Jherek Bischoff

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Jherek Bischoff
File:Jherek Bischoff Roxy Theater 18 July 2013.jpg
Bischoff performing with Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra at the Roxy Theater, West Hollywood, California.
Background information
Born Sacramento, California
Genres Alternative, classical music
Occupation(s) Composer, musician, songwriter
Instruments Bass guitar, ukulele, vocals, cello, violin, keyboards, drums, trombone, clarinet, guitar
Years active 2000–present
Labels Brassland (US), The Leaf Label (UK)
Website Official website

Jherek Bischoff is an American musician, composer, arranger, producer and songwriter, currently living in Los Angeles.

Background

Bischoff was born in Sacramento, California. When he was a young child his parents decided they wanted to move aboard a sailboat, and eventually sailed up the coast to the Pacific Northwest. Bischoff spent his early years on the boat and when he was 14 years old, the family departed on a two-year sailing trip to Central America, through the Panama Canal and into the Caribbean.[1]

The family eventually returned to their home on Bainbridge Island, Washington, where Bischoff learned to play a wide variety of instruments. Bischoff has some fluency on a number of woodwinds (saxophone, clarinet), brass (tuba, trombone, trumpet) and stringed instruments (electric bass, guitar, ukulele, banjo, stand-up bass, cello, violin). As a composer, Bischoff is largely self-taught having attended part-time college classes on the topic and gaining experience by writing arrangements and compositions for fellow artists in the Seattle music scene. Music was also a family tradition. His father, who had studied music at the University of California, Davis with John Cage and Stanley Lunetta, had been in avant garde and experimental bands throughout the 1970s.[1]

Early career

Bischoff first emerged as a sideman, co-writer, and accompanist in several bands. In the first decade of the 2000s, he was a member and collaborator with Parenthetical Girls, Xiu Xiu, Degenerate Art Ensemble, and The Dead Science. More recently, he was a member of Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra, and has collaborated with The Wordless Music Orchestra, yMusic and Contemporaneous.

Composed and Scores

Bischoff gained attention as a solo performer upon the 2012 release of Composed and a related instrumental album Scores: Composed Instrumentals. The album features nine orchestral pieces with a different vocalist on eight of the nine tracks. Many of the vocalists are well known, and included David Byrne, Caetano Veloso, Mirah, Carla Bozulich (Evangelista, Geraldine Fibbers), Craig Wedren (Shudder to Think), Dawn McCarthy (Faun Fables), Zac Pennington (Parenthetical Girls), Soko and more. Guest soloists included Greg Saunier (Deerhoof) and Nels Cline (Wilco).

The album was first composed by Bischoff on a ukulele. He then orchestrated, engineered, and mastered the album, achieving an orchestral sound at a low cost by recording the instrumentalists one at a time using a single microphone and a laptop computer recording set-up.[2] Pitchfork wrote that listening to the album whilst being aware of the process "is like imagining someone filling an Olympic-sized pool with an eye dropper: the mind balks, both at the enormity of the undertaking and at the disposition of the person behind it".[3]

In a 4/5 star review, The Guardian described the album as "a collection of lavishly orchestrated pop songs that throb with expressionistic drama, by turns romantic, playful and faintly sinister" adding, "occasionally, Composed sounds indulgent, when Bischoff succumbs to syrupy, symphonic cliche; even so, its ambition and singularity are intoxicating".[4]

Cistern

Bischoff began recording the album Cistern in an empty two million gallon underground water tank under Fort Worden in Port Townsend, Washington. The size of the space was a huge factor in the development of the album. In an interview Bischoff described how "the vast emptiness of the cistern generates a reverb decay that lasts 45 seconds. That means, if you snap your fingers, the sound lasts 45 seconds. That amount of reverberation is an absolutely wild environment to try to create music in".[5] This led to "a record intrinsically linked to the space in which it was conceived. A space which forced Bischoff to slow down, to reflect, to draw on his childhood growing up on a sailing boat - an unexpected journey of rediscovery, from the city back to the Pacific Ocean".[6]

Critical reception

Bischoff has also been called a "pop polymath"[7] (The New York Times), a "Seattle phenom" (The New Yorker), and "the missing link between the sombre undertones of Ennio Morricone and the unpredictability of John Cale"[8] (New Musical Express).

In 2013, Bischoff was interviewed by Terry Gross for her NPR show Fresh Air, where he spoke largely about his unique childhood growing up on a sailboat, and the unconventional process by which he recorded his album Composed.[9]

Awards and Nominations

Bischoff was a finalist for The Stranger's Music Genius Award in 2013[10] and was named Seattle's Best Collaborator by the Seattle Weekly in 2014.[11]

Discography

As Jherek Bischoff

As Ribbons

As part of Parenthetical Girls

  • Privilege (Abridged) (2013)
  • Privilege, Pt. V: Portrait of a Reputation (2012)
  • Privilege, Pt. IV: Sympathy For Spastics (2011)
  • Privilege, Pt. III: Mend & Make Do (2011)
  • Privilege, Pt. II: The Past, Imperfect (2010)
  • Privilege, Pt. I: On Death & Endearments (2010)
  • Morrissey/The Smiths - 7" Split with Xiu Xiu (2009)
  • The Scottish Play (2009)
  • Entanglements (2008)
  • Safe as Houses (2006)
  • (((GRRRLS))) (2004)

As part of Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra

As part of Jason Webley

As part of Led to Sea

  • Into the Darkening Sky (2010)
  • Led to Sea (2008)

As part of Degenerate Art Ensemble

  • Sonic Tales (2009)
  • Cuckoo Crow (2006)
  • The Bastress (2005)
  • Look-Away Popeye (2003)

As part of The Dead Science

  • Villainaire (2008)
  • Crepuscule with The Dead Science EP (2006)
  • Frost Giant (2005)
  • Bird Bones in the Bughouse EP (2004)
  • Submariner (2003)

As part of Casiotone For The Painfully Alone

As part of Xiu Xiu

Other Collaborations

References

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External links

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