Georg Kajanus
Encyclopedia
Georg Kajanus is a Norwegian composer and pop music
ian, best known as the lead singer and songwriter of the British pop group, Sailor
.
, Norway
, the son of Prince Pavel [also Paulo] Tjegodiev of Russia
and Johanna Kajanus, a French
/Finnish
sculptress
, winner of a Bronze Medal for Sculpture at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (1937)
, who was the granddaughter of Robert Kajanus
, the Finnish composer, conductor, champion of Sibelius
, and founder of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
. He is the brother of the late actress and film-maker Eva Norvind
and the uncle to Mexican theater and television actress, Nailea Norvind
.
Kajanus moved with his mother and sister to Paris
at the age of twelve. It was there that he studied music and the classical guitar, as well as attending the Cité Universitaire’s flying school. The family then relocated to Quebec
, Canada
where Kajanus worked as a stained-glass
window designer in Montreal
.
band Eclection
, who released a self-titled album in 1968 and wrote Cliff Richard
's single "Flying Machine" (1971).
Kajanus and Phil Pickett, who been acquainted for some time, collaborated on an album, Hi Ho Silver! (1972), as Kajanus/Pickett. Deciding to form a group, tentatively named KP Packet, Kajanus and Pickett enlisted drummer and percussionist Grant Serpell
(Affinity
), and keyboard player and guitarist Henry Marsh
(Gringo). In 1973, the foursome made their first recordings in a small studio in North London. Most of this material was not released at the time, but three demos are featured in Sailor's Buried Treasure 2CD box set (2006).
in Paris's red-light district
. Encouraged by Grant Serpell to rework this material as pop songs, Kajanus devised the concept for Sailor
.
Sailor signed to Epic Records
-CBS Records
and between 1974 and 1978 released five albums with Kajanus: Sailor, Trouble, The Third Step, Checkpoint (without Pickett) and Hideaway. Kajanus was the lead singer, guitar
ist and, for the first three albums, the sole songwriter for the band, penning its two major hits, "A Glass of Champagne" and "Girls, Girls, Girls".
Kajanus then left Sailor, leaving Pickett as the creative force behind their next album, Dressed for Drowning.
, forming DATA
with Frankie and Phil Boulter. The classically orientated title track of DATA’s first album, "Opera Electronica", was used as the theme music to the short film, Towers of Babel (1981). DATA followed Opera Electronica with two more studio albums, 2-TiME (1983) and Elegant Machinery (1985).
Shortly after DATA disbanded, Kajanus formed And the Mamluks with Henry Marsh. They recorded only four songs, with two being released on a Razormaid! anthology on vinyl, Razormaid: The Epilogue: Back to Basics (1985). Kajanus and Marsh also collaborated on the soundtrack for the British TV series, The Kid (1986), starring actor and singer Steve Fairnie
.
Kajanus then worked with the Japan
ese composer and musician Shigeru Umebayashi
, co-writing and producing songs for his album, Ume (1988).
Kajanus, Marsh, Pickett and Grant Serpell reformed Sailor in 1990. The group recorded two albums, Sailor (1991) and Street Lamp (1992), with Kajanus once again writing and arranging all the material. They achieved further chart success in continental Europe with singles such as "La Cumbia" and "The Secretary".
(previously of Tik and Tok
). Noir’s single "Walking" was used extensively in the 1997 Channel 4
television series, Feast, an avant-garde culinary program directed by TV food maestro David Pritchard. Feast was hosted by Noir and also starred French TV chef Jean Christophe Novelli.
Noir's album, Strange Desire, recorded in 1995, was eventually released on Angel Air
Records in 2007.
: Didn't Do It for Love (1997) and the award-winning Gendernauts (1999).
In 2008, Kajanus began working with Roberto Trippini and Barbie Wilde
on a new version of the Sailor musical - an update of his original Red Light Review concept - which he describes as "a bittersweet musical about two people searching for love in the ruins of post-War Marseille
".
Kajanus's other current musical project is People Industry, which he describes as "an exuberant, musical exploration of the human journey".
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
ian, best known as the lead singer and songwriter of the British pop group, Sailor
Sailor (band)
Sailor are a British pop group, best known in the 1970s for their hit singles "Glass of Champagne" and "Girls Girls Girls", written by the group's lead singer and 12-string guitar player, Georg Kajanus.-In the 1970s:...
.
Early years
Kajanus was born in TrondheimTrondheim
Trondheim , historically, Nidaros and Trondhjem, is a city and municipality in Sør-Trøndelag county, Norway. With a population of 173,486, it is the third most populous municipality and city in the country, although the fourth largest metropolitan area. It is the administrative centre of...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, the son of Prince Pavel [also Paulo] Tjegodiev of Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and Johanna Kajanus, a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
/Finnish
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
sculptress
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
, winner of a Bronze Medal for Sculpture at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (1937)
Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (1937)
The Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne was held from May 25 to November 25, 1937 in Paris, France...
, who was the granddaughter of Robert Kajanus
Robert Kajanus
Robert Kajanus was a Finnish conductor and composer of Swedish descent.-Life:Robert Kajanus was the most prominent Finnish composer before Jean Sibelius. His music drew on the folk legends of the Finnish people...
, the Finnish composer, conductor, champion of Sibelius
Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...
, and founder of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
The Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra is an orchestra based in Helsinki, Finland...
. He is the brother of the late actress and film-maker Eva Norvind
Eva Norvind
Eva Norvind was a writer, documentary producer, director, sex therapist/ dominatrix, and former actress of the cinema of Mexico...
and the uncle to Mexican theater and television actress, Nailea Norvind
Nailea Norvind
Nailea Norvind is a Mexican television actress who also appeared in the critically acclaimed film Gaby: A True Story...
.
Kajanus moved with his mother and sister to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
at the age of twelve. It was there that he studied music and the classical guitar, as well as attending the Cité Universitaire’s flying school. The family then relocated to Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
where Kajanus worked as a stained-glass
Stained glass
The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...
window designer in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
.
Early musical career
Kajanus was a member of UK-based folk rockFolk rock
Folk rock is a musical genre combining elements of folk music and rock music. In its earliest and narrowest sense, the term referred to a genre that arose in the United States and the UK around the mid-1960s...
band Eclection
Eclection
Eclection were a British-based folk rock band, originally formed in 1967 in London by Norwegian-born Georg Kajanus , Canadian Michael Rosen, Australians Trevor Lucas and Kerrilee Male, and Britisher Gerry Conway...
, who released a self-titled album in 1968 and wrote Cliff Richard
Cliff Richard
Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....
's single "Flying Machine" (1971).
Kajanus and Phil Pickett, who been acquainted for some time, collaborated on an album, Hi Ho Silver! (1972), as Kajanus/Pickett. Deciding to form a group, tentatively named KP Packet, Kajanus and Pickett enlisted drummer and percussionist Grant Serpell
Grant Serpell
Grant Serpell was a member of several bands during the 1960s and 1970s, including Affinity and Sailor, and was an encouraging influence over two of the members of The Hoosiers while being their chemistry teacher at Waingels College.Serpell enjoyed a revival of Sailor's success, which started in...
(Affinity
Affinity (band)
Affinity were an English jazz-rock fusion band, active from mid 1968 to January 1971.-Origins:The origin of Affinity was, circa 1965 in the science department of the University of Sussex in Brighton, England...
), and keyboard player and guitarist Henry Marsh
Henry Marsh (musician)
Henry Marsh is a British composer and pop musician, best known for his work with the group Sailor....
(Gringo). In 1973, the foursome made their first recordings in a small studio in North London. Most of this material was not released at the time, but three demos are featured in Sailor's Buried Treasure 2CD box set (2006).
Sailor
Kajanus had developed a musical theater concept, Red Light Review, based on his memories of being a young man in places like PigalleQuartier Pigalle
Pigalle is an area in Paris around the Place Pigalle, on the border between the 9th and the 18th arrondissements. It is named after the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Pigalle ....
in Paris's red-light district
Red-light district
A red-light district is a part of an urban area where there is a concentration of prostitution and sex-oriented businesses, such as sex shops, strip clubs, adult theaters, etc...
. Encouraged by Grant Serpell to rework this material as pop songs, Kajanus devised the concept for Sailor
Sailor (band)
Sailor are a British pop group, best known in the 1970s for their hit singles "Glass of Champagne" and "Girls Girls Girls", written by the group's lead singer and 12-string guitar player, Georg Kajanus.-In the 1970s:...
.
Sailor signed to Epic Records
Epic Records
Epic Records is an American record label, owned by Sony Music Entertainment. Though it was originally conceived as a jazz imprint, it has since expanded to represent various genres. L.A...
-CBS Records
CBS Records
CBS Records is a record label founded by CBS Corporation in 2006 to take advantage of music from its entertainment properties owned by CBS Television Studios. The initial label roster consisted of only three artists; rock band Señor Happy and singer/songwriters Will Dailey and P.J...
and between 1974 and 1978 released five albums with Kajanus: Sailor, Trouble, The Third Step, Checkpoint (without Pickett) and Hideaway. Kajanus was the lead singer, guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
ist and, for the first three albums, the sole songwriter for the band, penning its two major hits, "A Glass of Champagne" and "Girls, Girls, Girls".
Kajanus then left Sailor, leaving Pickett as the creative force behind their next album, Dressed for Drowning.
DATA and afterwards
Kajanus then left Sailor in 1978 to experiment with electronic musicElectronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
, forming DATA
DATA (band)
DATA were an electronic music band created in the late 1970s by Georg Kajanus, creator of such bands as Eclection, Sailor and Noir...
with Frankie and Phil Boulter. The classically orientated title track of DATA’s first album, "Opera Electronica", was used as the theme music to the short film, Towers of Babel (1981). DATA followed Opera Electronica with two more studio albums, 2-TiME (1983) and Elegant Machinery (1985).
Shortly after DATA disbanded, Kajanus formed And the Mamluks with Henry Marsh. They recorded only four songs, with two being released on a Razormaid! anthology on vinyl, Razormaid: The Epilogue: Back to Basics (1985). Kajanus and Marsh also collaborated on the soundtrack for the British TV series, The Kid (1986), starring actor and singer Steve Fairnie
Steve Fairnie
Steve Fairnie was a British musician, painter, sculptor, actor, board game designer and chicken hypnotist, best known as the frontman of the post-punk band Writz, and as one half - with his wife Bev Sage - of the 1980s pop outfit Techno Twins .-Career:Born in Fraserburgh and raised in Bristol,...
.
Kajanus then worked with the Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese composer and musician Shigeru Umebayashi
Shigeru Umebayashi
is a Japanese composer.Once the leader of Japan's new-wave rock band EX, composer Shigeru Umebayashi began scoring films in 1985 when the band broke up. He has more than 40 Japanese and Chinese films to his credit and is perhaps best known in the West for his score for director Wong Kar-wai's In...
, co-writing and producing songs for his album, Ume (1988).
Sailor again
In 1989, Kajanus reunited with Henry Marsh and Phil Pickett to write and record some new material. This was not released at the time, but three songs are featured in Sailor's Buried Treasure 2CD box set (2006).Kajanus, Marsh, Pickett and Grant Serpell reformed Sailor in 1990. The group recorded two albums, Sailor (1991) and Street Lamp (1992), with Kajanus once again writing and arranging all the material. They achieved further chart success in continental Europe with singles such as "La Cumbia" and "The Secretary".
Noir
In the late nineties, Kajanus formed the "poetic-techno" duo Noir with Tim DryTim Dry
Tim Dry is a mime artist, writer, songwriter and actor, best known for appearing in ‘Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi’ and for being half of a duo, Tik and Tok, that popularized robotic mime in the UK in the 1980s.-Early years:...
(previously of Tik and Tok
Tik and Tok
Tik and Tok are the robotic mime and music duo of Tim Dry and Sean Crawford. They began performing together with SHOCK: a rock/mime/burlesque/music troupe in the early 1980s with Barbie Wilde, Robert Pereno, L.A. Richards and Carole Caplin....
). Noir’s single "Walking" was used extensively in the 1997 Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
television series, Feast, an avant-garde culinary program directed by TV food maestro David Pritchard. Feast was hosted by Noir and also starred French TV chef Jean Christophe Novelli.
Noir's album, Strange Desire, recorded in 1995, was eventually released on Angel Air
Angel Air
Angel Airlines, trading as Angel Air, was an airline based in Bangkok, Thailand, which was operational between 1997 and 2006.-Fleet:Over the years, Angel Airlines operated the following aircraft types:...
Records in 2007.
Other projects
Kajanus composed the soundtracks for two documentaries directed by German filmmaker Monika TreutMonika Treut
Monika Treut is an openly lesbian German filmmaker.In the mid-1970s she began working with video. She founded Hyena Filmproduktion together with Elfi Mikesch in 1984, and began producing, writing, and directing independent feature films....
: Didn't Do It for Love (1997) and the award-winning Gendernauts (1999).
In 2008, Kajanus began working with Roberto Trippini and Barbie Wilde
Barbie Wilde
Barbie Wilde is a Canadian actress and writer, perhaps best known for appearing as the Female Cenobite in Hellbound: Hellraiser II - the second of eight Hellraiser films based on Clive Barker's novella, The Hellbound Heart...
on a new version of the Sailor musical - an update of his original Red Light Review concept - which he describes as "a bittersweet musical about two people searching for love in the ruins of post-War Marseille
Marseille
Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...
".
Kajanus's other current musical project is People Industry, which he describes as "an exuberant, musical exploration of the human journey".