Saturday, February 03, 2007

Frank Zappa

New York is a huge center for performing arts of all kinds, and to be honest, I haven’t had the chance to go see nearly as many shows, of any kind, as I’d like (though I have seen a few). Miller Theater is run by the Graduate School of the Performing Arts here at Columbia, and students have access to savagely discounted tickets. On Friday night, a group of musicians put on a performance of selected works by Frank Zappa, and it was an absolutely great evening.
Zappa (1940-1993) is a tricky figure to explain exactly. Basically, he was an extremely talented musician primarily from California who wrote, directed, and produced an extremely wide range of music during his life, but had tastes & vision somewhat outside the mainstream. In pop culture, he’s often best known for his works that were satirical, like his song “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow”. But he worked on a wide range of things, and musically really was a genius in terms of the range of music and instruments he was comfortable with, and the depth of his understanding of music. He was a bit like Weird Al Yankovic in that regard; much of his stuff sounds silly, or non-sensical, but in order to be able to do all the parodies he does, it requires someone who actually is a very accomplished musician. I’d heard Zappa’s name before, and was curious about his music, so when I found out Miller was putting on a show of his work, I figured it would be a good opportunity.
I wasn’t disappointed. The performance started out as a winds quartet, moved to a strings quartet, moved to a full orchestra, had an intermission, and then ended in what I might best describe as a “jam session” with the following instruments: electric guitar, bass guitar, drums, cello, violin, sax, flute, & piano/keyboard. The performers were all fantastic, and really put themselves into the playing; the first chair violin in particular was excellent. The music itself would be a bit hard to describe; the friend I went with said it was “barely controlled chaos”. Try to imagine an orchestra warm-up session where people were all playing random notes and tones. Then try to imagine someone scoring something like that, and after you listen a bit you start to realize it isn’t all random, but it fits together in very clever ways. That’s what this was like (with a bit more structure, though the structure wasn’t always obvious). During the orchestra bit, the music went through a tempo shift to something that sounded more like a lounge tune, and some of the performers actually put their instruments down and started talking & laughing with each other, to simulate a noisy bar or club type atmosphere. But the thing is, you come to realize the music is scored that way, for specific effect, and lasts a specific number of measures, before the performers pick up their instruments again. That’s the type of genius I’m talking about.
It's admittedly a bit hard to describe, so I think the best example of what I'm talking about would be this ancedote from the program notes; this was written by the show's director (and bass player) Brian Coughlin.
"Until I got to college I never really paid much attention to Frank Zappa. (...) I only became acquanited with a different zappa as a freshman in college, when a friend instroduced me to a live performance of his verion of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven from the album The Best Ban You Never Heard in Your Life. My friend was delighted by the clever way in which Zappa lampoons the bombastic showiness of 1970 rock by using a jazz big band to play Jimmy Page's classic rock guitar solo. When the song gets to the point where, in the original, Page takes over with his usual guitar pyrotechnics, instead of the expected guitar solo, Zappa brings in the whole jazz band, but playing Page's solo, note-for-note. The moment is very funny. But as I listened to it, I began to realize that there was more to it than just a clever spoof of Led Zeppelin: here was a full big band of musicians who were playing Page's complex, virtuosic guitar solo IN UNISON. WHo was this crazy man who would go to all the trouble to put together and train a huge group of musicians to do something this difficult as a joke? (...) I soon found out that the re-orchestration of Led Zeppelin I had heard was only the tip of the iceberg. Though challenging to most mortal musicians, playing Jimmy Page's solo must have seemed like a walk in the park for Zappa's players compared to some of the other music he had them play ..."
It was a great show, and a great intro to a great composer. If anyone has interest, maybe pick up some of his stuff & give it a listen.
(Oh, by the way, this clever picture came from the promo stuff for the concert, I'm sure it's copyrighted by the folks down at Miller Theater or the School of Performing Arts OR the Zappa Family Trust or all three or something like that, I'm just a college student who appreciated the music, I don't have any money, I'm not claiming this as my own work, I didn't make this thing, I'm not promoting it for money, so don't sue me, etc etc etc ...
The same basic thing applies for the program notes I'm quoting.
Thank you for your cooperation.)