"Though it was a golden era for countercultural California folk, Zimmerman devoted himself to mastering formal music theory and composition while working part-time as a firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service. He composed arias in the early 1960s and only turned to folk in 1965, when a friend asked him to hide a Spanish guitar that had been a gift from a girlfriend he was planning to leave."
"Under the tutelage of composer Henry Onderdonk, Zimmerman graduated from San Francisco State College in 1966 and received a Fulbright scholarship to study composition with Goffredo Petrassi in Rome. In Italy, Zimmerman made the rounds of folk clubs playing his own songs as he tried to establish a foothold in Europe. At the time his scholarship was awarded, he had been drafted into the U.S. army. "The State Department and Selective Service battled for possession of my soul," he wrote in a biography on his website. "At the last moment the draft board relented and let me go.""
Tucker Zimmerman was born Bryan Tucker Zimmerman in San Francisco in 1941, studied violin from age four, and absorbed jazz, rhythm and blues, Folkways recordings, and novels by Steinbeck and Verne. He mastered formal music theory and composition while working part-time for the U.S. Forest Service and composed arias in the early 1960s before turning to folk in 1965. Zimmerman studied with Henry Onderdonk, graduated from San Francisco State College in 1966, received a Fulbright to study with Goffredo Petrassi in Rome, and performed in folk clubs across Europe and North Africa. He met Marie-Claire in 1967. Zimmerman and his wife died of asphyxiation in a house fire at their home in Belgium on January 17; he was 84. The label 4AD confirmed the news and had released his 2024 collaborative album with Big Thief, Dance of Love.
Read at Pitchfork
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]