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Tom Cora
born Thomas Henry Corra (September 14, 1953 - April 9, 1998)

A longtime fixture of the New York City downtown music scene, cellist, composer and improviser Tom Cora was best known in avant-jazz circles, although his eclectic pursuits led him in a wide variety of musical directions.

Born in Yancey Mills, Virginia, Tom Cora made his musical debut as drummer on a local television program, DandyDoodleShow. Reared on the gospel, blues and country music of the Appalachians, he passed the mid-seventies as guitarist with the house-band of a Washington, DC jazz club. He then suddenly abandoned the guitar and took up the cello instead. Cora secluded himself and studied cello with Casals' student, Luis Garcia-Renart. During this time he explored non-idiomatic improvising and Turkish and Eastern European folk music, as well as constructing instruments for his group, The Moose Skowron Tuned Metal Ensemble. He also studied under the vibraphonist Karl Berger at Creative Music Studios in Woodstock, N.Y.

For two years, prior to the age of Reagan, he led a government funded group that spent its summers performing at various ports along the Hudson River, aboard the Floating Foundation of Photography; and he toured Europe with a group led by Karl Berger that included Lee Konitz and Don Cherry.

By 1979 Tom had moved to New York where he began an extended working relationship with Shockabilly guitarist Eugene Chadbourne, introducing the cello to the honky tonk circuits of North America. Between stints on the road with Chadbourne he became a familiar face in the improvising clubs and venues of New York alongside John Zorn, Wayne Horvitz, David Moss, Toshinori Kondo and others. There followed the formation of CURLEW, a collaboration with George Cartwright, whose records won much recognition for helping define new areas of rhythmic music.

In the summer of '82 Tom Cora and Fred Frith formed SKELETON CREW. It was based on the premise of stretching the resources of the minimum number of people in the maximum number of ways. They divided up the drum kit between them and played it at the same time as their other instruments, an extension of the one-man-band principle. Tom took up the bass guitar and began constructing musical contraptions to be played with the feet, thus throwing himself into a four-limbed approach to music. During its five years, the last two of which it became a trio with Zeena Parkins. Skeleton Crew performed hundreds of concerts in North America, Europe and Japan, including an extensive tour of Eastern Europe. Dave Newhouse joined for a while the duo playing saxophone in 1982.

1986 was the year that Tom began in earnest to address himself to the problem of the solo concert. The problem lay in the fact that the prospect of carrying a concert-length performance single-handedly seemed deeply frightening to the budding cellist, but that was also part of the attraction. Tom honed the solo to a deft balancing act of risk and intention which has been burned into the memory of audiences all over North America, Europe and Japan.

Meanwhile, Cora was no stranger to collaboration: CURLEW was reviving itself as a performing and touring band; NIMAL, with Momo Rossel, was born; a duo with Hans Reichel was not only a meeting of strings but a meeting of daxophone and daxello; the collective FRAME (with E. Sharp, N. Rothenberg and P. Hollinger) toured what was then called the Soviet Union; and THIRD PERSON was born from live collaborations with percussionist Samm Bennett. This trio, with the third position constantly shifting, documented a year of live concerts at the Knitting Factory with their first CD, The Bends. Third persons have included Don Byron, George Cartwright, Chris Cochrane, Nic Collins, Catherine Jauniaux, Myra Melford, Zeena Parkins and Marc Ribot.

In 1990 Tom took a week-long pause from a European tour to rehearse and play two concerts as a guest with the veteran Dutch band, THE EX. Though the two had been longtime mutual admirers, little did they know at this first meeting that they were to be hurled directly into some years of intense collaboration together; collaboration in the truest sense. Two CDs and hundreds of worldwide concerts.

The Dutch connection also meant a two month residency at STEIM, the electro-acoustic research center in Amsterdam where Tom tailored a live sampling and triggering system to his four-limbed approach, which was unveiled with a 25 concert solo tour in the Fall of '92. Though most visible as a performer in recent years, Cora has been equally occupied in less nomadic activities: composition commissions from Guy Klucevsek and Ralph Records; film music for the National Film Board of Canada; music for the video The Misfits, a documentary of 30 years of the Fluxus movement; a Bessie award-winning composition for longtime collaborator choreographer Donna Uchizono; a NewYork Foundation for the Arts Fellowship; and a solo cello film score for Dziga Vertov's, Man With the Movie Camera, commissioned by the American Museum of the Moving Image. This turned into more than 30 live performances in Europe (late '94/early '95), with solo cello in front of Vertov's city symphony. Cora was recently awarded a Meet the Composer Commissioning Grant to realize an ensemble score for Man with the Movie Camera. It will be performed live with the film at several North American venues in the Spring of '96.

In 1996 Tom finds himself once again collaborating with Fred Frith on Etymology, a sound sample library on CD-ROM. This license-free CD-ROM contains the sonic sounds and wire manipulation techniques of Fred Frith and Tom Cora. In the AIFF format, Etymology is designed for musicians and sound designers who use digital audio workstations on the Mac O/S platform. Sound designer, Thomas Dimuzio is producing Etymology for Rarefaction.

ROOF, the meeting place of Tom Cora, Phil Minton, Luc Ex and Michael Vatcher. It was not just a collective, but a band whose highly articulate improvisational spirit serves tightly rehearsed compositions. The members­ widely differing backgrounds belie a pointed empathy as often at the service of the subversion of expectations as in the affirmation and joy of collective music making.

Tom Cora died of melanoma in 1998 at a hospital in Draguignan, in the south of France, where he lived with his wife, singer Catherine Jauniaux, and their son. He was 44.

A month after Cora's death, a benefit concert in aid of his family was held at the Knitting Factory with appearances by Catherine Jauniaux, Fred Frith, George Cartwright, Zeena Parkins and others.

In 1999 John Zorn released on his label Tzadik "Hallelujah, Anyway - Remembering Tom Cora", a two CD set featuring a selection of recordings by Cora and some of the groups he recorded with, and also tribute music made by his friends.

This special 2-CD set memorial features poignant tributes by many of Tom’s most distinguished collaborators, new recordings of Tom’s most memorable compositions, and some of Tom’s most important recordings, creating an exciting and vivid portrait of one of the most original musicians in new music.

All profits from this set will go directly to Tom Cora's surviving family.

(Tzadik -1999)

* cilck on album cover for more informations and purchasing link

Solo

as Co-Leader

Skeleton Crew

Curlew

Third Person

Nimal

Roof

The Hat Shoes

Various Artists

Collaborations