Biography
Lindsay Cooper was born in Hornsey, North London. She began piano lessons at the age of 11, but switched to bassoon a few years later. Between 1965 and 1968 she studied classical music and bassoon at the Dartington College of Arts and the Royal College of Music. She played in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and became a member of the Royal Academy of Music in London. Towards the end of the 1960s she lived in New York City for a year, during which time she became involved in music projects outside classical music.
When Cooper returned to the United Kingdom in 1971 she left classical music and became a part of the Canterbury scene. She joined the progressive rock band Comus, and although she only remained with the band for a year, it changed her whole approach to music. She added oboe and flute to her instrument repertoire, and started doing session work for other musicians, including Mike Oldfield on his album Hergest Ridge (1974). A common misconception here is that she also performed on Oldfield's Tubular Bells (1973), but it was her namesake Lindsay L. Cooper who played double bass. Then, during a theatre project, Cooper encountered Henry Cow, an avant-rock group that would later launch her musical career on the world stage.
Read more about this topic: Lindsay Cooper
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)