Rufus Wainwright life and biography

Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright is an American-Canadian singer-songwriter. He has recorded six albums of original music, EPs, and tracks on compilations and film soundtracks.

Wainwright was born in Rhinebeck, New York, to folk singers Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III. His parents divorced when he was three, and he lived with his mother in Montreal for most of his youth. Wainwright has dual US and Canadian citizenship.
He attended high school at the Millbrook School in New York (which would later inspire his song "Millbrook"), and later briefly studied piano at both Concordia and McGill Universities in Montreal.
He began playing the piano at age six, and started touring at 13 with "The McGarrigle Sisters and Family", a folk group featuring Rufus, his sister Martha, his mother Kate, and aunt Anna. His song "I'm a-Runnin'", which he performed in the film Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller at the age of 14, earned him a nomination for a 1989 Genie Award for Best Original Song. He was nominated for a 1990 Juno Award for Most Promising Male Vocalist of the Year.

Wainwright acknowledged that he was gay while a teenager. In 1999, he told Rolling Stone that his father recognized his homosexuality early on. "We'd drive around in the car, he'd play 'Heart of Glass' and I'd sort of mouth the words, pretend to be Blondie. Just a sign of many other things to come as well." Wainwright later said in another interview that his "mother and father could not even handle me being gay. We never talked about it really."

Wainwright became interested in opera during his adolescent years, and the genre strongly influences his music. (For instance, the song "Barcelona" features lyrics from the libretto of Giuseppe Verdi's opera, Macbeth.) During this time, he became interested in Édith Piaf, Al Jolson, and Judy Garland.

At 14, Wainwright was sexually assaulted in London's Hyde Park after picking up a man at a bar.He has been reported to have stated that he remained celibate for five, or seven years, after the incident, and eventually became promiscuous.
In an interview years later, he described the event: "I said I wanted to go to the park and see where this big concert was going on. I thought it was going to be a romantic walk in the park, but he raped me and robbed me afterwards and tried to strangle me". Wainwright states that he survived only by pretending to be an epileptic and faking a seizure.

In 2009 the unofficial biography There Will Be Rainbows: A Biography of Rufus Wainwright and the story of Loudon Wainwright and Kate McGarrigle by Kirk Lake documented Wainwright's early struggles.

Through weekly shows at Cafe Sarajevo, Wainwright was on the Montreal club circuit and eventually cut a series of demo tapes produced by Pierre Marchand, who later produced Wainwright's album Poses. The resulting tapes impressed his father Loudon, who passed them on to his friend Van Dyke Parks. Parks sent the recordings to Lenny Waronker, the DreamWorks executive who eventually signed Wainwright to his label.
Waronker stated the following of Wainwright: "When I was about to listen to his tape, I remember clearly I was thinking, 'Gee, if he has the mom's musicality and smarts, and the dad's smarts and voice, that'd be nice.' Then I put it on and I said, 'Oh, my God, this is stunning.'"

The singer moved to New York City in 1996, performing regularly at Club Fez. He relocated to Los Angeles that year and began his first studio album, 1998's Rufus Wainwright. Waronker paired Wainwright with producer Jon Brion, and the two spent most of 1996 and 1997 making the record. Wainwright recorded 56 songs in total, on 62 rolls of tape. The sessions cost $700,000.

Wainwright's self-titled debut received critical acclaim; Rolling Stone recognized it as one of the best albums of the year, and named the singer "Best New Artist" of the year. Wainwright was nominated for four awards by the Gay & Lesbian American Music Awards, including Album of the Year, Pop Recording of the Year and Video of the Year, and won for Best New Artist.
Rufus Wainwright won a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Music Album and a Juno Award for Best Alternative Album. However, commercial success of the album was limited; the debut failed to chart in any country, though he ranked No.24 on Billboard's Top Heatseekers chart.

Wainwright toured with Sean Lennon in 1998 and began his first headline tour later that year. In December 1998, he appeared in a Gap commercial directed by Phil Harder, performing Frank Loesser's "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve". In March 1999, Wainwright began a headlining tour at Maxwell's in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Wainwright lived in the Chelsea Hotel in NYC for six months, during which he wrote most of his second album. On June 5, 2001, Wainwright's second album, Poses, was released to critical acclaim but limited sales. The album ranked No.117 on the Billboard 200 and No.1 on the Top Heatseekers chart.
Poses won a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Music Album, a Juno Award for Best Alternative Album, and was nominated by the Juno Awards for Best Songwriter ("Poses" / "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk" / "Grey Gardens").
From 2001 to 2004, he toured with Tori Amos, Sting, Ben Folds, and Guster, as well as headlining the 2001 and 2002 tour in support of the album.

Wainwright became addicted to crystal meth in the early 2000s and temporarily lost his vision. His addiction reached its peak in 2002, during what he described as "the most surreal week of my life."
During that week, he played a cameo role in the UK comedy television program, Absolutely Fabulous, spent several nights partying with George W. Bush's daughter Barbara, enjoyed a "debauched evening" with his mother and Marianne Faithfull, sang with Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons for Zaldy's spring 2003 collection, and experienced recurring hallucinations of his father throughout. He decided after that he "was either going to rehab or I was going to live with my father. I knew I needed an asshole to yell at me, and I felt he fit the bill."

Wainwright's album Want Two, from which four songs were released as the EP Waiting for a Want, was released by DreamWorks/Geffen on November 16, 2004. It is a companion or sequel to the 2003 release, Want One. Afterward, a live iTunes Sessions EP entitled Alright, Already: Live in Montréal was released on March 15, 2005. A DVD entitled All I Want, featuring a biographical documentary, music videos, and live performances, was released internationally in 2005. That same year, Wainwright made two major contributions as a solo vocalist to a pair of records: the Mercury Prize-winning Antony and the Johnsons' I am a Bird Now and Burt Bacharach's At This Time.

Want One and Want Two were repackaged as Want for a November 2005 release to coincide with the beginning of a British tour. This version of Want One contains two extra songs: "Es Muß Sein" and "Velvet Curtain Rag". The Want package in the UK has two bonus tracks: "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" (a Leonard Cohen cover) and "In With the Ladies", which replace "Coeur de Parisienne – Reprise d'Arletty" and "Quand Vous Mourez de Nos Amours" from 2004's augmented edition.

Wainwright created the concept of Blackoutsabbath in early 2008. In an attempt to become more environmentally conscious, participants are asked to live "off the grid" as much as possible on a designated date by unplugging appliances, walking or cycling for transportation, turning out lights and decreasing energy usage in any other ways possible.

As the sun sets on the evening of Blackoutsabbath, participants write ways they can contribute to the Earth's well-being throughout the rest of the year. Annual benefit concerts take place to raise awareness of the cause. Special guests performing at the concert included Joan Wasser, Jenni Muldaur, and friend and fellow singer-songwriter Teddy Thompson. The organization's official site contains updates about the program and contains links to various tools, green products and services, studies, and groups that promote energy conservation and environmental protection.

Following his 2007–2008 tour, Wainwright began writing his first opera, Prima Donna, about "a day in the life of an opera singer", anxiously preparing for her comeback, who falls in love with a journalist. There are four characters, and the libretto is in French.
The opera was originally commissioned by Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb. However, because of a dispute over Wainwright's decision to write the libretto in French and the Met's inability to schedule an opening in the 2009 season, Wainwright and the Met ended their relationship. Instead of a New York opening, Prima Donna was staged during the Manchester International Festival, where the first performance took place at the Palace Theatre on July 10, 2009.
Reviews for the performance were mixed, with one publication suggesting Wainwright "may struggle to convince critics he is worthy of a place among the greats". Prima Donna won a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Musical/Opera in June 2011.

In December 2008 Rufus performed alongside his sister, Martha Wainwright, and mother Kate McGarrigle as well as many more of his family at the Knitting Factory in downtown Manhattan. Joined by other artists such as Grammy Award-winner Emmylou Harris, Velvet Underground front man Lou Reed and famed performance artist Laurie Anderson, the eclectic cast performed original and traditional Christmas-themed songs. In November 2009 Revelation Films released the concert on DVD.

In November 2009, Wainwright announced that he had finished recording his sixth studio album, and was calling it All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu. The album was released on March 23 in Canada, April 5 in the UK and April 20 in the US, with the first single "Who Are You New York?".

In December 2009, Wainwright appeared with sister Martha Wainwright and mother Kate McGarrigle at the Royal Albert Hall in London, raising $55,000 for the Kate McGarrigle Fund, which was established in 2008 to raise awareness of sarcoma, a rare cancer that affects connective tissue such as bone, muscle, nerves, and cartilage. It was the last performance made by his mother before her death in January 2010.
Wainwright and his partner, German arts administrator Jörn Weisbrodt, in 2010.
In late 2010 Wainwright became engaged to his partner Jörn Weisbrodt.

In 2011, Wainwright announced that he and Leonard Cohen's daughter, Lorca Cohen, had had a child. He announced on his website: "Darling daughter Viva Katherine Wainwright Cohen was born on February 2, 2011 in Los Angeles, California to proud parents Lorca Cohen, Rufus Wainwright, and Deputy Dad Jorn Weisbrodt. The little angel is evidently healthy, presumably happy, and certainly very very beautiful."
In July 2011 a 19-disc box set called House of Rufus containing all his studio and live recordings as well as previously unreleased material was released.

In addition to his tenor singing voice, he plays piano and guitar, often switching between the two instruments when performing live. While some songs feature just Wainwright and his piano, his later work is often accompanied by rock instrumentation or a symphony orchestra, displaying complex layering and harmonies with an operatic feel.
Wainwright is an opera fan and likes Franz Schubert's Lieder. Some of Wainwright's songs are described as "popera" (pop opera) or "baroque pop". Many of his compositions are densely packed amalgams of strings, horns, operatic choruses, ragtime rhythms, with a warm vocal timbre.

He often performs with his sister, Martha Wainwright, on backup vocals. Despite critical acclaim, Wainwright has experienced limited commercial success in the United States, although the release of Release the Stars saw increased media attention there, as did the associated 2007 U.S. tour.

In addition to his role in Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller, Wainwright has appeared in the films The Aviator and Heights. He has also recorded tracks specially for films, including Brokeback Mountain, I am Sam, Moulin Rouge!, Shrek, Meet the Robinsons, Big Daddy, Zoolander, and Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man. His recording of "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" plays during the closing credits of the film The History Boys. He is seen in the Denys Arcand film, L’Âge des ténèbres, performing two arias.


DISCOGRAPHY

* Rufus Wainwright (1998)
* Poses (2001)
* Want One (2003)
* Want Two (2004)
* Release the Stars (2007)
* Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall (2007)
* Milwaukee at Last!!! (2009)
* All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu (2010)

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