Richard Wolfson was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 musician

Musician

A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

, performance artist, cameraman and journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

. He is probably best remembered for the concept album

Concept album

In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...

 Kaddish which he created with Andy Saunders using the band name Towering Inferno.

Life

Wolfson was born to an orthodox Jewish family. In his early years he learnt piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

 and guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

, and, at the age of 17, formed the first of a succession of bands with Saunders. Towering Inferno was conceived as a large scale multimedia

Multimedia

Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...

 stage project, involving film and electronics. Wolfson and Saunders met with and were impressed by the Hungarian

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 poet Endre Szkárosihttp://www.barcelonareview.com/21/c_prop_es.htm and his cryptic poetry was a stimulus for their major work, the stage show and album Kaddish, which was created over five years and is an extended reflection on the Jewish prayer of the same name

Kaddish

Kaddish is a prayer found in the Jewish prayer service. The central theme of the Kaddish is the magnification and sanctification of God's name. In the liturgy different versions of the Kaddish are used functionally as separators between sections of the service...

, including references to the history and folk-lore of Central and Eastern Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 and to the Shoah

Shoah

Shoah may refer to:*The Holocaust*Shoah , documentary directed by Claude Lanzmann * A Shoah Foundation...

. The music includes adaptations of Hungarian folk-songs, some of them sung by Márta Sebestyén

Márta Sebestyén

Márta Sebestyén is a Hungarian folk vocalist, as well as a composer and actress.Sebestyén's mother is a composer, and was a music student of Zoltán Kodály. Her father was an economist and author. When Sebestyén was seven years old, her father, returning from a trip to the U.S...

 and Szkárosi, Jewish chant and the sound of the shofar

Shofar

A shofar is a horn, traditionally that of a ram, used for Jewish religious purposes. Shofar-blowing is incorporated in synagogue services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.Shofar come in a variety of sizes.- Bible and rabbinic literature :...

, and dramatic electronic sound-effects. Other musical guests included John Marshall

John Stanley Marshall

John Stanley Marshall, better known as John Marshall, born 28 August 1941 in Isleworth, Middlesex, is an English drummer. He was a founding member of the jazz rock band Nucleus and has worked with various other jazz and rock bands and musicians, among them J.J...

, Chris Cutler

Chris Cutler

Chris Cutler is an English percussionist, composer, lyricist and music theorist. Best known for his work with English avant-rock group Henry Cow, Cutler was also a member and drummer of a number of other bands, including Art Bears, News from Babel, Pere Ubu and Gong/Mothergong...

, Tim Hodgkinson

Tim Hodgkinson

Tim Hodgkinson is an English experimental music composer and performer, principally on reeds and keyboards. He is best known as one of the core members of the British avant-rock group Henry Cow, which he formed with Fred Frith in 1968...

 and Elton Dean

Elton Dean

Elton Dean was an English jazz musician who performed on alto saxophone, saxello and occasionally keyboard....

.

Kaddish was originally released in 1993 and described by its creators as 'a dream history of Europe in the wake of the Holocaust'. Brian Eno

Brian Eno

Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...

 called it 'the most frightening record I have ever heard'. It received outstanding reviews from both the popular music and mainstream press, and performances were given all over the world.

Wolfson also became a successful journalist, writing on music and film for the Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times

Financial Times

The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....

. He died of an aortic aneurysm

Aortic aneurysm

An aortic aneurysm is a general term for any swelling of the aorta to greater than 1.5 times normal, usually representing an underlying weakness in the wall of the aorta at that location...

. Saunders with Cutler, Jah Wobble

Jah Wobble

Jah Wobble is an English bass guitarist, singer, poet and composer. He became known to a wider audience as the original bass player in Public Image Ltd in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but left the band after two albums...

, Bob Drake

Bob Drake (musician)

Bob Drake is an American multi-instrumentalist musician and recording engineer. He was a founding member of the avant-rock band Thinking Plague in the early 1980s, and a member of the 5uu's, Hail and The Science Group . He formed his own band, Bob Drake's Cabinet of Curiosities in 2007...

, Dave Kerman

Dave Kerman

David Kerman , better known as Dave Kerman, is a United States experimental rock drummer and composer, best known as the founder and member of the Los Angeles avant-rock group 5uu's. He is also a member of the Belgian progressive rock band Present and the Israeli avant-rock band Ahvak...

, Glyn Perrin, Greg Skerman, and others are completing a second Towering Inferno album, started before Wolfson's death.