The gift­ed gui­tarist, singer and song­writer Jeff Buck­ley would have turned 45 years old today. As a young boy grow­ing up in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Buck­ley’s first musi­cal obses­sion was Led Zep­pelin’s Phys­i­cal Graf­fi­ti. His moth­er remem­bers him play­ing the record so often the grooves wore out. The tables were turned in 1994 when Buck­ley released his debut album, Grace, and Led Zep­pelin gui­tarist Jim­my Page found him­self lis­ten­ing to it con­stant­ly. Page thought Buck­ley was the great­est tal­ent to emerge in decades. It was an aus­pi­cious begin­ning.

Sad­ly, the young man died before he could fin­ish a sec­ond album. In 1997, at the age of 30, Buck­ley was wait­ing for some band­mates to arrive for a record­ing ses­sion in Mem­phis when he decid­ed to go for an impromp­tu swim in a slack­wa­ter chan­nel of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er. Sober and in good spir­its, he went into the water ful­ly clothed, with his boots still on, singing along to a boom­box play­ing Led Zep­pelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love.” A tug boat passed, and a road­ie friend who was on the shore scram­bled to move the boom­box and a gui­tar away from the boat’s wake. When he turned back around, Buck­ley had dis­ap­peared.

Buck­ley nev­er had a hit record in his life­time, but his fol­low­ing has steadi­ly grown since his death. His bril­liant remake of Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah” (in the video above) went to the top of the iTunes down­load chart in 2008.

To learn more about this remark­able artist you can watch the 2002 BBC doc­u­men­tary, Jeff Buck­ley: Every­body Here Wants You. (See below.) The one-hour film fea­tures rare footage of Buck­ley’s ear­ly per­for­mances and inter­views, along with com­men­tary by Jim­my Page, Pat­ti Smith, Chrissie Hyn­de and many of the peo­ple who were close to Buck­ley, includ­ing his moth­er. It chron­i­cles his ear­ly work as a gui­tarist in Los Ange­les, his emer­gence as a singer and song­writer in New York, the mak­ing of Grace, and the ghost that was always shad­ow­ing Buck­ley: the com­pli­cat­ed lega­cy of his famous bio­log­i­cal father, the folk singer Tim Buck­ley, who he bare­ly knew, and who also died young.

The Copen­hagen Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra dates all the way back to 1843, mak­ing it one of the old­est pro­fes­sion­al sym­pho­ny orches­tras around. But it’s not so old that it can’t par­take in the con­tem­po­rary flash mob trend. Ear­li­er this year, they broke out some Rav­el’s Bolero at Copen­hagen’s Cen­tral Sta­tion. Feel free to add it to a playlist that includes Verdi’s La travi­a­ta in Valen­cia, Spain and Han­del’s Mes­si­ah in the city of Broth­er­ly Love. Thanks Bob for send­ing our way.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

On Wednes­day night, Peter Gabriel brought his 46-piece orches­tra to the Ed Sul­li­van The­ater in New York City and treat­ed the audi­ence to a 65-minute con­cert fea­tur­ing orches­tral ver­sions of some clas­sic Gabriel songs: Red Rain, Sols­bury Hill, Biko, Intrud­er, Mer­cy Street, Wall­flower, San Jac­in­to, Rhythm of The Heat, Sig­nal to Noise — they were all on the setlist, though not in that par­tic­u­lar order. The con­cert, pre­sent­ed as part of the Live on Let­ter­man web­cast series, fea­tures songs and musi­cians appear­ing on Gabriel’s lat­est LP, New Blood.…

via Stere­ogum

Cel­list Yo-Yo Ma is famous for his eclec­ti­cism. From Baroque cham­ber music to tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese melodies, Ma delights in dis­solv­ing bar­ri­ers. His lat­est genre-hop­ping project is The Goat Rodeo Ses­sions, an inven­tive blue­grass col­lab­o­ra­tion with bassist Edgar Mey­er, fid­dler Stu­art Dun­can and Man­dolin­ist Chris Thile. Vocal­ist Aoife O’Dono­van joins the group on two songs. The expres­sion “goat rodeo” refers to a chaot­ic sit­u­a­tion where a group of peo­ple with dif­fer­ing view­points have to work togeth­er to avert dis­as­ter. When the group showed up recent­ly at Google’s New York offices for a brief per­for­mance and dis­cus­sion (see above), Ma com­pared The Goat Rodeo Ses­sions to the eco­log­i­cal “Edge Effect,” where con­trast­ing eco-sys­tems come togeth­er. “You have the least den­si­ty of life forms, but you actu­al­ly have the most vari­ety of new life forms,” explained Ma. “I think we all prob­a­bly, as a group, enjoy going to the edge because it’s thrilling to dis­cov­er new life forms. It’s thrilling to take from what you know and try some­thing that real­ly has­n’t quite hap­pened in the same way before.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Col­lab­o­ra­tions: Spike Jonze, Yo-Yo Ma, and Lil Buck