Unfortunately, I never saw them perform together, only separately. I think Art was somewhere in Eindhoven in 1996 and Paul twice at the Ziggo. Personally, I find the combination of their voices the most beautiful. I believe my favourite album is "The Concert in Central Park".
Simon & Garfunkel
Simon & Garfunkel was an American singing duo from the 1960s consisting of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. During their high school years, Simon and Garfunkel began singing songs by, among others, The Everly Brothers. In 1956, they adopted the stage names Tom and Jerry (Paul Simon as Jerry Landis and Art Garfunkel as Tom Graph), officially starting a career and securing their first recording contract. In 1957, they wrote their first original lyrics and scored their first hit: "Hey Schoolgirl". Subsequent attempts to achieve hits were unsuccessful, and after high school, they each went their separate ways.
In the following period, they saw each other rarely. In 1962, they met again and by the end of 1963, they performed under the name Simon & Garfunkel.
Because their music was used in 1967 as the soundtrack for the film The Graduate (starring Dustin Hoffman), their career accelerated rapidly. With their calm, catchy, and mildly socially critical songs, they climbed the charts. Songs like "The Sound of Silence", "Homeward Bound", "I Am a Rock", "Kathy's Song", "April Come She Will", "A Hazy Shade of Winter", "America", "Scarborough Fair", "Mrs. Robinson", "The Boxer", "Bridge Over Troubled Water", "Cecilia", "El Condor Pasa" and "My Little Town" are still well known to many. They also dedicated a song to the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
Some of their songs have achieved evergreen status. Simon & Garfunkel won five Grammy Awards for their albums. The duo split up in 1970.
After eleven years, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel came together once more on 19 September 1981 for a performance in Central Park, New York. Nearly half a million people attended this memorable concert. In 2003, the duo received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 2004, they held the Old Friends Tour and in February 2009, Garfunkel announced that they might start a new tour. In June and July 2009, there was a tour through Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
Sunday Morning Classics: Bridge Over Troubled Water
On 24 May 2020, Simon & Garfunkel were featured as Sunday Morning Classic with the album "Bridge Over Troubled Water".
Simon and Garfunkel's swan song from 1970, Bridge Over Troubled Water, was both their most effortless record and their most ambitious. The duo spent most of the sixties as a highly regarded folk act distinguished by their intuitive harmonies and Paul Simon's articulate songwriting. This varied album contains the roots of Paul Simon's later incorporation of African and South American rhythms into clever pop songs, notably "El Condor Pasa (If I Could)". The tune is hundreds of years old, but Simon came to it via a contemporary Peruvian group called Los Incas. He wrote new English lyrics about rural versus urban life, and he and Garfunkel sang them over the original instrumental. Especially after the grand gospel of the title track, the song sounds both exotic and modest. Later, "Keep the Customer Satisfied" swells with huge brass blasts, "Baby Driver" brings some R&B sax, and "Cecilia" sounds irresistibly catchy with its pennywhistle solo and handclap percussion. Despite the breadth of sound – and despite the fragmentation of their relationship – Bridge sounds like a united statement, enlivened by styles and rhythms rarely heard on pop radio at the crossroads of those two decades.
The album versions on Bridge demonstrably hold up better than the singles – or perhaps it's just that we've all heard the title track and side-two opener "The Boxer" so often, while songs like "Keep the Customer Satisfied" and "Baby Driver" still sound less familiar, and therefore full of surprises. Bridge reveals an abundance of strange, exciting sonic details, as Simon, Garfunkel and co-producer Roy Halee insert small sound effects, such as the disruptive skiffle beat on "Why Don't You Write Me" or the audience rhythm section on the live version of "Bye Bye Love". The title track owes its outsized drama not only to Garfunkel's intense, measured singing but also to the resonant percussion, which mimics the echoing crackle of sound against a cathedral wall. Thanks to the ethereal organ and the melodically prominent bass of Joe Osborn, "The Only Living Boy in New York" sounds practically weightless, as if Manhattan is as lonely and deserted as the moon. The song remains one of the most natural and surprising juxtapositions of sound and sentiment in Simon's catalogue.
Source: Wikipedia and Jan Liebregts
Photo: Eddie Mallin (1982)
https://www.simonandgarfunkel.com/
