Penguin Cafe Orchestra

The Penguin Cafe Orchestra (PCO) was founded by British composer Simon Jeffes (born February 19, 1949; died December 10, 1997). Born in Sussex, England, and raised in Canada and around Europe, Jeffes began playing the guitar at the age of 13 while attending boarding school in England and then studied classical guitar, piano, and music theory at Chiswick Polytechnic, but dropped out before graduating. He worked with Gilbert Biberian's Omega Players for a time and accompanied producer Rupert Hine on Hine's solo albums Pick Up a Bone (1970) and Unfinished Picture (1971). While living in Japan in 1972, he developed an interest in ethnic music, particularly African styles, and decided to try to merge those styles with more traditional Western sounds. He launched the PCO as an outlet for his compositions with this eclectic hybrid approach. He always said that the "Penguin Cafe" concept was one that came to him in a dream while he was suffering from food poisoning in the south of France in the summer of 1972, after which he wrote a poem that began, "I am the proprietor of the Penguin Cafe, I will tell you things at random." He described the music of the group as "modern semi-acoustic chamber music." The PCO was organized as a fluctuating unit in which Jeffes and cellist Helen Liebmann were the only permanent members. At first, when it began playing in London, England, in 1973, it was called the Penguin Cafe Quartet. The members of the group, not yet performing publicly, were Jeffes (on electric guitar), Liebmann, violinist Gavyn Wright, and Steve Nye on electric piano. In 1974, they made their first recordings, "Penguin Cafe Single," "The Sound of Someone You Love Who's Going Away," and "It Doesn't Matter." In 1975, Nye, who knew producer Brian Eno, introduced Jeffes to him,...