Loren Mazzacane Connors

Biography

Loren Mazzacane Connors was born on October 22, 1949, in New Haven, Connecticut. He initially studied art at Southern Connecticut State University and the University of Cincinnati in the early 1970s before switching his focus from painting to music.

Over his career, he has released more than 50 albums under names including Guitar Roberts, Loren Mazzacane, Loren Mattei, and his current name, Loren Connors. His music spans abstract and experimental versions of blues and folk, encompassing spare solo and duo blues, ensemble experimental jazz, noise, drones, and avant-garde rock. He has released work on labels such as Family Vineyard, Table of the Elements, Recital, and Father Yod, as well as his own imprints Black Label, St. Joan, and Daggett.

An early supporter was Dr. William Ferris, a blues historian who later headed the National Endowment for the Arts under President Clinton. Connors contacted Ferris in the late 1970s while Ferris taught at Yale University. Unbeknownst to Ferris at the time, Connors was the janitor who cleaned his office. Years later, Ferris wrote liner notes for a compilation CD set of Connors’s seven-inch recordings titled “Night Through.”

Between 1978 and 1984, Connors recorded a series of mostly solo blues abstractions, issuing them in limited runs on his Daggett label. These were later reissued in 1999 by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore on the Ecstatic Peace label, mastered by Jim O’Rourke, partly to mark Connors’s 50th birthday. Cadence Magazine described him as similar to other avant-garde improvising guitarists in extending the boundaries of acoustic guitar sound and pitch, but unique in his use of blues, calling it “Avant Garde Blues.”

From 1981 to 1984, he released six limited-edition albums with folksinger Kath Bloom, featuring traditional songs and Bloom’s originals.

In the mid-1980s, Connors stepped back from music to refine his compositional skills through haiku. He won the 1987 Lafcadio Hearn Award and co-wrote an article on blues and haiku, “The Dancing Ear,” with his life partner Suzanne Langille, published in the Haiku Society of America’s journal. A book of his haiku from this period, “Autumn Sun,” was later re-released by Thurston Moore and Byron Coley. He wrote under the name Loren Mattei, and a music recording from this time, “Ribbon o’ Blues,” also appeared under that name.

After returning to music, Connors began using layered tracks. The first such album was “In Pittsburgh,” released in 1989 and reissued by Dexter’s Cigar in 1996. He moved to New York City in 1990 and continued with multi-track recording through the 1990s.

Langille contributed vocals on several recordings and helped edit his suites. Many of these releases came out on the RoadCone label, run by Mike Hinds. During this period, Connors introduced an abstracted undercurrent of Irish themes and melodic influences while avoiding formal structure, with “Hell’s Kitchen Park” marking this new direction.

These 1990s recordings were mixed with live guitar duet performances. The first duet was with Japanese guitarist Keiji Haino, arranged by WFMU DJ David Newgarten, who also produced the recording, released in 1995.

This was followed by the first of several recordings with guitarist Alan Licht in 1996, and others with Thurston Moore. In the mid-to-late 1990s, Connors led the blues-rock group Haunted House with Langille, Andrew Burnes of the band San Agustin, and percussionist Neel Murgai. Connors and Langille also joined San Agustin’s David Daniell and Burnes for a recording on the Secretly Canadian label.

In the late 1990s, Connors met John Fahey at a Chicago event, introduced by guitarist Jim O’Rourke. Fahey, who died in 2001, included a piece on his last CD, released posthumously in 2003, titled “Red Cross, Disciple of Christ Today (for Guitar Roberts),” referencing Connors’s nickname. In the mid-2000s, Connors met and performed with Jandek, a long-time improviser often compared to Connors for his unique independence and originality. He worked closely with poet Steve Dalachinsky (who died in 2019) and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter.

From 1999 onward, Connors focused on extended solo improvisational recordings, including the “Departing of a Dream” series, his tribute to Miles Davis. His main label for these was Family Vineyard, managed by Eric Weddle. In 2003, he composed and recorded a score for the film “Why Can’t I Stop This Uncontrollable Dancing?” In 2009, his piece “Airs No. 3” appeared in the soundtrack for the French-language film “Le Premier Cercle” (“The Ultimate Heist”), directed by Laurent Tuel and starring Jean Reno. In 2012, his composition “The Murder of Joan of Arc” was used as one of two alternative soundtracks for a Criterion Collection and Eureka Entertainment reissue of Carl Dreyer’s silent film “The Passion of Joan of Arc.”

In the mid-to-late 2010s, Connors returned to painting while continuing to compose and perform. An art show of acrylic paintings on Belgium linen canvas was held at Artists Space in Manhattan in fall 2018. Connors was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1992 but continues to perform and record. Some of his works are archived at the Blues Archive of the University of Mississippi, and the University of South Carolina holds a comprehensive archive of his materials.

Did You Know?

• Connors was the janitor who cleaned Dr. William Ferris's office at Yale University in the late 1970s, before Ferris became head of the National Endowment for the Arts.
• Connors was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1992 but continues to perform and record.
• His composition "The Murder of Joan of Arc" was used as an alternative soundtrack for Carl Dreyer's silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc in a 2012 Criterion Collection reissue.