Patrick O'Hearn
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Patrick O’Hearn
| For The Record... |
| Born on September 6, 1954; married. Began career as bass player in jazz combo; studio musician, 1970s; member of Frank Zappa’s band in the 1970s and appeared on Zappa’s records, beginning with Läther, 1978; cofounder of Group 87, a modern jazz group, recorded eponymous debut for CBS Records, 1980; bass player with New Wave act Missing Persons, early 1980s; formed Mushroom, a San Francisco modern jazz ensemble for which he played drums, 1998; released several solo albums of ambient music, beginning with Ancient Dreams, 1985; writer of musical scores for film and television. Addresses: Website—Patrick O’Hearn Official Website: http://www.patrickohearn.com. E-mail—patrick@patrick ohearn.com. |
Bassist, drummer, composer
Contemporary electronic composer and musician Patrick O’Hearn has released several quietly acclaimed solo records since the mid-1980s. A jazz bassist and drummer who has played with both Frank Zappa and the New Wave band Missing Persons, O’Hearn notes that his sound is sometimes difficult to categorize. He is often pegged as a New Age musician, but prefers to describe his sound as "’mood’ music," he explained to Michael Foster of Ambient Visions online. "Sounds funny and a bit retro, but it just may be ambiguous enough to fit the bill."
O’Hearn was bom on September 6, 1954, and grew up in a family full of artists, musicians, and actors. As O’Hearn recalled in the interview with Foster, "every get-together or holiday was an open invitation for a jam session…. I was encouraged to grab any instrument I could produce a favorable sound upon and join in." O’Hearn’s mother played in a nightclub combo, and by the age of 15 he was playing with her band and had even earned his musicians’ union card. Over the next few years, he enjoyed steady work on the jazz scene, and was eventually recruited by avant-garde rock experimentalist Frank Zappa. He appeared on the 1978 release Läther, and in the following year’s Sheik Yerbouti, one of Zappa’s few commercially successful releases. O’Hearn can be seen in the 1979 Zappa concert film Baby Snakes as well.
In the Ambient Visions interview, O’Hearn described Zappa, who died in 1993, as "perhaps the last of a breed of composer, and I would cite Duke Ellington as an example as well, who used a large ensemble of fine musicians as an instrument." In 1980, O’Hearn co-founded Group 87, an experimental electronic music act with guitarist Peter Maunu and trumpeter/ keyboardist Mark Isham. The trio record a self-titled debut for CBS Records in 1980, on which a former bandmate from O’Hearn’s Zappa days, Terry Bozzio, played drums. O’Hearn left Group 87 before its second recording, and joined a band called Missing Persons that Bozzio started with his wife, Dale Bozzio, and another member of Zappa’s band, Warren Cuccurullo. O’Hearn served as bass player for Missing Persons during their most successful period, before stress from the disintegrating Bozzio marriage split the band. Several of the band’s songs became hits, including "Words," "Destination Unknown," and "Walking in LA." The group was also known for its outlandish stage gear, including futuristic outfits for the men and vixenish bondage gear for frontwoman Dale Bozzio.
O’Hearn later said that the Missing Persons gig was initially enjoyable. "Missing Persons was fun, for the most part, while it lasted, but I didn’t consider it a pinnacle," he told Foster. "It was more an opportunity to play music and travel the world with good friends and musicians." The personality clashes wore everyone down and caused O’Hearn to explore his solo-career options. "Rehearsals, which were nightly, became very stressful and I would return home afterward to my apartment where I had a small project studio, and would begin improvising and recording musical ideas that were deliberately far afield from what I had been doing earlier with the band."
A drummer friend, Peter Baumann of Tangerine Dream, had recently launched his own label, and invited O’Hearn to join his charter roster. Their instrumental tracks were released as Ancient Dreams in 1985. "I wasn’t sure anyone would care for it," he recalled in the interview with Foster, noting that his friends were enthusiastic about his work, but he wondered if anyone else would like it. "The beauty of those days was that I could have cared less. I loved it and that was all that mattered!"
Ancient Dreams proved a surprising success and garnered a cult following among music aficionados. Private Music, Baumann’s label, had decided to release it in CD format only, a relatively new medium at the time, which added to its allure among cognoscenti. O’Hearn’s subsequent records for the label in the late 1980s also did well, and include Between Two Worlds and River’s Gonna Rise.
O’Hearn wrote and recorded his solo records at home in a state-of-the-art studio. Around the time of his 1989 Eldorado release, he moved his family from the Los Angeles area to Atlanta. A poorly conceived dance-club remix album of his songs, Mix-Up, stunned fans in 1990, but by this time O’Hearn had found lucrative side
work writing film and television scores. One of his first credits was for the CBS nighttime drama Falcon Crest.
O’Hearn eventually formed his own label, Deep Cave, and released Trust in 1995. It earned him a Grammy Award nomination in the New Age category that year. Metaphor followed in 1996, but O’Hearn experienced problems with his distributor, and the record disappeared from stores. At the onset of the Internet-commerce boom in the mid-1990s, O’Hearn began working with online retailer Amazon.com to sell his Deep Cave releases.
O’Hearn folded the Deep Cave label and relocated again, this time to Bat Cave, North Carolina, in Blue Ridge Mountains. He formed his own modern jazz ensemble, Mushroom, in 1998. Other members included Jon Birdsong, who had played with Beck, horn player Carroll Ashby, guitarist/saxophonist Eric Person, and keyboard player Michael Holt, among others. All had strong links to the rock scene and were jazz hobbyists interested in exploring new sounds. They drew upon the San Francisco psychedelic era of the 1960s as well as British progressive rock and early German electronica from the 1970s. "We finally decided to take stuff like old King Crimson and Miles Davis and go for it on a totally improvisational level," O’Hearn explained to Down Beat writer Mitch Myers about Mushroom’s creative focus.
Mushroom released Foxy Music in 2001. "With oblique references toward American culture in its song titles as well as in its music, Mushroom stands apart from straight-laced fusion ensembles," noted Myers in Down Beat. The group also put out a companion remix album, Compared to What, which Myers asserted "straddles a sonic realm somewhere between reconstructed jazz-rock and timeless German psychedelia."
In 2001 O’Hearn also released his first solo record in four years, So Flows the Current. As he told Foster in Ambient Visions, it "took along time to make…. It’s a nice melding of ideas and mood and I think it shows a maturing over my earlier records." Guest musicians include his former Group 87 bandmate Maunu and cellist Pat Johnston. Much of the record was recorded live in the studio, which forced O’Hearn to break his longtime reliance on synthesizers and software that he had used in his previous solo releases.
O’Hearn planned to record another work with Maunu, and still composed scores for films and television. He found this work to be much easier than working on his own records. "With a film, you are presented with an already defined template, that being the narrative, plot or story line," he explained to Ambient Visions’ Foster. "You read the script or watch the rough cut of the film and the ideas start rolling." He pointed out that this was "much different than pulling an album out of thin air and the challenge of keeping it cohesive."
Selected discography
Ancient Dreams, Private Music, 1985.
Between Two Worlds, Private Music, 1987.
River’s Gonna Rise, Private Music, 1988.
Eldorado, Private Music, 1989
Mix-Up, Private Music, 1990.
Indigo, Private Music, 1991.
The Private Music of Patrick O’Hearn, Private Music, 1992.
Trust, Deep Cave, 1995.
Metaphor, Deep Cave, 1996.
Patrick O’Hearn: A Windham Hill Retrospective, Windham Hill, 1997.
(With Mushroom) Foxy Music, Innerspace, 2001.
So Flows the Current, self-released, 2001.
Sources
Periodicals
Down Beat, December 1996; June 2001.
People, November 26, 1984; November 18, 1985.
Online
"Going with the Flow," Patrick O’Hearn Official Website, http://www.patrickohearn.com/EQMagInterview.HTM (September 12, 2002).
"So Flows the Current: Ambient Visions Talks with Patrick O’Hearn," Patrick O’Hearn Official Website, http://www.patrickohearn.com/AmbientVisionsInterview.HTM (September 12, 2002).
AMG AllMusic Guide: Pop Artists:
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Patrick O'Hearn
- Genres: New Age
Biography
In the early '80s, this bassist and synthesist was mired in the glitz and grind of pop music as a member of the group Missing Persons. Then friend Peter Baumann, best known for his work with Tangerine Dream, made O'Hearn an offer he couldn't refuse. Baumann had visions of starting a record label catering to his first love, contemporary electronic music, and he wanted O'Hearn to become a charter member of the new company. Nearly a decade and a half-dozen albums later, O'Hearn is still amazed at the success of Ancient Dreams, the richly hued debut release that established his career as a solo artist and helped launch the Private Music label. Born in Los Angeles and raised in Oregon, O'Hearn was exposed to a wide variety of music by his parents, who were both working musicians. Though he studied cello, violin, and flute, he gained early experience playing bass with his parents' lounge act. As his musicianship began to excel, he found himself accompanying jazz greats like Joe Henderson, Joe Pass, Tony Williams, and Charles Lloyd. While living in San Francisco in the mid '70s, he played with Frank Zappa and co-founded the visionary progressive band Group 87 with Mark Isham and Peter Maunu before joining Missing Persons. O'Hearn's style reflects all of these experiences within the context of a highly personal electronic sound. During the late '80s, however, his innovative vision seemed to blur under the strain of the commercialism infiltrating the new-age and contemporary instrumental realms. Urged on by increasingly conservative, pop-oriented executives at Private Music, O'Hearn conformed to more conventional song forms on albums like Between Two Worlds and Rivers Gonna Rise. His music suffered from excessive predictability as a result. The record label even released some crass disco mixes of the composer's most tuneful selections on the embarrassing Mix Up. Fortunately, O'Hearn's good musical sense prevailed in the long run. His more recent releases Eldorado and Indigo are both admirable, highly satisfying albums. He is, however, the last remnant of the Private Music label's original roster of innovative, electronic-based instrumentalists. So Flows the Current marked his second release of the new millennium, issued in early 2001. ~ Linda Kohanov, RoviWikipedia on Answers.com:
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Patrick O'Hearn
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This article relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Please add citations from reliable sources. (July 2011) |
Patrick O'Hearn (b. September 6, 1954) is an American multi-instrumentalist musician, composer and recording artist. While his musical repertoire spans a diverse range of music, he is an acclaimed New Age artist in his solo career. To date in his career, he has released 13 solo albums.
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Formative years
Born in Los Angeles and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Patrick O'Hearn began his professional music career at age 15 when he joined the Musicians Union and began playing night clubs in Portland, Oregon. Upon graduating from Sunset High School in 1972, he moved to Seattle. There, he briefly attended Cornish College of the Arts and, as well, studied privately with bassist Gary Peacock.
In 1973 he moved to San Francisco and soon became involved in the vibrant Bay Area jazz scene of that time, playing bass for well-established artists Charles Lloyd, Joe Henderson, Dexter Gordon, Joe Pass, Woody Shaw, Eddie Henderson, and Bobby Hutcherson, as well as with other like-aged young musicians, including Terry Bozzio, Mark Isham and Peter Maunu.
While on tour in Los Angeles in 1976, O'Hearn met musician Frank Zappa, who offered him a job as bass player in his band - a position he held for over two years. During this period, O’Hearn shifted from the acoustic bass to the electric bass guitar (given the requirements of Zappa's arrangements), and also became increasingly interested in electronic music. Zappa encouraged O’Hearn to explore his premium collection of synthesizers, and also introduced him to the technical aspects of intricate physical tape editing as a way of producing compositions (in an era prior to home computers), audio engineering, and home studio audio recording equipment.
In 1979, O'Hearn teamed with trumpet player Mark Isham and guitarist Peter Maunu to form Group 87, an ensemble heavily influenced by the instrumental jazz fusion of Weather Report, as well as the electronic stylings of Kraftwerk and the ambient minimalism of Brian Eno. Although they only produced two LPs — Group 87 in 1980, and A Career in Dada Processing in 1984 — Group 87 would help establish the musical direction of O'Hearn's solo career. Both Isham and Maunu would continue as important collaborators on several of O'Hearn's subsequent solo releases.
In 1981, drummer and former Zappa bandmate Terry Bozzio invited O’Hearn to join his emerging rock/new wave band, Missing Persons along with guitarist and fellow Zappa alumnus Warren Cuccurullo and Dale Bozzio, who had performed vocals in several Zappa productions and recently married Terry. The nature of the music called for O'Hearn to make a further shift — this time, from electric bass to synthesizers. Missing Persons recorded three albums for Capitol Records: Spring Session M (1982), Rhyme & Reason (1984), and Color In Your Life (1986). The band dissolved in early 1986; subsequently, O'Hearn and Terry Bozzio joined with former Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor and former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones for one album, Thunder (1987), and a brief tour. Although both Terry Bozzio and Warren Cuccurullo later contributed to several of O'Hearn's solo albums, O'Hearn declined to take part in the 2001 Missing Persons reunion.
Solo career
Private music
O'Hearn's solo career was spurred in large part by former Tangerine Dream member Peter Baumann, who had been conceiving of a new music label that would showcase progressive instrumental music - a niche earlier explored by Group 87. Baumann formed the Private Music label in late 1984, and signed O'Hearn as a charter artist (along with Mahavishnu Orchestra violinist Jerry Goodman, Roxy Music keyboardist Eddie Jobson, and later, New Age notables Yanni and Suzanne Ciani), and produced O'Hearn's debut solo album, Ancient Dreams (1985).
Signature elements readily manifest in Ancient Dreams: found percussion instruments, hypnotic bass guitar patterns, synthesized pads, and minimalist harmonies. Perhaps biased by his preferred instrument, O'Hearn often adds jazz elements, particularly in his frequent use of the bass guitar (often a fretless bass) as the lead voice.
O'Hearn followed Ancient Dreams with two more albums - Between Two Worlds (1987), which earned the artist his first Grammy nomination, and Rivers Gonna Rise (1988). Notably, the albums gradually became brighter in tone as O'Hearn began to receive greater airplay on jazz and new age radio stations. O'Hearn also co-produced several tracks for guitarist Colin Chin's Intruding on a Silence, featuring Mark Isham on trumpet - as such, the output strongly echoes Group 87's earlier work.
The fourth album, Eldorado (1989), ventured decidedly into the World Music genre - infusing O'Hearn's signature sound with rhythms and timbres drawn from disparate sources such as South America and the Middle East. As such, O'Hearn's arrangements accommodated a wider array of instrumentation - such as human singing and the solo violin (most notably on "Black Delilah".) Commercially, Eldorado performed well among New Age audiences - some tracks remain popular on jazz stations today.
He was also composer of the ninth and last season of Falcon Crest television show on CBS from 1989-90.
An album of techno remixes called Mix Up was released by Private Music in 1990, featuring contributions from popular music producers, including David Frank, Joe "The Butcher" Nicolo, and Carmen Rizzo Jr. However, Mix Up was panned by critics and fans, and remains long out of print. The album was released without O'Hearn knowing about it. He had only agreed to allow some remixes of his material to be experimented with in dance clubs. In a 2001 interview, O'Hearn said that the album was "the brainchild of the A&R department of Private Music ... some of the stuff makes me cringe to this day." [1]
Yet another major turning point in O'Hearn's music career was marked with the release of Indigo (1991). Ostensibly billed by the label as being "In the tradition of Ancient Dreams", O'Hearn downplayed the use of synthesizers and instead focused on manipulating space, acoustics, and textures to create an album with a cohesive consistency of tone.
Following the commercial success of Yanni's compilation albums, Private Music issued a retrospective, The Private Music of Patrick O'Hearn, in 1992. This contained three previously unreleased tracks that have a similar feel and ambience to Rivers Gonna Rise, and are likely to have been recorded around the time of that album. Also in 1992 O'Hearn composed and performed the music score for White Sands, a police thriller starring Willem Dafoe and Samuel L. Jackson. (The movie was directed by Roger Donaldson, of Cocktail fame.)
Deep Cave/Paras Recordings
After a four year absence of solo album recording, a period primarily focused on composing film scores, O'Hearn released Trust in 1995 under the newly formed Deep Cave record label. Featuring contributions from David Torn and former bandmates Terry Bozzio and Warren Cuccurullo, Trust earned O'Hearn his second Grammy nomination. Shortly after the release of his next album, Metaphor (1996), the Deep Cave record label folded.
O'Hearn's next project, So Flows the Current (2001), was recorded over a three year period from 1997 to 2000. The album saw O'Hearn move away from the MIDI-centric style of music production and performance, relying more on musicians playing live together in the studio. The result is a rich tapestry of earthy and yet atmospheric music, which actually yielded a subsequent album in 2006 (see below). So Flows the Current is O'Hearn's only album released on the Paras Recordings label.
Patrickohearn.com
Beautiful World was O'Hearn's next release in 2003, and it was voted the #1 album on the nationally syndicated radio program Echoes. This was followed by Slow Time in 2005, which marked a departure for O'Hearn, in that he ventured into the experimental realm characterized by musical movements of the 20th century - including references to Steve Roach and Pierre Boulez.
In 2006, O'Hearn released three recordings via online delivery only. These are The So Flows Sessions (previously unreleased material from the same recording sessions in 1997-2000 that produced So Flows The Current). Very often, tracks recorded but excluded from an album's release are somewhat inferior in quality to the songs that made the album, but the material on The So Flows Sessions is very strong indeed and it stands up as an album on its own. Also released in 2006 was the soundtrack to the stage play Simpatico (originally recorded in 1994), as well as the soundtrack EP to the short film The Wheelhouse. The next year in 2007 O'Hearn released the CD Glaciation, which pays homage to the Earth's Arctic regions.
In 2008, he played bass on John Hiatt's "Same Old Man" studio release, and toured with Hiatt as a member of the "Ageless Beauties". 2009 saw O'Hearn recording again with John Hiatt and the Ageless Beauties. "Open Road" is due for release in March 2010 with touring to follow.
O'Hearn's 13th album Transitions was released digitally on August 23, 2011. The CD will be sold at record stores and online on October 4.
O'Hearn's daughter, Rachel is currently an electronic musician, performing under the name Chromatiq.[2]
Discography
Solo albums
| Release date | Title | Label |
|---|---|---|
| 1985 | Ancient Dreams | Private Music |
| 1987 | Between Two Worlds | Private Music |
| 1988 | Rivers Gonna Rise | Private Music |
| Aug 4, 1989 | Eldorado | Private Music |
| Sep 24, 1991 | Indigo | Private Music |
| July 25, 1995 | Trust | Deep Cave |
| March 7, 1996 | Metaphor | Deep Cave |
| Feb 20, 2001 | So Flows the Current | Paras Recordings |
| Nov 4, 2003 | Beautiful World | Patrick O'Hearn |
| June 28, 2005 | Slow Time | Patrick O'Hearn |
| July 7, 2006 | The So Flows Sessions | (iTunes) |
| Aug 22, 2007 | Glaciation | Patrick O'Hearn |
| Aug 23, 2011 | Transitions | Patrick O'Hearn |
Compilations
| Release date | Title | Label |
|---|---|---|
| 1990 | Mix-Up (Remixes by other producers) | Private Music |
| Nov 10, 1992 | The Private Music of Patrick O'Hearn | Private Music |
| July 15, 1997 | A Windham Hill Retrospective | Windham Hill |
Soundtracks
| Release date | Title | Label |
|---|---|---|
| 1992 | White Sands | Morgan Creek |
| 1996 | Crying Freeman | Ariola |
| 2006 | The Wheelhouse | (iTunes) |
| 2006 | Simpatico | (iTunes) |
Film soundtracks not released
| Film released | Title | Label |
|---|---|---|
| 1988 | The Destroyer | Unreleased |
| 1991 | Heaven is a Playground | Unreleased |
| 1993 | Father Hood | Unreleased |
| 1994 | Silent Tongue | Unreleased |
| 1995 | As Good As Dead (TV) | Unreleased |
| 1999 | Alien Cargo (TV) | Unreleased |
| 2000 | Border Patrol (TV) | Unreleased |
See also
Notes
- ^ "Interview with Patrick O'Hearn". Ambient Visions. http://www.ambientvisions.com/ohearn.htm. Retrieved 2008-01-20.
- ^ Chromatiq information @Sine Language Bass Agency Retrieved 1-9-2012.
External links
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Mentioned in
The Private Music Sampler, Vol. 5
(1990 Album by Various Artists)
Private Music Video Collection
(1988 Music Film)
Wave Aid 2
(1987 Album by Various Artists)
Celestial Journey
(1996 Album by Various Artists)
Timeless... A National Parks Odyssey
(2002 Music Film)
» More