Musician Arthur Jeffes has resurrected the unusual music of his father’s famous Penguin Cafe Orchestra, writes Diane Parkes.

When composer and musician Simon Jeffes died of a brain tumour in 1997 many feared his quixotic tunes would die with him.

Simon’s Penguin Cafe Orchestra, which was created in the 1970s, has been called everything from folk to classical and experimental to interpretive.

But whatever the label applied, it is difficult to deny that Jeffes’ music was distinctive.

Tunes such as Music for a Found Harmonium, which was composed for a harmonium Simon discovered abandoned on a Kyoto street, and Telephone and Rubber Band, inspired by a confused telephone call, are in many ways unique.

The orchestra’s music has featured in countless films, adverts and samples and also forms the score to Birmingham Royal Ballet director David Bintley’s work Still Life at the Penguin Cafe.

Now Simon’s mantle has been taken up by his son Arthur, whose Penguin Cafe are due to play at Birmingham Town Hall next week.

Arthur was just 19 and on his first term of a degree in archaeology at Cambridge University when his father died. At the time he had no plans to follow in Simon’s footsteps.

But 10 years later Arthur took to the stage for a memorial concert, playing alongside former Penguin Cafe Orchestra members. “That concert was something distinctive, it was a way of closing the cycle,” says Arthur, now 32.

“There were no plans to do anything more than that, it was the end of an era.

“But a couple of years later I was asked to play some music at a festival in Italy in a totally unconnected way.”

Arthur gathered a handful of musicians for that festival and together they performed a number of his father’s tracks.

“It all went really well and after that we were asked by a few people to play other festivals and do a few Christmas parties.”

The handful grew to the current line-up of nine musicians and the group took on the name of Penguin Cafe.

“I struggled with it a lot,” admits Arthur. “If you asked me to write down on paper reasons why it was not a

good idea there would be a lot of them. But I had grown up with that music, it was in my bones, and it just felt right to play it.”

Over the past couple of years Penguin Cafe has performed at festivals and venues and earlier this year released a new album A Matter of Life.

When performing they blend old and new.

“Probably less than a quarter of what we play is new material but it was important for us to make our own music,” says Arthur.

"Even though it is my dad, I didn’t want us to be just a cover band, I didn’t want everything nailed down like a museum.”

“But all of the new stuff is very much based in the sensibility of my dad. It comes out of what he was doing.”

But in the hands of different musicians, those tunes also take on a new life.

“My dad always said he wrote for musicians, not instruments and that is the start point for his original music. Depending on who is playing it, there will be changes. The point is that the music has a kind of controlled wildness. It it like a bonsai tree because it is wild and random but it also has set parameters.

“We couldn’t play without us keeping to those parameters but, within that, we also allow each musician some opportunity to play to their strengths.”

Each concert also takes on its own identity.

“One of the things I really enjoy about these summer concerts is that it gives us the chance to play pieces we have not played before,” says Arthur.

“We are playing a new track at each concert. We decide in the week before and practice it. The choice depends a lot on who is around to practice.

“But my dad’s music really comes into its own when it is performed live and can be played in this very fluid kind of way.”

It can be a tricky business mastering Simon’s idiosyncratic sound.

“Some of his stuff is very difficult,” says Arthur. “It is like that game where you pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time. And, particularly with the musicians that we have, it is easy to get carried away and give it more of a heavy sound than it did have. But then it is also good that it can be played in a slightly different way.”

Simon did not plan on being a musician and only decided to concentrate on his talents after taking a masters in composition.

“I didn’t study music and was studying archaeology – but I wasn’t a very good archaeologist, I was too lazy,” says Simon, whose mum is the sculptor Emily Young.

“I had always been around music but my dad never railroaded me into it. It was when I was about 24 or 25 that I realised it was what I wanted to do.

“Now I just hope we can carry on playing as the Penguin Cafe and keeping my dad’s music where it should be – live and in front of an audience.”

* Penguin Cafe play Birmingham Town Hall on July 8. For tickets call 0121 780 3333 or go to www.thsh.co.uk