JON KELIEHOR-biography

. . . background in depth

SEATTLE

Jon Keliehor’s journey into music began in Seattle in the 1960’s. Like many of the remote North American cities during this time, Seattle was a seed-bed for the creative arts. In earlier years the city nurtured experimental artists such as John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Mark Toby, but by the 50’s had become the home for a new generation of musicians such as Quincy Jones, Ray Charles, and emerging NW Rock and Roll groups such as The Kingsmen, The Sonics, The Frantics and The Wailers. Decades later Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Sound Garden took the lead with Seattle becoming the museum city for the legend Jimi Hendrix. Inbetween, by 1964, the music of Psychedelic culture was poised to emerge, and with this transformational underground movement, Keliehor joined Seattle’s legendary group The Daily Flash. Leading to this, he had studied music at the University of Washington, played with aspiring jazz ensembles in clubs and coffee houses, and by the age of 20 was accepted as percussionist with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, remaining there for three years. All this was a valuable training ground, but it was only a prelude to a wider range of musical experiences that would prompt him to leave the symphony in 1963 to explore the more fertile waters of jazz and rock music.

Between 1963-70, his interests expanded toward rhythm and blues, and eventually rock music, providing him with new areas of experience and new techniques to assimilate. Playing in jazz groups with Seattle musicians Larry Coryell, Joe Brazil, Overton Berry, Jerry Heldman, Marius Nordal, Lee Graham, and in the R&B group The Frantics, with Joe Johansen, Jerry Miller and Mike Mandel, his drumming developed to a peak. Following on, he co-founded the Seattle based group The Daily Flash with Steve Lalor, Don MacAllister and Doug Hastings. They were a huge regional success, releasing an album and several singles. The group toured the West Coast psychedelic circuit finally settling in Los Angeles where they eventually broke up. The nucleus of this group re-emerged as Bodine, lasting for another two years.

LOS ANGELES

In Los Angeles his drumming led him towards guest performances with the Doors, the Byrds, Lee Michaels, The Gentle Soul, and recordings with Frank Zappa, Jeff Simmons, David Ackles, Noel Harris, and a variety of artists including one enigmatic LA studio session with James Brown. In 1970, leaving many musical contacts behind, he took an abrupt change of pace and moved to London.

LONDON

Searching for a more direct way to develop his interests in percussion oriented music, he started to work with dancers and choreographers at London Contemporary Dance Theatre. This opened a doorway to new possibilities and knowledge, new drumming techniques, and an immersion into the study of world, ethnic music. In 1971 his first compositions emerged. He taught music at the London School of Contemporary Dance, accompanied dance classes, and began to compose music for the company, producing a score for one of Robert Cohan’s most dynamic works, CLASS. This piece and others that followed (TROY GAME, BEYOND THE LAW) was a feast of percussion instruments and musicianship.

Keliehor brought complex arrays of instruments normally found within Brazilian, Indonesian, Indian and African music cultures to bear on the new-music environment of modern dance. His innate understanding of dance rhythms, coupled with emerging concepts of dance-theatre provided an impetus to create a new and original music. He worked with nearly every contemporary dance company in London between 1970-1984, creating a ‘World Music’, ahead of it's time, landmark pieces that explored music styles, rhythms, and fast changing counting systems.

DIORAMA

By 1975 his studio at the London Diorama Arts, gave him a sanctuary to search for deeper cross-fertilisations of world percussion culture, and moreover for a more abstract form of music. Intrigued by the loan of a large collection of Indonesian gongs, his music began to incorporate gamelan influences into modern minimalist music structures. In 1978 he co-founded an exploratory music group with ex-Quintessence leader Raja Ram. This ensemble of nine musicians created a range of music that explored raga, gamelan and world percussion tonalities, performing at the first Symposium On Humanity, Wembley, in 1979. The following year saw an intensive rewrite of CLASS, as well as a new score for Robert North’s TROY GAME, for The Royal Ballet. CLASS V went on tour throughout the UK. It became both a challenge for percussionists, and one of London Contemporary Dance Theatre’s flagship pieces.

In 1981 two new ensembles emerged, the Percussion Music Research Ensemble and Luminous State Theatre, and by this time his music had become dark and dreamtime, serious and satiric, a swirling fantasy of hypnotic and trance like textures. Here he mixed drums, Indonesian gong tonalities, Chinese theatre instruments, western classical percussion, plastic sound toys, obscure ethnic instruments and a variety of sound contouring electronics. His music concentrated on polymetric rhythms and superimposed sound events, following the idea:

“If TIME is the only thing that keeps everything from happening all at once, what is TIME then?”

By fusing live performance with sample and loop recording techniques, Keliehor developed a multi-stream music style he called Frozen Slices. This music attracted young experimental choreographers and musicians. He performed with non-verbal and non-narrative theatre companies Theatre of Lies and Lindsay Kemp Theatre, and in 1983 created The DreamHouse, a large-scale music performance at the Commonwealth Institute. In 1984, working with Orlando Kimber, Eddy Sayer and Simon Tassano, Keliehor co-created an exceptional recording of new percussion music, EAST MEETS WEST, commissioned by Bruton ATV. And this seemed to signal a time of change. Within a few months he decided to return to America once again.

LOS ANGELES

Back in Los Angeles during 1985 he worked with Lisa Lyon on the Icons Of The Divine project, briefly returning to London for the London Contemporary Dance Theatre Royal Gala performances at Theatre Royal. In 1986 he moved to Seattle. His return to America gave him new perspectives on composition, and opportunities to explore new directions in music. A seven-year association with the unique music ensemble Gamelan Pacifica, in Seattle, produced a new range of composition. This music can be heard on the Gamelan Pacifica CD, ‘TRANCE GONG’ and on ‘ISLANDS INBETWEEN’ for Touch Records.

SEATTLE

His involvement in recording deepened with the creation of a production facility and in-house recording studio called Luminous Music. Works such as Celestial Nile and Zacary’s Dream brought a new melodic scope to his music as he began to further develop ideas on the Kalimba, an instrument he used extensively in dance classes. In Seattle he worked primarily at Cornish College of the Arts, wrote music for dance, and performed with local highlife band Je-Ka-Jo, led by Jon Kertzer. He co-produced Trance Culture with associate Michele Savelle, a performance of ritual drumming, dance and arts.

VENEZUELA

By 1986 his continuing work with modern dance focused around Venezuelan dance company DanzaHoy, producing new music and performance in both North and South America (MOMENTOS HOSTILE, QUARENTA GRADOS EN LA SOMBRE, EL JARDIN DE LOS MISTERIOS, ZONA TORRIDA). In 1988 he met Signy Jakobsdottir, a gifted percussionist with whom he has collaborated on many projects. In 1996, with their first child Brendan, they decided to return to Glasgow.

GLASGOW

Scotland has seen the development of Luminous Music as an educational provider. Now with British citizenship and resident in Glasgow, Keliehor creates music and performance projects for dance companies and for the contemporary gamelan ensemble Gamelan Naga Mas. He has maintained his long-term commitment to modern dance as a solo percussionist and composer, and has emerged with a unique musical direction based on the spirit and nature of drumming. His music is innovative, spatial and dramatic, a contemporary world percussion music, rich with the tonalities of percussion and exotic instruments.

MUSIC ON CD

His first CD release, CELESTIAL NILE, developed for the choreography of Jacques Broquet (DanzaHoy) opened the doorway to a journey style of music rich in metaphysical and mythological interests. A second CD, based on audio-book music for poet James Broughton’s THE ANDROGYNE JOURNAL, brought this style to a narrative approach in OCEAN OF DREAMS.

Although a great deal of his music remains currently unpublished, works such as CREATE MUSIC, EAST MEETS WEST, OCEAN OF DREAMS, CELESTIAL NILE, SPIRAL IN ALCYONE, are now available, and reissues of powerful, older works such as CLASS V and TROY GAME are beginning to emerge from Luminous Music. Recent recorded works for gamelan such as DOMAINE, ABYSS, SELUNDING SULING and SMARADAHANA on the CD FLOAT SOUND OBJECTS, are beginning to reveal new music for gamelan instruments.

In 2006, the CD FROM THE TIME OF DREAMS brought new and past compositions together in a revitalised look at the liquid, dreamtime textures of his London Diorama music. By 2008 another new direction developed with the cd IN DEEP, returning Keliehor towards his interests in jazz, rock and film music. Current directions for 2010 revolve around a renewed commitment to reopen the catalogue of the drumming oriented music for dance, with its connections to the rich territories of his Venezuelan music.