Lindsay Cooper -

Lindsay Cooper (March 3, 1951 — Sept. 18, 2013) was an English bassoonist, oboist, and composer. In 1974, she replaced reedist Geoff Leigh in Henry Cow for their second album Unrest. She imprinted their 1975 Slapp Happy merger discs Desperate Straights and In Praise of Learning and composed the “Day by Day” half of their 1978 swan song Western Culture.

As a bandleader, Cooper composed the 1981–83 soundtrack albums Rags and The Gold Diggers, performed with vocalists Phil Minton and Sally Potter. In 1984, she reteamed with Cow drummer Chris Cutler in News From Babel, which made two cabaret art-rock albums on Rē Records. Her sundry film cues appear on the 1986 No Man’s Land release Music for Other Occasions.

In 1989, Cooper toured with Potter and Minton behind Oh Moscow, a Cold War opera released as a 1991 live disc. They followed with another avant-garde opera, Sahara Dust, released in 1993 on Intakt.

Background

Lindsay Cooper was born March 3, 1951, in Hornsey, North London, England. She began piano lessons at age eleven and became interested in bassoon a few years afterward through the son of her piano teacher, a Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra musician.

Between 1965 and 1968, Cooper studied classical music and bassoon at Dartington College of Arts and the Royal College of Music and played with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. She also won a scholarship for bassoon performance at the Royal Academy of Music. At the end of the decade, Cooper spent a year in New York on projects outside the classical repertory.

Cooper returned to England at age twenty and joined Comus in July 1971 after woodwind player Rob Young left the band. She added oboe and flute to her instrumental range as Comus developed an intended second album around “The Malgaard Suite.” Cooper appears on a surviving 1972 college performance of the suite, the earliest known Cooper recording. Manager Chris Youle sought a Pye contract for the suite shortly ahead of his move to Polydor in Germany. Comus dissolved after Youle left the group.

In 1973, Cooper worked with Ritual Theatre at Oval House in South London, where vocalist and improviser Maggie Nicols ran music workshops. Cooper also performed with multi-instrumentalist Clive Bell in Ritual Theatre. After reedist Geoff Leigh left Henry Cow in December 1973, drummer Chris Cutler and guitarist Fred Frith saw Cooper perform with Bell and approached her for the vacant woodwind role. Cooper joined Henry Cow in January 1974 on bassoon and oboe, then recorded Unrest across February, March, and early April sessions at Manor Studios.

Cooper accompanied Henry Cow on a June 1974 support tour with Captain Beefheart. Henry Cow asked her to leave after the tour and played September Netherlands dates as a quartet. Cutler subsequently invited Cooper back from rehearsals at St. Christopher’s School for In Praise of Learning. Cooper rejoined by late April as a permanent Henry Cow member.

Her 1974 session work included Hergest Ridge by Mike Oldfield, The Civil Surface by Egg, and To Keep from Crying by Comus. Cooper appeared the following year on Fish Rising by Steve Hillage and The Rotters’ Club by Hatfield and the North. She served as musical director and band member for theatrical rock project The City. Cooper also played jazz and free improvisation with saxophonists Lol Coxhill and Evan Parker and guitarist Derek Bailey.

Cooper took a larger compositional role within Henry Cow by the late seventies and added soprano saxophone to her instrumental range. She composed “Falling Away,” “Industry,” “Look Back,” and “1/2 the Sky” for the Day by Day half of Western Culture. After a Music for Socialism event with few women performers, Nicols approached Cooper at a Musicians’ Union meeting about an all-women improvisation group. Their first lineup paired Cooper and Nicols with bassist–cellist Georgie Born, singer–pianist Cathy Williams, and trumpeter Corinne Liensol. The Feminist Improvising Group debuted in October 1977 at the Music for Socialism festival in London’s Almost Free Theatre.

After Henry Cow dissolved in 1978, Cooper and Born briefly joined National Health. Cooper joined the Mike Westbrook Orchestra in 1979 and continued work in jazz and free improvisation. Filmmakers Sue Clayton and Jonathan Curling commissioned Cooper to score The Song of the Shirt, a film on women workers in the Victorian clothing trade. Cooper expanded material from the score into Rags with singer Sally Potter, vocalist–trumpeter Phil Minton, bassist–cellist Georgie Born, guitarist Fred Frith, and drummer Chris Cutler. Cooper recorded and mixed the album with engineer David Vorhaus across summer sessions in 1979 and 1980 at Kaleidophon Studios.

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