Eric Woolfson
Eric Woolfson (born March 18, 1945 in Glasgow , † December 2, 2009 in London ) was a British musician and producer.
Life
Woolfson was an avid musician and composer even as a child and had acquired excellent piano skills. At 18 he was already working as a session pianist. The producer of the Rolling Stones , Andrew Loog Oldham , gave him soon after working as a songwriter, and the first "Woolfsongs" he wrote for artists such as Marianne Faithfull and Chris Farlowe .
In 1974, at Abbey Road Studios , he met the up-and-coming young producer Alan Parsons , with whom he got along well and complemented each other. Since they both appreciated Edgar Allan Poe's Phantastica , they decided to record a concept album based on Poe's stories. In 1976 they rewrote various short stories accordingly and recorded the album Tales of Mystery and Imagination with guest musicians . The group name The Alan Parsons Project was actually only intended for this album. Because it was so successful, nine more productions followed by 1987 (see APP discography ). By 2004 45 million albums had been sold.
After the musical Freudiana (1990), whose rights remained with the artistic director Brian Brolly , but the losses remained with Parsons and Woolfson, the companions separated. Woolfson produced other musicals such as Gambler (1996) and Gaudi (1992) based on the project albums The Turn of a Friendly Card (1980) and Gaudi (1987), both of which had their world premieres in Germany in the production of Elmar Ottenthal and stayed in the program for several years.
In 2003 Woolfson recorded a sequel to the first Project LP with singer Steve Balsamo . POE - More Tales Of Mystery And Imagination was performed live once in November of the same year at Abbey Road Studios .
His most recent release, Eric Woolfson sings The Alan Parsons Project That Never Was (2009), contains ten songs that he wrote for The Alan Parsons Project and which had previously remained unreleased. On August 28, 2009 the last stage work by Woolfson Edgar Allan Poe (based on the two Poe albums) in German had its world premiere in Halle (Saale) , where it remained in the regular program until March 2011.
Woolfson died of kidney cancer on December 2, 2009 at the age of 64 .
Others
By his own admission, Woolfson was a founding member of the Social Democratic Party .
Web links
- Eric Woolfson's website
- Eric Woolfson in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Woolfson's official website for the POE album
- ↑ http://www.edgar-allan-poe-musical.com/DE/index.html
- ↑ biography on the homepage
- ^ Supplement to the remastered edition of The Alan Parsons Project album Ammonia Avenue .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Woolfson, Eric |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British musician, producer and lawyer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 18, 1945 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Glasgow |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 2, 2009 |
| Place of death | London |