Tom Cora - Biography
American cellist Tom Cora (1953-1998) had a career that was tragically brief, but within the course of a few decades, he managed to radically re-imagine his instrument in profound fashion, pushing headlong into terrain that traversed free improvisation, jazz, experimentation, and punk rock. Yet Cora didn’t settle within any of these fields. He was far too transformative an artist for that. Instead, he played the role of wildly inventive aural alchemist. Most musicians play within genres; Cora created them from seemingly disparate elements. His discography reads like a who’s-who of international innovation, and to every collaboration in which he participated, he brought a powerful creativity and persuasively unique voice that elevated whatever material he touched. Cora was a fundamental member of some impossible essential ensembles, including Curlew with saxophonist George Cartwright and Alabama Wildman guitar phenom Davey Williams, Third Person with percussionist Samm Bennett, and amusingly ambidextrous Skeleton Crew with the avant, string-bending genius, Fred Frith. And if anyone needs proof of Tom Cora’s own genius, they need look and listen no further than his recordings with anarchic pioneers the Ex. Cora’s albums with them contain some of the most exhilarating, intelligent and sweepingly gorgeous material ever heard in the realm of punk. That’s right, it took a cellist to make some of the most furious thrashers ever committed to tape.
Cora got his start in 1979 when he moved from his native Virginia to New York City, where he promptly fell in with the experimental scene. He and Shockabilly’s Eugene Chadbourne teamed for the exceptional 2000 Statues and the English Channel (1979 Parachute Records), and soon Cora was in thick with the fertile Downtown scene. He joined Cartwright and bassist/producer Bill Laswell in Curlew, and appeared on several of their albums, including the eponymous Curlew (1981 Landslide Records), North America (1985 Moers Music), Live In Berlin (1988 Cuneiform Records), Bee (1991 Cuneiform Records) and A Beautiful Western Saddle (1993 Cuneiform Records). Throughout the early 80s, Cora was perfecting an aggressive, modern style that utilized harsh playing styles, impressive theatrics, deafening amplification, and electronic processing. In short, he was attacking the cello as if it were an electric guitar.
In the early 80s, Cora also had an amazing stint with Fred Frith. Skeleton Crew was a delightfully inventive duo, in which Cora and Frith played an array of instruments, many of them homemade or custom built, using all of their limbs — arms and legs. The result was an amazing avant-garde octopus of sound, documented on the LPs Learn to Talk (1984 Rift Records) and In the Country of Blinds (1986 Rift Records), the latter featuring the renowned electric harpist, Zeena Parkins. Cora’s collaboration with Bennett in Third Person was equally inventive, as the two added a different, third musician for each performance; participants included Parkins, Don Byron, Chris Cochrane, and Marc Ribot. There are a couple of live albums, including The Bends (1991 Knitting Factory Records) and Lucky Water (1995 Knitting Factory Records).
Cora worked with an array of artists throughout the 80s and early 90s, and while a number of his recordings are difficult to find, they’re worth tracking down, and feature a bevy of improv talent, with appearances by John Zorn, Zeena Parkins, Butch Morris, Hans Reichel, and Cora’s wife, Catherine Jauniaux. The highlight may be his efforts with The Ex, Scrabbling at the Lock (1991 RecRec Music) and And the Weathermen Shrug Their Shoulders (1993 RecRec Music). Both are classics of experimental rock, elevated by Cora’s searing, soaring performances. Tom Cora’s performance idiom was memorable. The cello is the stringed instrument with the range closest to that of the human voice, and Cora taught his instrument how to speak, shout, scream, murmur, babble and squeal in entirely new languages. His discography merits wide aural scrutiny.
