Loren Mazzacane Connors
Encyclopedia
Loren MazzaCane Connors (born October 22, 1949, New Haven
, Connecticut
) is an American
experimental music
ian who has recorded and performed under several different names: Guitar Roberts, Loren Mazzacane, Loren Mattei, and currently Loren Connors. He is a prolific collaborator who has worked with artists including Alan Licht
, Jim O'Rourke
, bassist Darin Gray
, Thurston Moore
, John Fahey
, Keiji Haino
, Jandek
, Suzanne Langille, avant garde poet Steve Dalachinsky
, Chan Marshall, Margarida Garcia, Kath Bloom
and blues musician Robert Crotty.
, noted blues historian who served as head of the National Endowment for the Arts under the Clinton Administration. Connors made contact with him in the late 1970s, while Dr. Ferris was teaching at Yale University. Although Ferris did not know it at the time, Connors was the janitor who cleaned his office. Many years later, Ferris wrote the liner notes for a sweeping compilation CD set of Connors's seven-inch recordings, called "Night Through."
Best known as a composer
and improviser
on acoustic
and electric guitar
, Connors has released over 50 albums, on commercial record labels such as Table of the Elements
and Father Yod
as well as on his own Black Label, St. Joan and Daggett self publishing imprints. They include spare solo and duo blues, ensemble experimental jazz
, noise
, drones
, and folk music
. From 1981-1984, Connors released six limited edition albums with singer-guitarist Kath Bloom
. In the mid-1980s, Connors took a partial break from music and honed his compositional skills by focusing on the art of haiku. He received the 1987 Lafcadio Hearn Award, and he and life partner Suzanne Langille also co-wrote an article on blues and haiku, "The Dancing Ear," published in the Haiku Society of America's journal. (A book of Connors's work from this period, "Autumn Sun," was re-released by Thurston Moore
and Byron Coley
a couple decades later.) He wrote under the name Loren Mattei, and a music recording from this period, "Ribbon o' Blues," was also released under that name.
Soon after returning to music, Connors began working with layered tracks. The first of this period was the "In Pittsburgh" album, released in 1989 (reissued by Dexter Cigar label in 1996). This approach to recording continued through the 1990s. Langille's vocals were featured on several recordings, and she also helped edit the music. Many of these releases were on the RoadCone label, managed by Mike Hinds. Such recordings were interspersed with live performances of guitar duets. The first of those recordings was with Japanese guitarist Keiji Haino
, introduced to Connors by WFMU DJ David Newgarten, who then produced the recording, released in 1995. This was followed by the first of several recordings with guitarist Alan Licht
in 1996.
In the mid-to-late 1990s he led the blues-rock
group Haunted House with Langille, Andrew Burnes (of the band San Agustin), and percussionist Neel Murgai. Connors and Langille also joined with San Agustin's David Daniell
and Burnes for a recording on the Secretly Canadian label.
In the late 1990s, Connors and John Fahey
met at a Chicago event, introduced by guitarist Jim O'Rourke. Fahey, who died in 2001, included on his last CD, released posthumously in 2003, a piece called, "Red Cross, Disciple of Christ Today (for Guitar Roberts)," referring to Connors's nickname. In the mid-2000s, Connors met and performed with Jandek
, a long-time improviser whose unique independence and originality had often been compared to Connors's. Since the 1990s, Connors's main label has been Family Vineyard, managed by Eric Weddle.
Connors was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease
in 1992. He continues to perform and record. Some of Connors's works are archived at the Blues Archive of the University of Mississippi. The University of South Carolina also has a collection of his music.
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
, Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
) is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
experimental music
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
ian who has recorded and performed under several different names: Guitar Roberts, Loren Mazzacane, Loren Mattei, and currently Loren Connors. He is a prolific collaborator who has worked with artists including Alan Licht
Alan Licht
Alan Licht is an American guitarist and composer, whose work combines elements of pop, noise, free jazz and minimalism. He is also a writer and journalist.-Biography:Licht was born in New Jersey in 1968...
, Jim O'Rourke
Jim O'Rourke (musician)
Jim O'Rourke is an Irish-American musician and record producer. He was long associated with the Chicago experimental and improv scene...
, bassist Darin Gray
Darin Gray
Darin Gray is an American musician and composer based in Edwardsville, Illinois. He is best known for playing bass in St. Louis' Dazzling Killmen, and with Jim O'Rourke in Brise-Glace and on O'Rourke's solo albums....
, Thurston Moore
Thurston Moore
Thurston Joseph Moore is an American musician best known as a singer, songwriter and guitarist of Sonic Youth. He has also participated in many solo and group collaborations outside of Sonic Youth, as well as running the Ecstatic Peace! record label...
, John Fahey
John Fahey (musician)
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
, Keiji Haino
Keiji Haino
Keiji Haino born May 3, 1952 in Chiba, Japan, and currently residing in Tokyo, is a Japanese musician whose work has included rock, free improvisation, noise, singer-songwriter, solo percussion, psychedelic, minimalism and drone styles...
, Jandek
Jandek
Jandek is the musical project of an anonymous outsider musician who operates out of Houston, Texas. Since 1978, Jandek has self-released over 60 albums of unusual, often emotionally dissolute folk and blues songs without ever granting more than the occasional interview or providing any biographical...
, Suzanne Langille, avant garde poet Steve Dalachinsky
Steve Dalachinsky
Steve Dalachinsky is a New York downtown poet. He is active in the poetry, music, art and music- Free jazz scene.Dalachinsky was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1946...
, Chan Marshall, Margarida Garcia, Kath Bloom
Kath Bloom
Katherine Bloom is an American singer-songwriter based in Litchfield, Connecticut, whose sad voice often accompanies simple folk melodies.The daughter of oboist Robert Bloom, Kath grew up in New Haven, where she studied the cello as a child and started playing the guitar when she was a teenager...
and blues musician Robert Crotty.
Biography
An early champion of Connors's music was Dr. William FerrisWilliam R. Ferris
William Reynolds Ferris is an American author and scholar and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities...
, noted blues historian who served as head of the National Endowment for the Arts under the Clinton Administration. Connors made contact with him in the late 1970s, while Dr. Ferris was teaching at Yale University. Although Ferris did not know it at the time, Connors was the janitor who cleaned his office. Many years later, Ferris wrote the liner notes for a sweeping compilation CD set of Connors's seven-inch recordings, called "Night Through."
Best known as a composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and improviser
Free improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician involved. The term can refer to both a technique and as a recognizable genre in its own right....
on acoustic
Classical guitar
The classical guitar is a 6-stringed plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones...
and electric guitar
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
, Connors has released over 50 albums, on commercial record labels such as Table of the Elements
Table of the Elements
Table of the Elements is an American record label. It concentrates on re-released and specially recorded experimental music, including many of the great avant garde musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries — John Cale, Tony Conrad and La Monte Young, for instance — as well as...
and Father Yod
Father Yod
Father Yod or YaHoWha was the American owner of a Los Angeles health food restaurant on the Sunset Strip who founded a spiritual commune in the Hollywood Hills known as the Source Family...
as well as on his own Black Label, St. Joan and Daggett self publishing imprints. They include spare solo and duo blues, ensemble experimental jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, noise
Noise music
Noise music is a term used to describe varieties of avant-garde music and sound art that may use elements such as cacophony, dissonance, atonality, noise, indeterminacy, and repetition in their realization. Noise music can feature distortion, various types of acoustically or electronically...
, drones
Drone music
Drone music is a minimalist musical style that emphasizes the use of sustained or repeated sounds, notes, or tone-clusters – called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively slight harmonic variations throughout each piece compared to other musics...
, and folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
. From 1981-1984, Connors released six limited edition albums with singer-guitarist Kath Bloom
Kath Bloom
Katherine Bloom is an American singer-songwriter based in Litchfield, Connecticut, whose sad voice often accompanies simple folk melodies.The daughter of oboist Robert Bloom, Kath grew up in New Haven, where she studied the cello as a child and started playing the guitar when she was a teenager...
. In the mid-1980s, Connors took a partial break from music and honed his compositional skills by focusing on the art of haiku. He received the 1987 Lafcadio Hearn Award, and he and life partner Suzanne Langille also co-wrote an article on blues and haiku, "The Dancing Ear," published in the Haiku Society of America's journal. (A book of Connors's work from this period, "Autumn Sun," was re-released by Thurston Moore
Thurston Moore
Thurston Joseph Moore is an American musician best known as a singer, songwriter and guitarist of Sonic Youth. He has also participated in many solo and group collaborations outside of Sonic Youth, as well as running the Ecstatic Peace! record label...
and Byron Coley
Byron Coley
Byron Coley is an American music critic who wrote prominently for Forced Exposure magazine in the 1980s, starting with their fifth issue until the magazine ceased publication in 1993. Prior to Forced Exposure, he wrote for NY Rocker, Boston Rock, and Take It! magazine. Coley is one of the first...
a couple decades later.) He wrote under the name Loren Mattei, and a music recording from this period, "Ribbon o' Blues," was also released under that name.
Soon after returning to music, Connors began working with layered tracks. The first of this period was the "In Pittsburgh" album, released in 1989 (reissued by Dexter Cigar label in 1996). This approach to recording continued through the 1990s. Langille's vocals were featured on several recordings, and she also helped edit the music. Many of these releases were on the RoadCone label, managed by Mike Hinds. Such recordings were interspersed with live performances of guitar duets. The first of those recordings was with Japanese guitarist Keiji Haino
Keiji Haino
Keiji Haino born May 3, 1952 in Chiba, Japan, and currently residing in Tokyo, is a Japanese musician whose work has included rock, free improvisation, noise, singer-songwriter, solo percussion, psychedelic, minimalism and drone styles...
, introduced to Connors by WFMU DJ David Newgarten, who then produced the recording, released in 1995. This was followed by the first of several recordings with guitarist Alan Licht
Alan Licht
Alan Licht is an American guitarist and composer, whose work combines elements of pop, noise, free jazz and minimalism. He is also a writer and journalist.-Biography:Licht was born in New Jersey in 1968...
in 1996.
In the mid-to-late 1990s he led the blues-rock
Blues-rock
Blues rock is a hybrid musical genre combining bluesy improvisations over the 12-bar blues and extended boogie jams with rock and roll styles. The core of the blues rock sound is created by the electric guitar, piano, bass guitar and drum kit, with the electric guitar usually amplified through a...
group Haunted House with Langille, Andrew Burnes (of the band San Agustin), and percussionist Neel Murgai. Connors and Langille also joined with San Agustin's David Daniell
David Daniell (musician)
David Daniell is an American guitarist and composer active in experimental music, improvisation and electroacoustic composition.He has been active with the trio San Agustin since 1996...
and Burnes for a recording on the Secretly Canadian label.
In the late 1990s, Connors and John Fahey
John Fahey (musician)
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
met at a Chicago event, introduced by guitarist Jim O'Rourke. Fahey, who died in 2001, included on his last CD, released posthumously in 2003, a piece called, "Red Cross, Disciple of Christ Today (for Guitar Roberts)," referring to Connors's nickname. In the mid-2000s, Connors met and performed with Jandek
Jandek
Jandek is the musical project of an anonymous outsider musician who operates out of Houston, Texas. Since 1978, Jandek has self-released over 60 albums of unusual, often emotionally dissolute folk and blues songs without ever granting more than the occasional interview or providing any biographical...
, a long-time improviser whose unique independence and originality had often been compared to Connors's. Since the 1990s, Connors's main label has been Family Vineyard, managed by Eric Weddle.
Connors was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system...
in 1992. He continues to perform and record. Some of Connors's works are archived at the Blues Archive of the University of Mississippi. The University of South Carolina also has a collection of his music.
Selected recordings
- Two Nice Catholic Boys (Family Vineyard 2009), with Jim O'RourkeJim O'Rourke (musician)Jim O'Rourke is an Irish-American musician and record producer. He was long associated with the Chicago experimental and improv scene...
- Sails (Table of the Elements 2006), with John FaheyJohn Fahey (musician)John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
- Night Through: Singles and collected works 1976-2004 (Family Vineyard 2006)(incl. Robert Crotty, Suzanne Langille, Haunted House)
- Departing of a Dream Volumes 1,2 and 3(Family Vineyard, early 2000s)
- Suzanne Langille, Loren MazzaCane Connors, Andrew Burnes and David Daniell (Secretly Canadian 1999)
- Hoffman Estates (Drag City 1998), with Alan LichtAlan LichtAlan Licht is an American guitarist and composer, whose work combines elements of pop, noise, free jazz and minimalism. He is also a writer and journalist.-Biography:Licht was born in New Jersey in 1968...
, Jim O'RourkeJim O'Rourke (musician)Jim O'Rourke is an Irish-American musician and record producer. He was long associated with the Chicago experimental and improv scene...
and others - Evangeline (Road Cone 1998)
- In Bern (Hat Hut 1997), with Jim O'RourkeJim O'Rourke (musician)Jim O'Rourke is an Irish-American musician and record producer. He was long associated with the Chicago experimental and improv scene...
- Ninth Avenue (Black Label 1995)
- Moonyean (RoadCone 1994)
- Hell's Kitchen Park (Black Label 1993), with Suzanne Langille
- Rooms (St. Joan 1990), with Suzanne Langille
- Blues: The Dark Paintings of Mark Rothko (St. Joan 1990)
- In Pittsburgh (St. Joan 1989; Dexter's Cigar 1996), with Suzanne Langille
- Moonlight (St. Joan 1984), with Kath Bloom (to be re-released on Chapter Music 2009)
- Restless, Faithful, Desperate (St. Joan 1983), with Kath Bloom (re-released on Chapter Music 2009)
- Solo Acoustic Guitar Improvisations Vol. 1-9 1979-1980 (Daggett Records series, re-released on Ecstatic Peace/Father Yod 1999)