Songs and Symphoniques: The Music of Moondog

“Songs and Symphoniques” contains brilliant reinterpretations of the music of Louis Thomas Hardin, better known as Moondog. The blind musician, poet, and composer lived on the streets of Manhattan from the 1950s to the 1970s as the “Viking of Sixth Avenue” before vanishing without a trace and reappearing in the distant Ruhr area in the late 1970s. His compellingly rhythmic, strictly contrapuntal music inspired Philip Glass and Steve Reich. The album was conceived as a collaboration between the Brooklyn-based Ghost Train Orchestra and the legendary Kronos Quartet and quickly expanded to include numerous exquisite voices from pop and jazz, such as Marissa Nadler, Joan Wasser (Joan As Police Woman), Jarvis Cocker (Pulp), Rufus Wainwright, and Petra Haden.