Jon Symon

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jon Symon at a club appearance in December 2008 in Hanover

Jon Symon Hornsby (born January 10, 1941 as Simon John Hornsby in Epsom , United Kingdom , † December 7, 2015 on the Isle of Wight , England) was a British musician and composer who lived in Germany since the mid-1960s mainly worked as a freelance rock musician .

He became known to a wider audience in the early 1980s as a co-producer of the successful rock ballet Warlock , in which he also participated as a rock singer in the accompanying German rock band.

life and career

Jon Symon came to Germany as a British soldier in the mid-1960s and has lived in Hanover and Barsinghausen ever since . He belongs to the founding generation of the Hanoverian rock scene and from 1965 played in Hanover as a guitarist with the beat band Anyones, founded in 1963 . In 1970 he first appeared as a one-man band under the name Rasputin . A drum kit he designed was equipped with a special mechanism, the guitar and bass came from a converted Fender Telecaster . As Rasputin , and also under the name of Jon Symon's One Man Band , he mostly covered songs by well-known groups, replacing the sound of an entire band with his instruments. He toured the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria , appeared in the ARD music store in 1973 and then had several television appearances such as 1976 in the ZDF music show disco as well as in other programs in the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria. In the 1970s, he released several singles.

In 1978 he met the music publisher Michael Mellethin, who was co-owner of a recording studio that Symon was allowed to use. The result was the concept album Warlock - Memories of a White Magician . Symon was able to win over bassist Klaus-Peter Matziol and keyboardist Detlev Schmidtchen from Eloy as well as violinist Hajo Hoffmann for this project , while Jim McGillivray from Epitaph was on the drums.

In the early 1980s, Alexander May , director of the Schauspielhaus Hannover , became aware of Symon and brought him together with the ballet director Lothar Höfgen . Symon (text and music) and Höfgen (choreography) jointly produced the rock ballet Warlock , which premiered in March 1983 in the sold-out Kuppelsaal in Hanover. The symbolic plot is about the "question of war or peace".

Jon Symon (2003) with the soundtrack LP Warlock - The Rockballet

In all of Warlock's performances , the music was played live by the rock group Warlock , consisting of Jon Symon (vocals), three members of the then disbanded German rock band Jane - Peter Panka (drums), Werner Nadolny (saxophone and synthesizer) and Charly Maucher ( Bass), as well as the guitarist Detlef Klamann (later with the then reformed band Jane ).

The rock ballet Warlock became a success and remained in the repertoire of the Lower Saxony State Theater for two years, with all appearances in Hanover being sold out. Around 7,000 guests came to the Warlock farewell event in Hanover, which took place in June 1984 as an open-air performance in the Sportpark Hanover .

There were also several guest performances of the rock ballet throughout the Federal Republic of Germany, such as at the ICC in Berlin, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt am Main, the CCH in Hamburg and the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

This was followed in 1984 by the premiere of the rock ballet Lady MacBeth, also produced by Jon Symon and Lothar Höfgen . Since the 1990s Symon has written and staged rock musicals and other rock-oriented projects in Hanover and the surrounding area, such as the rock ballet Beachy Head in 1994 with a choreography by Sylvie Zander and the rock ballet Tarot in 1995 . In 1996 he wrote the rock grusical Bats in the Belfry . These works were each staged in the Theater am Aegi in Hanover.

In 1998 Symon founded the rock duo Demon Angel together with Alexandra Süllow and in 1999 brought out the revue Himmlische Teufeleien with Demon Angel , Thommi Baake , Diego Leon, Masoud Zand and Andy Clapp. In 2003 the "Grusical" Schwarzer Engel, composed by him and staged by Süllow, followed . In 2003 he formed the duo Elfenlicht with Janina Gorski , with whom he brought out the musical Spiders .

The idea for Vox Nocturna came up in 2005 and he composed the concept album Legends by the end of 2007 . Old legends , myths and pirate stories fascinate Symon and have already been musically processed by him several times; for Legends he wrote songs about the "legends of the earth". He describes his current music, which contains elements of folk , metal and medieval music and which can be assigned to the style of symphonic metal , as "Symphonic Pirate Metal". His new band Jon Symon's Vox Nocturna with Leandra Low (vocals), Thomas St. Jones (keyboard), Wolfgang “Wolle” Schneider (drums) and Anja Fünfziger (background vocals) played live for the first time in December 2008.

Since 2008, Symon has been back on stage as the one-man band Rasputin and, with its 1970s show, served in particular the genre symphonic rock .

In 2009 he dissolved Vox Nocturna shortly before the release of the new concept album Legends and went back to the studio, where he reworked all pieces of the album with the singers Sonja Schott and Janina Gorski (former duo partner at Elfenlicht ) until September 2010. During a visit to England, he met the drummer of his first band, The Demons, from the 1960s in Liverpool . The band member Carl Hardin found him on the Internet after 45 years . When The Demons reunited , Symon agreed with Hardin and with the electric bassist John Cross, who comes from Standish near Liverpool, a collaboration on his new project Legends . Until 2012 the line- up of the Jon Symon Band consisted of: Jon Symon (guitars, vocals), Sonja Schott (vocals), Janina Gorski (vocals), Carl Hardin (drums) and John Cross (bass guitar).

In 2013 the formation Jon Symon & The Pirates From Hell was launched, which consisted of a trio with Jon Symon (vocals, guitar, bass effects, bagpipes, choirs), Vanz Oliver Sheridan (drums, background vocals) and Frank Perrey (guitar, Noise Machine).

Discography (selection)

  • Rasputin - Chicken Song / Spoonful , single record, Funlife, 1973
  • Jon Symon's One Man Band - Sweet Eliza (Give Up Your Rubber Man) / Greenhorn , single record, BASF , 1973
  • Jon Symon's One Man Band - Mighty Quinn / Shangri-la , single record, BASF, 1974
  • Jon Symon - Silver Star (part 1) / Silver Star (part 2) , single record, BASF. 1975
  • Jon Symon - I would love to be a millionaire / Auf der Grünen Wiese , single record, Hansa, 1975
  • Rasputin - Freedom On The Road / Sympathy For The Devil , single record, Rasputin-Records, 1977
  • Rasputin - Raggaephone / Merlin , single record, 1979
  • Warlock - Memories of a white magician , LP, Lava, 1981
  • Warlock - The Rockballett , long-playing record, Lava, 1983 (recording of the world premiere on March 3, 1983 in Hanover)
  • Jon Symon's Warlock - Lady Macbeth , Lava, 1984
  • Beachy Head , album, CD, No fun, 1992
  • Bats in the Belfry , album, double CD, KönigReich, 1996
  • Tarot , album, CD, Roxxon, 1996
  • Demon Angel - Heavenly Devils , Megaphone, 2000
  • Warlock - Memories of a white magician , album, CD, Magic Minds, 2001
  • Legends , MP3 album, LAVA, 2010

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cancer! Mourning for rock star Jon Symon. In: Bild.de , December 8, 2015, accessed December 9, 2015.
  2. ↑ Blazek, Matthias: The Lower Saxony Band Compendium 1963-2003 - Data and facts from 100 rock groups from Lower Saxony, Celle 2006, p. 158, ISBN 978-3-00-018947-0 .
  3. ↑ a b Biography compiled by Friedhelm Drecktrah , article in hallo Sonntag of August 9, 2009, p. 10 (accessed on August 24, 2009).
  4. ↑ a b See information about Jon Symon at the online music magazine www.Rockszene.de (as of August 24, 2009).
  5. ↑ Information about Warlock - The Rockballett on www.derikum.de (accessed on August 24, 2009).
  6. ^ Association of theater workers in the GDR: Theater of the time . Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin, Issue 38, No. 6 - 1983, p. 79.
  7. ↑ Peter Panka's Jane ( Memento of August 6, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), report in Rock News magazine No. 3, July / August 1998; at www.germanrock.de (accessed on August 24, 2009).
  8. ↑ Information on the existing Jane formations, written by Werner Nadolny at www.wn-jane.de, accessed on August 24, 2009.
  9. ↑ See the official website of Jon Symon's Vox Nocturna (see web links).
  10. ↑ Legends, myths and heroes return  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Article about Jon Symon's Vox Nocturna in Deister aktuell on November 8, 2008 (accessed August 24, 2009).@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.deister-aktuell.de  
personal data
SURNAME Symon, Jon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hornsby, Simon John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British rock musician, composer and record producer
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Epsom , England , UK
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 2015
Place of death Isle of Wight , England , UK