Art Garfunkel with the NC Symphony

2011/12 NC Symphony Pops Series

 
Friday, March 2, 2012, 8:00pm
Saturday, March 3, 2012, 8:00pm
 
Meymandi Concert Hall, Raleigh
 
William Henry Curry, Resident Conductor
 
Art Garfunkel joins the NC Symphony for a night of the very best from his fifty-year career. Garfunkel was won five Grammys, is member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and (of course) is half of one of the most popular singing duos of all time, Simon and Garfunkel.
 
Tickets.
 

Art Garfunkel’s Career

 
From the NC Symphony website:
 

Although it has been thirty-five years since “Bridge Over Troubled Water” was recorded, Art Garfunkel’s image and signature vocals remain among the most instantly recognizable in popular music. His “beautiful countertenor,” as Neil Strauss described Garfunkel’s voice in The New York Times, is clear and resonant, surely one of the finest instruments in all of popular music, and a time-honored friend to a world of listeners.
 
The dialogue began for Art at age four, when his father brought home one of the first wire recorders. “That got me into music more than anything else,” he recalls, “singing and being able to record it.” Seven years later he was singing Everly Brothers songs at school talent shows with a partner Paul Simon, from his Forest Hills neighborhood in Queens, New York. In 1957, Tom and Jerry, as they were called then, landed a recording contract. Their first 45, “Hey, Schoolgirl,” which they wrote together, scored a moderate hit, and they appeared on American Bandstand as high school seniors.
 
Garfunkel earned his bachelor’s degree in Art History at Columbia College and a master’s in mathematics at Columbia University. But he never stopped singing; he and Paul began performing as Simon & Garfunkel at the height of the folk music boom in late-1963. Within a year were signed to Columbia Records and soon maintained a tireless pace in the recording studio and on the road, reaching a wide and loyal international audience. From 1964 to 1970 they recorded a groundbreaking string of classic albums and an equally impressive body of songs, many of which became pop standards; among them, “The Sound Of Silence,” “Homeward Bound,” “I Am a Rock,” “America,” ““Mrs. Robinson,” “The Boxer,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Cecilia.”
 
Simon & Garfunkel won five Grammy awards together and a prestigious Britannia Award for Best International Pop LP and Single, 1952-77, for “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” In 1972, Simon & Garfunkel Greatest Hits was released, remaining on the charts for 131 weeks in the U.S. and 179 weeks in the UK. The album has since sold 14 million units, the largest-selling album of all time for a duo. In 1990, Paul and Art were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
 
Having worked with director Mike Nichols on The Graduate soundtrack, Garfunkel went on to feature acting roles in Nichols’s movies Catch-22 and Carnal Knowledge, opposite Ann-Margret, Candice Bergen and Jack Nicholson. He also garnered acclaim for his roles in films including Nicholas Roeg’s Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession, Good to Go and Jennifer Lynch’s controversial film Boxing Helena.
 
Art Garfunkel’s first solo album, Angel Clare, was released in 1973 to critical and commercial acclaim. Breakaway was released in 1975 and contained the mega-hit “I Only Have Eyes For You,” followed by Watermark, Fate for Breakfast and Scissors Cut, named one of the best albums of 1981 by Rolling Stone magazine. Shortly after the release of Scissor Cut, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel reunited for a concert in New York’s Central Park before a crowd of 500,000. Following up on the success of the concert, HBO special and platinum-selling live album, the duo undertook a worldwide tour in 1982-83. In the spring of 1990, at the request of the U.S. State Department, Garfunkel performed before 1.4 million people at an outdoor rally to support and promote democracy in Sofia, Bulgaria. He soon after began touring Europe, Asia and the United States, including a series of twenty-one sold-out reunion shows with Paul Simon at New York’s Paramount Theater, alongside an eighth solo album, up ‘til now, that offered up a compilation of old Simon & Garfunkel rarities, live Garfunkel recordings and new studio ballads.
 
In 2003, following a string of projects that included his debut as a songwriter, Everything Waits To Be Notice, Garfunkel and Paul Simon accepted the Grammy’s Lifetime Achievement Award and announced a worldwide tour. They performed together at Madison Square Garden on September 20, 2005, raising $9 million for long-term relief from the Hurricane Katrina. In January 2007, Garfunkel released his twelfth solo album, Some Enchanted Evening, a musical celebration of material from the 20th century’s greatest songwriters.