Penguin Cafe Orchestra

The Penguin Cafe

Penguin Cafe Orchestra was founded in 1972 by the guitarist and composer Simon Jeffes with the cellist Helen Liebmann. Jeffes was born on February 19, 1949 in Crawley, Sussex, and died on December 11, 1997, aged 48, which ended the orchestra. Wikipedia says he conceived the idea while ill in the south of France in 1972, from a poem that came to him on the beach the next day; Il Post tells a Breton hotel story instead. He called the music modern semi-acoustic chamber music, and Bandcamp Daily describes folk, minimalist classical and indigenous styles, particularly African. The debut Music from the Penguin Cafe (1976, Obscure) was released on Brian Eno's label, an offshoot of EG, and their first major concert was supporting Kraftwerk at the Roundhouse on October 10, 1976.

Penguin Cafe Orchestra (1981), the Mini Album (1983), Broadcasting from Home (1984), Signs of Life (1987, 49 in the UK), the live When in Rome... (1988, recorded at the Royal Festival Hall on July 9, 1987), Union Cafe (1993) and Concert Program (1995) followed. Regular players included Gavyn Wright on violin until 1984, Bob Loveday, Julio Segovia on percussion, Paul Street, Jennifer Maidman and Annie Whitehead on trombone. Their pieces were used in Malcolm (1986), Talk Radio (1988) and many other films; "Perpetuum Mobile" was sampled by Avicii for "Fade into Darkness", and Jeffes helped with the string arrangement of Sid Vicious's "My Way". A 1987 South Bank Show on ITV profiled the band, and the Royal Ballet danced his Still Life at the Penguin Cafe. Robert Sandall's 4-CD A History appeared in 2001.

Several original members reunited in 2007 for three sold-out shows at Union Chapel in London, organized by Arthur Jeffes, who founded the successor band Penguin Cafe in 2009 and made A Matter of Life... (2011), The Red Book (2014) and The Imperfect Sea. Former regulars also formed the Anteaters in 2009, renamed the Orchestra That Fell to Earth in 2011.