Kramer

Known professionally as “KRAMER ”, Bonner Kramer is an artist/composer and award-winning Record Producer and music executive. Prior to the early 1980s beginnings of his career in the recording & performing arts, Kramer’s education in the late 1970s included two years at the Creative Music Studio in the Woodstock Valley studying under Dr. Karl Berger, Art History at SVA, Film Studies at The New School, and acting studies under William Hickey at HB Studios.

Recipient of the Rolling Stone Magazine’s prestigious ‘Producer Of The Year’ honors in 1993, Kramer was a mainstay of the NYC “Downtown” music scene for 30 years, as well as one of the founders of the international music phenomenon known as “Slow-Core”, having produced all three Galaxie 500 LPs and the first two LPs by LOW. He still maintains a place on the artist roster of John Zorn’s Tzadik Records label, on which he has released four distinctively unique works as a solo artist & composer over the last 15 years, the last of which features guitarist Bill Frisell.

Following a harrowing tour as bassist with the Butthole Surfer in 1985, he acquired Noise New York, a 16-track recording studio in NYC that he nurtured into becoming a central piece of the era’s ‘Downtown’ music puzzle. It was also a magnet for international artists who came to regard it as the home of Kramer’s unique ethos as a producer, seeking out his talents there until 1992, when he sold the studio and moved his home base to a 24-track state-of-the-art recording facility in New Jersey, ten miles north of the city. This was to be dubbed Noise New Jersey. His activities there continued until late 1998 when he turned his attention
to theater.

In 1987 he founded the seminal NYC record label Shimmy-Disc (followed by his Kokopop and Second-Shimmy labels), and established himself as a maverick in the recording industry while maintaining the “independent” status of the label and ensuring that each artist had complete creative control of their artistic process and final product. Among the many artists for whom Kramer has produced seminal works are Daniel Johnston, Galaxie 500, White Zombie, LOW, Will Oldham, Urge Overkill, and King Missile, to name but a few.

Best known to international audiences as the producer of the hit single, “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon” from the soundtrack of 1994’s winner of the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Pulp Fiction. The recording has won 8x Platinum RIAA Awards and continues to be one of the film industry’s biggest-selling soundtrack albums of all time.

In 1998, KRAMER sold his interests in Shimmy-Disc and wholly devoted himself to working beside director Arthur Penn, whose 1967 film Bonnie & Clyde changed Hollywood and the film industry forever. Working as assistant director, sound designer and composer on numerous stage productions at Arthur’s W42nd Street Actors Studio Theater, Kramer also composed the score for Arthur Penn’s Broadway production of Fortune’s Fool, starring Alan Bates and Frank Langella.

As a musician, he has performed in a wide variety of musical projects including Butthole Surfers, WEEN, Half Japanese, and Bongwater.