30 | JANUARY 30 • 2019 

Arts&Life

music

Song
&
Story

Duo brings Simon & Garfunkel’
s
history and music alive on stage. 
 

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

A

s the singing-songwriting duo of Paul 
Simon and Art Garfunkel step back 
from stage work, Taylor Bloom and 
Benjamin Cooley step forward to perform 
some 30 of their folk-rock hits and tell about 
their high-powered careers and personal 
lives.
The Simon & Garfunkel Story, North 
American Tour, has a single performance 
Saturday evening, Feb. 8, at the Fox Theatre 
in Detroit, where a full live band joins in the 
concert-style theater piece enhanced with 
state-of-the-art video projections. 
The story is told chronologically from their 
beginnings as New York school buddies who 
were known as Tom & Jerry, and then moves 
through their success in the 1960s before 
their breakup in 1970. 
The show, seen in 50 countries, culmi-
nates with recollections of the Concert in 
Central Park reunion in 1981, when the two 
performed for more than a half million fans. 
Hit numbers include “Bridge Over Troubled 
Water,
” “Mrs. Robinson,
” “Homeward 
Bound,
” “The Sound of Silence” and 
“Scarborough Fair.
”
“It’
s a privilege to play this music, and I 
love the band that’
s up on the stage,
” said 
Bloom, who plays Simon. “These musicians 
are absolute pros, and to be with them is an 
absolute pleasure.

“What Ben and I do in telling the story to 
the audience is to explain, with each song, 
what was going on in their lives or what was 
going on in the world at the time each song 
first was performed,
” he said.
“The nice thing about Paul Simon is that 
there is a fair amount of footage of him with 
a lot of information to be gleaned from that 
footage — whether it’
s tracking him as a 
young and sort of naïve performer or later as 
a legend with the excitement 
that goes with that. I try to 
emulate that evolution in my 
performance.
”
Bloom did not have the 
opportunity to meet Simon in 
preparing for the role. Instead, 
his core information about 
career and private life was taken 
from a Simon biography. 
“Paul Simon and I have a similar gui-
tar-playing style,
” Bloom said. “When I was 
first learning all the music, I thought it was 
kind of complicated. I soon realized that 
Simon was doing what was based on chord 
shapes and techniques. They require a little 
less effort but give more freedom for the fin-
gers to do other things.
“From night to night, my favorite song to 
play is ‘
The Boxer.
’
 It’
s about someone who’
s 
trying to follow a dream and is struggling, not 

just with following a dream but with having 
to give everything up to try to get it. The song 
is a celebration of fighting for something.
”
Bloom, 24, realized a step forward in his 
quest for a performing career soon after 
earning a bachelor’
s degree in fine arts from 
Shenandoah Conservatory in Virginia, the 
state where he grew up learning to play dif-
ferent instruments and acting in school pro-
ductions. He was chosen for this tour and has 
been on it for three years.
“
Any of my friends will tell 
you that I’
m fairly energetic, 
boisterous and loud,
” he said. 
“Theater was the first place that I 
found acceptance of that level of 
energy that could be shaped into 
different characters and used to 
entertain.
”
Although Simon and 
Garfunkel are both of Jewish descent, the 
show does not discuss their heritage. Bloom 
was not raised in Jewish traditions, but he 
says he knows of Jewish heritage on his 
father’
s side and would like to explore that.
“My paternal grandfather is where our 
Jewish heritage comes from,
” he said. “I 
believe his family came to the United States 
to escape Germany. I’
m curious to find out 
more about my heritage.
 
”
. 

details
The Simon & Garfunkel 
Story begins at 8 p.m. 
Saturday, Feb. 8, at the 
Fox Theatre in Detroit. 
Tickets start at $30. 
313presents.com.

LANE PETERS

Benjamin Cooley and Taylor 
Bloom perform the songs of 
Simon and Garfunkel on stage 
with a full band and give 
information behind the songs. 

