Co-Producer)
was Music Producer of NBC’s “Night Music” for 2 shows in the first year
and the entire second season. He most recently released “Dead City Radio”
with William Burroughs, and “The Carl Stalling Project”, music written for
the classic Warner Brother cartoons. His reputation was made with three
“tribute” albums celebrating the music of some of his favorite composers –
Nino Rota (“Amarcord”), Thelonius Monk (“That’s the Way I Feel Now”),
and Kurt Weill (“Lost in the Stars”) featuring some of his favorite
musicians. He has also produced two records for Marianne Faithfull, “Strange
Weather” and “Blazing Away”, the latter recorded live at St. Ann's in
November, 1989; “Stay Awake”, music of the classic Disney films; Gavin
Friday and the Man Seezer, and Alan Ginsberg's “The Lion for Real”. His new
record of Charles Mingus’ music is soon to be released on CBS/Sony.
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