rutopia.info

[RW_Fan]

carry on.

lots of great stuff coming up soon. new album, some festivals, soundtrack projects, etc.

[Valkyrie]

Maybe a small tour? Like, close to where I live?

[marie]

rufus seems to tour a bit during the late fall. i'm hoping for the same this year and i'm dying to get to chicago again at that time, so let's hope,pray, etc

happy weekend
marie

[RW_Fan]

not sure if this was known already or not, but in the V Festival interview Rufus stated that he will be producing his next album, and the executive producer is Neil Tennant.
looking forward!

[Fairyboy69]

Rufus Wainwright
The Hitman of Köpenick
By Johanna Adorján

August 16, 2006
How does one actually record a string quartet? That’s the question on the mind of two world famous popstars on a Tuesday afternoon. Neil Tennant, 52, frontman of the Pet Shop Boys, and Rufus Wainwright, 33, labelled best songwriter of our time by Elton John, are conferring at the mixer in Room 4 of the former DDR-radio building in Berlin-Köpenick. In the studio, behind a thick sheet of glass, sit four young orchestra musicians, who have just played a string arrangement for Rufus Wainwright’s new record and are waiting to continue.


Recently in Köpenick: Rufus Wainwright in the studio with strings

It is taking some time. Again and again both popmusicians listen to the recording. Wainwright doesn’t look happy. Should it sound like a live recording, Tennant asks, because it does. No, says Wainwright, actually it should sound like Fauré. Hm. Finally they agree to add a little echo to the microphone during the next take – which does indeed sound a lot better.

Between pop and Mahler, Bernstein, Debussy

Rufus Wainwright is in Berlin, to record his new album and he has asked his friend Neil Tennant to lend him a hand. Actually Sam Mendes had planned to look in, the famous director, who is shooting a documentary about Wainwright at the moment, but something came up. So the musicians are left alone with a sound engineer in the oversized, mostly empty, ostentatious East German building, in which time seems to have stood still since the fifties. „Nobody's off the hook” is the name of the piece they’re working on today, and although it’s a classic pop song, with verses and a chorus, it still sounds like Mahler, it sounds like Brahms, Bernstein and like a hint of Debussy.

Wainwright must have sung the song at least twenty times in the last hours and it seems to get more beautiful every time – starting very softly, „Haven't fallen down in a while”, his voice ever so soft, backed by string quartet and piano. The pianist has covered the grand piano with a heavy curtain material to soften the sound. It’s a slow, melancholy song, that deals with the state of the world and the responsibility of every individual therefor, at least that’s how Neil Tennant summarises the song. In the last third of the song, it suddenly soars, becomes truly dramatic, especially for the singer – at one point the song suddenly ascends incredibly high, something that Wainwright only achieves halfway and then not at all for several attempts. Sitting down he could do it, he says, but continues to try standing up. His voice croaks a few more times but at some point it finally falls into place and everyone breathes a sigh of relief.

New Year’s Eve gone wrong in the place to be

Rufus Wainwright is one of the few musicians for whom there are no boundaries between classical and pop music. His parents are the Canadian (sic) folk musicians Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, as a child he preferred to listen to opera, he plays guitar and piano and his singing voice is so strong that it could easily be heard without amplification in the back rows of no matter how big an operahouse. In June he gave two highly praised back-to-back concerts in a sold out Carnegie Hall, New York, honoring Judy Garland. Since then, at last, he is also considered a „Held” by the „New York Times”. He was already famous before that: he has won many prizes and the hearts of seemingly all the critics with his four albums so far (latest installment „Want Two”, 2004), although they didn’t sell millions of them; he performed in Scorseses „Aviator” as a singer and during the the credits to „Brokeback Mountain” one of his songs was played.

The first time Wainwright was in Berlin was on New Year’s Eve a few years ago – he had heard it was the place to be, decided on a whim to book a flight and spent a miserable failure of a night that culminated in him sitting alone in his cheap, stinking, hotel room, because, as it turned out, he had trodden in a Berliner dog turd. But he came back nonetheless, and now he’s standing here in the woodclad and dust-smelling Recording room 4, with the air thick enough to cut with a knife but the atmosphere very pleasant, listening to his recently recorded latest work.

And then they discuss Renaissance music

The first few bars are played on the piano alone, then the string quartet joins in, carrying on the tempo, a deeply mournful song. Put a trance beat over that and it’ll be a big hit in Ibiza, Neil Tennant says. Wainwright laughs, which always sounds like a machine gun fire. For his last albums he has been working together with Marius de Vries, producer to Björk and of Madonnas „Ray of Light”. This time he wanted to try on his own.

He brought sound technician Tom with him from New York – Neil Tennant is only here for a few days, he will listen to all the songs before the weekend, make suggestions how to change them, produce his own versions. And although he makes dance music, disco, with his band Pet Shop Boys, he seems to be quite knowledgeable about classical music. Between recordings he and Wainwright get to talk about Bach and discuss his musical influences. Wainwright touches upon Montiverdi, Neil Tennant weighs in with Biber, the barok composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, born 1644 in Wartenberg, died 1704 in Salzburg, and the couple has a discussion about Renaissance music.

When Tiergarten turns into a Tear Garden

What else do pop stars talk about? About Kylie Minogue’s health, the crisis in the Middle East and how Easy Jet is ruining the prettiest European cities, with droves of drunk men celebrating stag nights. For lunch pop stars have pizza delivered and they drink cups of black filtered coffee. And because the sanitary facilities are out of order at the moment, as so much in this forsaken place, Neil Tennant and Rufus Wainwright go out into the garden, rampantly growing arround the weathered building, to relief themselves without complaint.

The name of the album, which will be released early next year, hasn’t been decided yet – but with the impression this afternoon has made, it will be one to look out for. The songs are as nonchalant as they are beautiful, there are very cheerful and very sad lyrics and Berlin features in several of them. One song is called „Sanssouci”, another „Tiergarten”, which sounds like „Tear garden” to American ears, and in „Going to a town” Wainwright sings, accompanied by changes in harmony that take you to ever more beautiful places, about a city that was once destroyed. It sounds prettier than ever.


Text: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 13.08.2006, Nr. 32 / Page 25
Photo: Franka Bruns

[translated by DJM & MKN]

alternate title on paper article:
Songwriter Rufus Wainwright is recording his new album in Berlin, and the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant is helping him

I'm shamelessly copying these from Belial on RWMB. Click the pictures for larger versions. This is a large version of the picture:


These two have the article:

[RW_Fan]

from the RWMB:

[Valkyrie]

Hmmm . . . Faure'.

That would be nice.

[Fairyboy69]

I know! That was one of the first things I noticed - and enthused over.

[msnyc]

great article , about the berlin recording sessions, a few posts before this one


i rarely check the official rwmb, but when i did earlier tonight i got a great surprise--

rufus just recorded in london, with teddy and richard thompson!

I'm not a huge teddy thompson fan (nothing wrong with him, and a good harmony singer, tho) but richard thompson is playing guitar on some of the new album!!!!!!!! amazing news...

and from the rwmb, heres a pix

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b382/btflhart/2thompsons1wainright.jpg



two thompsons and a wainwright!

[RW_Fan]

as posted by Eline on the RWMB:

[RW_Fan]

from a link rhap posted on the RWMB:

http://www.bgay.com/bae/hollywood/aeho60914b.htm

Rufus Wainwright's Judy Tribute Goes to the Movies

If you weren't one of the lucky gay men - what, there were non-queers in the audience? - who made it to New York City earlier this year to see Rufus Wainwright recreate Judy Garland's legendary 1961 Carnegie Hall concert, despair not.

Lesbian uber-producer Christine Vachon (Boys Don't Cry, Far from Heaven) arranged to have the whole event filmed by Oscar-winning _American Beauty_ director Sam Mendes.

Wainwright's loving tribute to the famous one-woman evening of vocal pyrotechnics features scads of classic signature Garland songs, from "Over the Rainbow" to "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart" to "Stormy Weather."

The concert film should pop up in theaters everywhere in 2007, so you'll no longer need to think of Wainwright as "The Man That Got Away."

[Fairyboy69]

(first off, I hope that the writer didn't misunderstand, as many of us did before. That being said...)

I LOVE THAT WOMAN!!!

Honestly, look at all the stuff she produced, not to mention the book Shooting to Kill which I found really insightful (and as a bonus much of it is based on the production of Velvet Goldmine, which I happen to love )

[RW_Fan]

Rufus in Spanish Rolling Stone

9/27/2006 2:49:35 PM - by mct mgmnt


Rufus is featured in the September issue of Rolling Stone Spain. A luxe eleven page photo shoot and interview begins on page 83.

[btflhart]

Eleven page photoshoot?? urp!! I'm envious of European "goodtaste"!!

Here's an Oasis article where Rufus says he wants to live in the Southern US. No doubt Clinton was President then. Now he and many in the US can barely tolerate to live here!! He also told some fans they could find some of his rarities on Napster...

http://www.oasismag.com/Issues/0106/cover.html

[Fairyboy69]

Thanks Wyllym. And because I had to figure this out anyway, to spare others the work:

I think the first article is from June 2001, the Great Music Hall concert was May 6, 2001 (hence the Cinco de Mayo the night before, duh!) and the url has 0106 in it...

The second one is Want One era, the only Cleveland concert around that time listed on Rutopedia is: 2004-06-27 - Cleveland, OH - Scene Pavilion