Recent History

J S Kingfisher – Jeff – is a composer, lyricist, poet, recording artist, and inventor living in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Northern California. His first album, Floating Upstream, was released in 1993, followed by Vesica Piscis in 1998. In 2002 he founded Philomuse, and produced and released John Steiner's Out of the Blue.

In 2004, Jeff began work on a system of divination based on music called the Muzoracle. On August 1, 2008, the Muzoracle -- and it's companion product, the Musician's Dice -- were launched. 2009 saw another album from John Steiner, Into the Green, and a game of skill and chance for musicians called Muzundrum. In 2010, he produced John Steiner's third album for Philomuse, Impressions. Jeff is currently at work on a new solo double CD, slated for release in mid 2012, and a second, two-volume edition of the Muzoracle handbook.

Root of the Fruit

J S Kingfisher – Jeff Siegel at the time – entered the world at 7:18 pm on July 23rd, 1958 in Sacramento, California (Leo Sun, Scorpio Moon, Capricorn rising.) Musically, he was influenced early on by the big band and country swing records of his parents, and by the records passed on to him by his older cousins: Meet the Beatles and Rubber Soul, the Stones' Aftermath, Cream's Disraeli Gears, lots of Janis and Motown, and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. His high school years found him heavy into Bowie and glam with the shoes to prove it; in the meantime he discovered fusion, Joni, and THC. Jeff started playing piano and writing songs himself at age 12, and studied organ and classical theory throughout his teens.

Jeff's first professional gig was as a pianist for the notorious Lee Garland Show, a raucous and bawdy review featuring Garland's female impersonations, comedy, and dancers. Throughout his early twenties he played in numerous rock bands, and in 1981 moved to LA. There he attended the Dick Grove School of Music for two years, studying piano, composition, and arranging; it was there he began to seriously sink his teeth into jazz and develop his compositional style of writing and playing. Jeff's next half-dozen years were spent arranging, producing, and playing sessions of all sorts, mostly from his Hollywood studio, Electric Cat. Meanwhile he continued working on his own stuff, and in 1989 moved up to Northern Cal and began writing the material that would later become Floating Upstream.

Jeff worked throughout the nineties on several multimedia projects, composing for the theatrical productions Both Hands, Kelly's Dream in the Rain, and finally Unity Gain, a well received Bay Area production based on Floating Upstream that included several musicians and movement artists floating behind a sixty-foot wide projection surface.

Personal Notes

Jeff's music, writing, and art is heavily influenced by his other esoteric interests, which include dreamwork, divination, mythology, and the Gurdjieff work. He is an avid reader of both fiction and non, and is somewhat of a film buff; he also loves to hike and is no slouch in the kitchen. Jeff divides his time between San Francisco, Los Angeles, and his home in the Sierra Nevada – gigging, casting the Muzoracle, espousing esoteric music theory, and embracing life with gusto.