June 23, 2010 – LSR – 8:30PM – Lopin’ Around thru the Cosmos: An Evening of Judee Sill’s Music + Kath Bloom

LOPIN’ ALONG THRU THE COSMOS
THE SONGS OF JUDEE SILL

Judee Sill was a fabulously gifted songwriter, composer, arranger, singer and musician. She was the first artist to be signed to David Geffen’s Asylum Label. She released two critically acclaimed albums, Judee Sill(1971), and Heart Food (1973). Both unfortunately were commercial failures, and Judee Sill fell out with the Label, living a rough life until her death in 1979. Since, she has been slowly rediscovered, and interest in her beautiful compositions has led to her work being re-released in 2005 by Rhino Handmade.
Her music is a rare mix of country and folk influences, Gospel piano; baroque string arrangements, and beautiful horn solos. Many of these musical styles were criss-crossing pop music in the late 60’s and early seventies. Yet her unique melodic genius and the beauty of her arrangements are unique and brilliant for any time. Listening, one feels the warmth of the 1970’s in her music, yet it’s incredibly fresh, even today. She is one of the Greats.
This show is an attempt to present her music, not as covers, but as a work of a composer-arranger that a large ensemble would interpret and perform. We will present a collection of songs arranged closely to the original recordings, and present them perhaps as they were intended to be performed, had she been given a chance to produce her own concerts.
The ensemble performing this show is still being formed, but will consist of 25 or so musicians from Montreal composed of singers, string players, horns and woodwinds, pedal steel, guitars, basses, piano and drums.

http://www.myspace.com/judeesill79

KATH BLOOM

Kath is a folk, country, and avant-garde legend. She has been making records since the late 70s, and has had her music featured in the movie Before Sunrise by Richard Linklater (starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy).

The daughter of world-renowned oboist Robert Bloom, Kath was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut, where she trained as a cellist. However, Kath met avant-garde guitarist Loren Mazzacane Connors in 1976 and teamed up with him for a series of now highly sought-after recordings of traditional blues songs and Bloom’s fragile, beautiful originals. Some records were released in editions of as few as fifty, most no more than 300 copies, until the duo released their swansong Moonlight in 1984.

After a period of child-rearing, family life and daily financial struggle, Kath began to return to the studio in the 1990s. These new songs, recorded in friends’ lounge rooms or cut-rate studios, reveal a mother-of-three songwriter as accomplished and affecting as any of her more acclaimed colleagues such as Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch or Hazel Dickens.

In the mid-nineties US director Richard Linklater stumbled across her music and used the song Come Here in Before Sunrise, but despite an initial flurry of interest, little came of the exposure. Kath’s album Finally, released on Chapter Music in 2006, is the first record she has put out since 1984, aside from her own self-released CD-Rs and cassettes.

Now Kath plays with her band Love At Work, including longtime collaborator Tom Hanford and husband Stan Bronski, and has just released a brand new recording on Mark Kozelek’s Caldo Verde imprint, the sublime Thin Thin Line.

http://www.myspace.com/kathbloomchapter

http://chaptermusic.com.au/artists/kath-bloom/