The Two F. Zappas

Zappa means hoe in Italian.  Jacopo told me that.  Jacopo is Jacopo Franzoni, a fan of all composers named F. Zappa - of which there have been two.  One was Frank Zappa, famous composer and rock star guitarist of the 20th century.  The other was Francesco Zappa, unknown composer and cellist to royalty of the 18th century.

Jacopo recently organized a conference in Milan Italy devoted to both F. Zappas.  Before the conference he interviewed me about the Two Zappas via the miracle of Skype.  Then he edited video from several hours of our conversation down to a concise 8 minute long video.  This was shown at the conference.

If any one thing unites the people of Italy it is that they speak Italian.  Sadly, I know only a few words in Italian and these are all nouns which fall into one of two categories: music (e.g. "fermata") or food (e.g. "martini").  Please don't remind me that these have long since become English words.

To make it easier for those attending the conference to understand my palaver, Jacopo added Italian subtitles to the video.  When he told me that he intended to do this I expressed some curiosity about how I might look that way.  Jacopo replied that I'm much more handsome with Italian subtitles.  I'll let you be the judge.

Here's another of Jacopo's videos in which I appear briefly.  It's the trailer for the conference.  Jacopo called it the "appetizer".

You might notice that Jacopo Franzoni shares billing with Vanni Moretto.  Vanni is a conductor who specializes in Baroque and Classical repertoire.  His ensemble is called Atalanta Fugiens and guess whose music they've recorded.  If you answered F. Zappa you'd be correct.

First, here's some 18th century F. Zappa, a movement from a symphony:

I'm very impressed by the quality of their performance.  I just discovered that Atalanta Fugiens has recorded all six Zappa Symphonies on an album from Deutsche Harmonia Mundi.  I look forward to hearing all of them.

Now some 20th century F. Zappa played by the same talented ensemble.

Now back to the 18th century guy.  This is Francesco Zappa's trio Opus One, Number One:

If you dare, compare that to the same music performed 30 years ago by the Barking Pumpkin Digital Gratification Consort, Frank Zappa conductor.  "Synclavier Document Encryption" for this was provided by David Ocker, Assistant Director of the consort, who all by himself was actually the entirety of the membership.

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I know you can't resist asking "Who was Francesco Zappa"?
I've written about Francesco Zappa before, here.
Francesco has his own website, here.
Fascinating new information about Francesco's life and death, here.

Frank Zappa's 200 Motels - The Suites

On Wednesday October 23 the Los Angeles Philharmonic performed Frank Zappa's 200 Motels - The Suites, an event marking Disney Hall's tenth anniversary.  It was an elaborately staged, spare-no-expense, more-than-ninety-minute concert version for soloists, actors, chorus and massive orchestra.  It was exceptionally well done. It was great fun.  It was like a rock and roll concert.  Sadly, however, it was sold out and one night only.  Many fans of Zappa's music wished for tickets they couldn't get.

I'd like to thank the Philharmonic, and especially conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and also Chad Smith, Philharmonic VP for Artistic Planning who shepherded this project from the beginning, for allowing me to observe all the orchestra rehearsals.  Remarkably, there were only three.  It was a wonderful thing to see this music prepared and performed with such precision and positive professionalism - qualities often missing in large orchestra productions during Frank's lifetime.  Watching this production come together prompted a lot of thoughts and emotions in me.

Gail Zappa, Frank's widow, and her team, also deserve thanks for putting Frank's music into a performable format. They chose the name "200 Motels - The Suites". There are 13 suites, played continuously, some of which are further divided into smaller sections.  They selected an order for the suites which is reminiscent of the movie.  There's only a faint semblance of story line.

I haven't been so excited about a live music event in a very long time.  I found the execution and performance of 200 Motels - The Suites thrilling.  It was a performance to remember.

The action is seen through the eyes of a touring rock band.  Frank seemed to think that everyone would be interested in the grueling aspects of his life on the road.  He toured a lot, traveling from town to town, each night searching out decent food, a clean shower and, apparently, someone to screw.  He cast himself and his fellow band members as characters in the story and assembled his loose libretto around the tribulations of touring: clueless interviewers, hostile local residents and bad drug trips.

In "I'm Stealing the Room" (Suite X). band member Mark (or is it Howard) wants to bring Jeff, the bass player, down from a bad trip caused by sniffing a mildewed bath towel.  Zappa wrote this dialogue:

We gotta get him back to normal before Zappa finds out and steals it and makes him do it in the movie. 

Yes, the action in 200 Motels is completely self-referential.

Frank uses the unlikely medium of symphonic composition to complain about the tribulations of being a rock star.  It's hard to feel too sorry for him.  I wonder if he ever gave a second thought to the notion that almost no one else in the universe could relate to his life.  A lot of people were probably downright jealous of him for exactly the things he was complaining about.

Could he have come up with better subject matter?  Maybe there is no better subject for an evening of musical entertainment than the life of the composer.  Frank's creative output almost never touches on the eternal verities.  He liked to use the small realities of life for his inspiration - for example, the cleanliness of his kitchen or the stupid things Jimmy Swaggart did.

I feel that lyrics and plots were not Zappa's creative strength. What he did best was turn out a stream of exceptional music, much of it very advanced and challenging.  His bands were monumentally tight.  He knew how to craft first-rate albums.  He managed to do these things in many different musical styles during his career.  He was a great musician.  A genius.

As you know, most rock stars have not been inspired to the life of orchestral composition by the music of Edgar Varese.  And of those that have been so inspired, apparently only Frank Zappa spent his free time while on tour writing gargantuan orchestra pieces.  Frank used his on-the-road compositional activities as the premise for the introduction to "The Pleated Gazelle" (Suite IX).

"The Pleated Gazelle" begins with a spoken narrative by the character called Frank (or is it Larry the Dwarf, the two looked identical) :

One night I couldn't get any action after the concert.  I went back to the hotel by myself.  I made some instant coffee and I took out the music I'd been working on, a piece for voice and small ensemble.  It was called "I Have Seen the Pleated Gazelle".  Some people might wonder why a person might want to write something like this.  It's not pretty and I don't think that it's sensible. But that didn't matter to me while I was writing it.  I just wrote down whatever came to mind.  I figured I'd never get to hear it anyway.  It occurred to me that night that if the piece was ever performed the audience might like it better if it had a story.  So I made up a story.

Here Frank is painting a clever portrait of how he composed.  He starts by implying that he only wrote music when he couldn't get laid.  He then tells us that this music was not for everyone and that he knew he was asking for impractical resources and stratospheric levels of musicianship.  Only later did he add plot lines, however surreal, in hope of giving more people a chance to relate.  I saw this happen directly in the music of A Zappa Affair, the large puppet and orchestra production produced by the Berkeley Symphony in 1984.

It's important to remember that all the music of 200 Motels - The Suites (and much more) was composed before Frank turned 30.  Also that he was largely self taught.  Also that these scores performed last week reflect exactly what he wrote back then, still very much a young inexperienced composer.

The performances of this music which he heard in the seventies were nowhere near as good as the one I heard in Disney Hall.  The orchestras back then had neither the resources nor the musicianship of today's Los Angeles Philharmonic.  They also lacked the positive attitude.  If by some chance Frank had gotten a performance this good, he might have grown as an orchestra composer in a way we can only imagine.

Frank follows the compositional confessional in The Pleated Gazelle with a story about a girl who falls in love with a newt rancher.  Her love, alas, is unrequited because he is attracted to an industrial vacuum cleaner.  I can imagine that story is something you might find in, say, a surreal opera.  In fact Schott, the publisher of this music, lists 200 Motels - The Suites  as an opera.

200 Motels?  An opera?  That must annoy "real" opera fans, the ones who repeatedly attend Ring Cycles and Rigolettos.

There had been some question of how regular Green Umbrella subscribers would react to this production of 200 Motels - what with all the absurdity and profanity.  I did see only a handful of people walking out mid-Suite.

When he composed this music Frank certainly was not writing for opera devotees or for symphony fanatics.  He never showed much respect for the long classical tradition which weighs on contemporary composers these days.  The traditions which force composers to share programs with the masterpieces by revered icons of classical music did not mean much to him.  Frank, after all, was an iconoclast.  He was good at breaking icons.  Very good.

In the blue-hair department, I found one reviewer who vented his unhappiness with this production, someone named Rodney Punt.  Here's a sample bit of screed from that online review.

I thought the work a pretentious, puerile, extravagant bore. The libretto (too kind a word) was wretched and trite but it thought itself clever and witty. The music was gauche, boring, and proceeded from one unmerited climax to another. Zappa certainly had ambition and all the documentary evidence suggests he worked hard on this work. But inherent musical value? Not there. I don't see creative or organizational talent in this score.

On the road Frank certainly encountered people who didn't like his music.  We know this because he added such a character to 200 Motels.  In this production Lonesome Cowboy Burt was portrayed as a gun-totin' blusterin' bully who terrorized the band members and dumped a wheelbarrow of faux shit on the stage.  The wheelbarrow had the logo of the LA Phil on it.

Later Burt meandered through the orchestra improvising insults.  "You donated money for THIS?" he asked the audience.  Burt ends up center stage pointing his pistols at the unflappable Esa-Pekka Salonen with the demand "Hey Twerp, why can't you play something I can enjoy?"

Since 200 Motels comes with its own built-in unhappy critic, it needs no more.  Superfluous unhappy critics might have done a good deed by giving up their tickets to some eager Zappa fan.

A much better online review by Richard S. Ginell has this description of the problems Zappa's music encounters in the classical music world.

What makes Zappa’s unique world as a whole so difficult for some to accept is that you have to buy the entire package – the salacious along with the serious; the relentless political, religious, and social satire; the musical references to his heroes in the classical and rock worlds; the cynicism and ultimately encouraging humanism – in order to get the message. It’s all of one piece, one vision, and you can take it or leave it.

That struck me as a fine summation of the problems facing a classical music fan sitting through an evening of Zappa for the first time.  I suspect Frank wasn't really expressing "encouraging humanism" in the finale "Strictly Genteel" (Suite XIII).  I've always felt that the message of that tune was "everyone should get laid".  That notion is less humanistic and more Zappaistic.

In Disney Hall in 2013 at the end of this particular Green Umbrella concert, however, even the smallest droplet of humanism was grasped at and probably much appreciated by many in the audience.

That Schott web site link I mentioned will also let you read the complete instrumentation list of 200 Motels - The Suites.  Frank asks for a lot of instruments.

The principal percussionist of the Philharmonic, Raynor Carroll, told me that this piece required him to provide the longest list of percussion instruments he had ever seen.  I learned elsewhere that there were 164 performers in total.  This figure would have been hard to verify independently because they were packed so tightly onto the stage.  And because there wasn't enough light on them.

To accommodate such a huge orchestra, the stage was completely flat instead of slightly raked.  This, along with the amplification of chorus and soloists, plus the mighty sound of all the percussion, made orchestra balances problematical.  In Strictly Genteel (Suite XIII) I noticed one familiar spot where 9 French horns and 4 trombones had trouble being heard.  It was a noisy evening.

There were plenty of quiet moments - for example music passages for three classical guitars.  Unfortunately, in both dress rehearsal and performance I found it was often hard to concentrate on the music because of the staging.  I felt that the music was often "covered" by the visuals.

Huge amounts of talent went into this production.  The most dazzling of all was that of Esa-Pekka Salonen who showed great courage by stepping outside his standard area of expertise in agreeing to conduct 200 Motels.  He kept things moving along and tightly focused far beyond what might have been expected.  He was almost too cool about it.  I hope he can conduct this piece again someday under conditions which will allow him to shape the music more carefully.  Curiously, at one of the rehearsals, he seemed to have trouble saying the name of Suite XII out loud.

The concert was obsessively recorded on audio but not video.  Each string player had an individual microphone.  We are told it will be for iTunes release.  I hope that does happen.

The Philharmonic, to their credit, provided every performer Frank asked for in his score except for one small group of boy sopranos.  They are marked "optional".  Their part was sung by actual adult sopranos.  I remember, when I worked for Frank, asking him whether he thought he'd get an orchestra to bring in children for so small part.  His memorable reply "It doesn't hurt to ask".

It's fair for us to wonder what Frank was thinking when he dared to write for such an impractical ensemble.  My guess is that he was thinking of all these instruments as a very large rock band.

In a 1966 interview (later published in the magazine Hit Parader) Frank described his perfect rock band.

The instrumentation of the ideal Mothers rock and roll band is two piccolos, two flutes, two bass flutes, two oboes, English horn, three bassoons, a contrabassoon, four clarinets (with the fourth player doubling on alto clarinet), bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet, soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and bass saxophones, four trumpets, four French horns, three trombones, one bass trombone, one tuba, one contrabass tuba, two harps, two keyboard men playing piano, electric piano, electric harpsichord, electric clavichord, Hammond organ, celeste, and piano bass, ten first violins, ten second violins, eight violas, six cellos, four string bass, four percussionists playing twelve timpani, chimes, gongs, field drums, bass drums, snare drums, woodblocks lion's roar, vibes, xylophone and marimba three electric guitars, one electric 12-string guitar, electric bass and electric bass guitar and two drummers at sets, plus vocalists who play tambourines. And I won't be happy until I have it. 

I was impressed that Frank's humongous rock and roll band functioned really well.  That was not so during his lifetime.  I've been told many times that at the infamous 1970 Pauley Pavilion concert and at the recording of 200 Motels - the Movie in England the moods were tense and the music imprecise.

In 2013 the LA Philharmonic players' mood was quite good and the musical precision was damn close to what the composer intended.  If Frank had witnessed something similar, especially in 1970, he might have mitigated his well known dislike of orchestra players.

These musicians actually did the crazy stage antics Frank wrote into the score (sadly these were hard to see because of the lighting).  They shouted out every last "blorp".  They also clowned around onstage before the music started, taking to heart their instruction to dress in concert black but with a disheveled look.  They did The Wave onstage.  When was the last time you saw that?  To be fair, many of them were probably quite relieved to see standard repertoire pieces on their music stands later in the week.

Anyway, Frank wrote his music for his own fans.  He had plenty of fans.  And he had a good idea of what they liked.  The 1966 quote above continues:

I think people are entitled to hear that kind of music live. Kids would go to concerts if they could hear music that knocked them out. If the concert halls would change to a more modern programming, they would find the place crawling with kids. Something like this won't happen overnight and I know it. But I've studied my audiences carefully enough to see that we're making some headway in that direction.

Today Frank's audience remembers and misses him. They knew the significance of this event not as the tenth anniversary of a concert hall, but as the long overdue realization of an important work by a toweringly creative artist who has been dead for nearly 20 years.  The Zappa fans filled every available seat of Disney Hall for this event and they were loud and noisy.  Before the  music started I found myself wondering if someone would shout out "What's the secret word for tonight?" or maybe start a pile of panties on a corner of the stage.  These fans went home happy.

It's too late to develop the sort of orchestra music for the "kids" which Frank dreamed about in 1966.  Those kids were part of the baby boom generation.  Boomers, like me and presumably Rodney Punt, are all grown up now and we are set in our musical tastes.

It was fun to witness this concert and wonder what might have been.  I found the evening quite touching because, had Frank lived to see this (and had he stayed relaxed enough to let everyone do their jobs), he would have loved it.  At least I think he would; it was always impossible to predict what he might think about anything.

And so, at the end of 200 Motels - The Suites I found myself with tears in my eyes.  Not just at the concert but also at the dress rehearsal.  Not because this is emotional music (which it absolutely isn't) but because I was able to witness the work of someone I consider to be a great composer and creative spirit, someone I knew and respected and feel privileged to have worked for, finally taken seriously and performed with great precision by one of the foremost musical ensembles of our time.

One of the few rewards of getting old is the ability to see how history turns out.  I personally am interested in tracking how music history gets written, how it develops a cultural memory of some of the people, like Frank, whom I have known.

Frank Zappa created his own unique music, sometimes baffling and bizarre, other times exciting and electrifying.  This event is a major milestone in our collective efforts to place him and his music in the ongoing chronicle of music.  It was an honor to witness this concert.

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Yet more comments which I couldn't work into the above essay:

200 Motels - The Suites was performed a few days later with different forces, without the staging, at the Royal Festival Hall in London.  Frank had wanted to perform 200 Motels in 1971 at the Royal Albert Hall, but the concert was canceled by authorities because it was thought to be "about sex".  That was pretty much true.  On November 9, 2013, the RFH concert will be broadcast online.  (Try this link.)

Also this week, another piece of Franks, Bogus Pomp, which is derived from some of the 200 Motels music, received a rare performance.  The Montreal Symphony Orchestra was led by Kent Nagano who led the premiere in England in 1983.  Here's a review.  That was one of the pieces I worked on during the years I was employed by Frank.

Hila Plitmann was the soprano in the L.A. performance and she stood out by a mile.  Frank, I think, would have loved her because she sang the music exceptionally well and she can act.  And also because she took off most of her clothes on stage.

Morris Robinson, the bass soloist, had a wonderful voice but a much smaller part.  His part cracked me up when in Penis Dimension (Suite XII) he sang a very low, slow rendition of the theme from Lumpy Gravy.  The old black and white picture of Frank Zappa is, I think, from the Lumpy Gravy sessions in 1967 at which point he must have been working on 200 Motels music.  The pianist in that picture is Mike Lang, who I saw at the 200 Motels concert.

"You donated money for THIS?"  The concert program had this line: This evening's performance is supported in part by a generous gift from Christian and Sutton Stracke.   Let's all give those two a big round of thanks.

The two actors who were identically made up to look like Frank really did remind me of him.  They were skinny enough (i.e. very skinny) and their hair looked just right.  However, when sitting onstage watching quietly, something Frank really did during rock concerts, he would have been smoking a cigarette.  The actors should have been sucking on a glowing e-cigarette. The Mark character (or was it Howard) did that at one point.  Frank should have also.  Then again, that might have been just too eerie.

Thanks to Charles Ulrich for locating the "ideal Mothers rock and roll band" quote.

The LA Philharmonic Facebook page is the source of most of these pictures.  The picture of the score of Tuna Sandwich Ballet came from here.

ADDENDA

At the end of the 1960's interview quoted above, Frank talked about how the Mothers created their musical sets:

Each set that we do is conceived of as one continuous piece of music, like an opera. Even the dialogue between numbers is part of it. Some of our sets run an hour and a half, when we get carried away. That's about opera length.

Kent Nagano said (from here):

History will be kind to Frank Zappa.

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Did you skip to the end?  Here's a selection of other Mixed Meters posts you may not have time to read either.

About Frank Zappa:
Zappa Symphonies (that would be Francesco Zappa, mostly)
Frank Zappa and Alcohol (Zappa beer and orchestra musicians who drank)
Frank Zappa's Jukebox (not a great compilation)
Out To Lunch (aka Ben Watson)
Paradise, Pomp and Puppets - Performing Zappa's Orchestra Music (a long one)
Lower Case Zappa  (a short one)
Varese, Zappa and Slonimsky (an early one)
(all MM posts tagged "Frank Zappa" - click here)

About Music Critics
David Ocker, Boy Music Critic (mostly about Domenico Scarlatti)
Combining Four Letter Words: Oboe + Blog
Rich Critic, Poor Critic (that would have been Alan Rich)
Two Marks of Good Music Criticism (one Mark would be Swed)
Who is Philip Hensher Anyway?  (he's English, I know that)
30 Second Spots - The Manuscripts Ends Abruptly, Scherzo for Danny Cariaga
(all MM posts tagged "reviewers" - click here)

The Rudy Schwartz Project

Back in the day Mixed Meters had a sidebar feature called "David's Favorite Music".  This listed all the posts I had written about music and musicians I particularly enjoy.  The list was short, eclectic and incomplete.  Eventually I removed it to simplify the blog layout.   You can still read all those posts via this link.

The top three omissions from the list - in no particular order - are Astor Piazzolla, Glenn Gould and The Rudy Schwartz Project.  Astor and Glenn have stopped performing these days so they won't mind waiting for their articles.   Meanwhile the RSP is more active than ever.  There are new albums, YouTube videos and even a Facebook page.

Here's a Rudy Schwartz Project tune I really like  - Stumpy (from the album Delicious Ass Frenzy).  It's about a bad-ass monkey with no ass.  I like the cool mistuned piano vamp.

Today's wonderful world of social media has brought me into contact with the fecund brain behind The Rudy Schwartz Project, the mysterious, talented, uber-creative Joe Newman.  Joe recently volunteered to remix a recent piece of mine, Not A Happy Camper.  (Listen to the improved version here.)  I'm finally writing this post as a feeble thank you to him for the excellent work he did on that project.  Maybe this extra publicity will get all the Mixed Meters readers to buy an RSP album.  That would be three more albums sold.

First, however, I think you must have questions you want to ask.

Your first question, I bet, is "Who is Rudy Schwartz?"

Answer: I don't know, but the Project named after him began in Austin Texas sometime in the 80s.  That was a time when independently produced, not particularly commercial music was distributed via the high-tech medium of cassette tapes.  I had several of my own tapes about that time and I suspect Joe and I must have traded.  How else could I have gotten my copy of Don't Get Charred, Get Puffy on cassette?  It's dated 1991.

Listen to one of my favorite RSP tunes ever: An Orange Is Nothing But A Juicy Pumpkin.  You can also listen to The Creation Science Polka.

Read an interview with Joe Newman discussing early period Rudy Schwartz.

Your next question, I bet, is "What happened after the early period?"

Answer: After the early years, Rudy and Joe disappeared for a long time.  There were no more Rudy Schwartz Project albums.  Then, suddenly, I think in the mid 2000's, Joe reappeared, living in Montreal.  He began releasing new albums fairly regularly.  The most recent is called Full Frontal Klugman.  Highly recommended.  Here's a fine tune from FFK entitled "You're Not Rondo Hatton"  (Rondo Hatton was an actor with a strange face and an apparently unintentionally musical name.)

Time for your last question. I bet you want to ask "Why do you like this music?"

Good question.  Here are some reasons:

1) The music of The Rudy Schwartz Project is politically topical.  It takes on some of the most destructive forces in American politics point blank using both outrageous humor and forthright anger.  Early RSP called out demagogues like Ronald Reagan, Phyllis Schlafly and Jimmy Swaggart.  Recent tunes excoriate George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin Pussy Juice:

Carry Me Back To the USA:

2) Joe Newman has an incredible talent for musical parody.  From popular music of the 1930's, or 50's rock 'n roll or 70's pop tunes.  He's covered John Denver and Bruce Springsteen tunes and the most off-the-wall version of Georgy Girl ever.  There are probably a bunch more covers he has done that I don't even recognize.

Road Trippin' With Waldo:  (Waldo Hamm is the RSP's mascot - a sock puppet reindeer.)

3) There is a keen element of cultural commentary.  Besides Rondo Hatton, there have been RSP tunes about Ernest Borgnine, Bob Eubanks, Nancy Kulp, Don Knotts, Doodles Weaver, Florence Henderson and the Dallas Cowboys, to name but a few.  Some of these are even complimentary.  The cultural reference aspect of Joe's work has been expanded by his move into video - as any of these examples in this post should easily prove.

Here's a redone television commercial called Colgate Clean:

Theme from "Sweet Movie":

4) Most importantly, Joe Newman is a creative, clever and curious composer who writes interesting, inventive and intriguing music. Aside from the subject matter he chooses or the pop cultural references he makes or the lyrics he sings, his music itself is a delight. Composers who use unexpected harmonies, sound collages, abrupt melodic turns and unpredictable changes in orchestration ought to be more common than they are these days.  When music gets pretty far out, I tend to like it.  I like this music.

A Nice Selection of Hasps:

In many ways I'm jealous of Joe Newman's talents as a composer.  He has combined cultural commentary and creative music making in a way that I would love to do myself, but find I don't have the necessary talents.

Finally, I have a question for you.

Can you name another composer who has combined these same elements: politics, parody, cultural commentary and cutting edge music?

Yes, the correct answer is Frank Zappa.  Many people have commented on Joe's debt to Zappa, even Joe himself.  The aspects of cultural parody, political commentary and cutting edge music which are well accepted in Zappa's music have not found many adherents in popular music since his death.  Those characteristics have been preserved and uniquely extended in Joe Newman's music.  I think he should get more recognition for it.  Any Zappa fan ought to really check out The Rudy Schwartz Project.  You'll be glad you did.

Frank:

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Waldo Hamm Tags: Rudy Schwartz Project. . . Joe Newman

Worst Sounding Clarinet Playing Ever

Long ago, SO long ago that I don't remember when or where it happened, someone told me that the most important thing about getting my music or performances reviewed was not whether the comments were good or bad, but whether my name was spelled correctly.

For twenty years I was a freelance clarinetist around Los Angeles, mostly playing chamber music and creative music gigs (meaning my own recitals and improvisations.)  Contractors in Los Angeles all seemed to agree that I was not the sort of player they wanted in their orchestras or studio sessions.  Their logic was sound.  I was more interested in the creative aspects of my instrument than in the re-creative.  The reviews I did get were usually positive and my name was always spelled properly.

The highpoint of my career as a clarinetist, as many readers of Mixed Meters will know, was playing Frank Zappa's Mo 'n Herb's Vacation with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Early in the 1990s it dawned on me that I wasn't getting much pleasure from the keyed beast any longer and it certainly wasn't contributing to my income.  I decided to give up playing the clarinet.  I've never regretted the decision.

The last time I played the clarinet in public was nineteen years ago today - April 15, 1994. when Xtet, the flexible chamber ensemble which I helped found, performed a South Bay Chamber Music Society concert at Harbor College.  The last piece on the program, hence the last piece I ever performed, was Aaron Copland's Sextet.  (Full program is here, scroll down.)

In spite of nearly two decades of being a "former" clarinetist, it's not uncommon for me to meet people who think I still play.  It's happened twice this month already.  Last fall a well-known musician of my acquaintance reminded me of a concert he had conducted in the early 80s for which I was NOT hired to play the bass clarinet although I apparently had been requested.  He told me that the performance back then would have been better had I been performing.  I scratched my head wondering why anyone would remember a detail like that after half a lifetime.

Anyway, this post is really about Mo 'n Herb's Vacation.  It's not Frank's greatest piece of music by far.  It isn't really a clarinet concerto and has never been advertised as one.  It simply has several sections of blindingly difficult music for the first clarinetist.  And there is also blindingly difficult music for the other three clarinetists - just not quite so much.   Frank was never terribly happy with the LSO recordings and he spent lots of time trying to fix them.  I doubt he improved them much.

Here's a recording which someone posted to YouTube, not of a performance but of a test recording done in Frank's studio before the London concert and recordings.  All four clarinets are me.  The bassoons are performed by John Steinmetz and Chad Wackerman is the drummer.

It was my impression that I was the only clarinetist who had ever performed this music.  But yesterday I learned that there had been another performance in 2005 in Venice Italy.  I'm anxious to hear that recording.

As I perused the web for information about this other Mo 'n Herb, I came across a 2007 discussion of the piece on Sherman Friedland's Clarinet Corner blog.  I had never heard of Sherman Friedland.  Apparently he was a clarinetist and pedagogue and professor at Concordia College in Canada, now retired to a life of blogging.

Sherman starts by saying some negative things about Frank and his music.  But at the end of the post he gets around to me.  Wow!

Of the work for solo clarinet and orchestra, called “MOE [sic] n Herbs Vacation” and played by David Ocker, solo clarinet, I can only say that is is the worst sounding clarinet playing I have ever witnessed, not being able to say “heard”.

So, to the young person who wrote and asked me what I think, I can only reply “very sadly”.

I wonder what an English teacher would think of Sherman's syntax.  How does one "witness" a piece of music without hearing it?  Fuzzy grammar or not, it's clear what he thinks.

This guy has a lifetime of clarinet experience.  For him to say that my playing is "the worst sounding clarinet playing" he ever heard is certainly intended as a major put down.  Since I played Frank's music accurately, we can assume that Sherman's complaints are about something else, my tone or my style or my enthusiasm or about some other subjective issue of how he thinks the clarinet is supposed to sound.

On that level I can take some pride in Sherm's defamation.  At a certain point in my clarinet studies I made the conscious decision that I would not imitate conventional clarinet playing, meaning the standard, omnipresent, wimpy, unadventurous, never-use-vibrato playing style produced by so many classical clarinetists.  Colleges and clarinet teachers, such as Sherman, must still be turning those clones out in exceedingly large numbers.  All of them hoping, no doubt, to score an orchestra job.  Any of them interchangeable with the others.  None of them the slightest bit distinguishable by their sound.

I listened to samples of Sherman's own playing on the web.  He seems to fit the mold himself.  I also found a short New York Times review of his recital at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1986.

Mr. Friedland is a competent player and seemed sincerely in love with his material. Still, one could have wished for a sharper technical edge in the Bernstein and the fulsome tone that might have invested Berg and Reger with more vivid colors.

Sherman would have gotten more notoriety from his performance if the reviewer had said "this is the worst clarinet playing I've ever heard".  People remember when something is described as the "worst ever".  "Competent"?  Could that be another word for tepid?

When I played I tried to make the clarinet something more than mono-timbral, to play with a variety of tone colors and styles and attitudes, the very thing, the fulsome tone, which the New York Times found lacking in Sherman's recital.  I wasn't always successful in my goal of aural variety but always I gave it my best shot.  Sherman, apparently, doesn't think along those lines and disparages those who do.

Sherman's comment makes me wonder if he often blogs his mouth off without thinking, like some sort of online jerk.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  More likely he's just someone with an exceptionally well-defined unchangeable set of musical assumptions which he has trouble stretching to account for the myriad varieties of other music in this world.

All in all, I would rather not have had my playing, even a 30-year old performance, called "the worst sounding clarinet playing I have ever witnessed" by anyone.  But, considering the ivory tower source of the remark, I'm happy to wear this comment proudly.

Plus, I do thank him for spelling my name right.

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Here's a picture of Sherman Friedland in March 1965, part of a group performing György Ligeti's Poème Symphonique for 100 metronomes, when he was a member of Lukas Foss's Center for Creative and Performing Arts at the State University of New York at Buffalo.   I found this in the book by Renee Levine Parker, This Life of Sounds. Evenings for New Music in Buffalo. (available as a pdf)

Other reading: Two Marks of Good Music Criticism  - a 2007 Mixed Meters article about music critics, including a full review of my New Music America recital by Mark Swed.  Here's a quote:

Ocker, as both a performer and composer, brings to music the kind of personal quality that most professional musicians have had trained out of them.

A number of my historical clarinet performances are available for listening here.

Here's a photo taken in Zappa's studio the same day the overdub recordings were made - plus discussion about whether it's a real photo or not.  (It is.)  I'm the one with both beard and clarinet, on the right.

In the Clarinet Corner blog posting, the "young person who wrote and asked me what I think" named Martin, is this person.

If you click the Xtet flyer picture, it should enlarge enough for you to read the press quotes which the ensemble received.  Xpect Xpuns.

Yeah, I'm living in the past. I can think of worse places to be.

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ADDENDUM: I thank everyone for their comments.  More discussion of this topic happened on Facebook.

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Worst Ever Tags: music reviews. . . nasty blog comments. . . David Ocker clarinetist

Arthur Jarvinen's Birthday

Art Jarvinen's birthday was January 27. He would have been 55 this year. I once mentioned to him that he shared his birthday with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a fact which impressed me more than it did him.  More interestingly, he shared his birthday with his wife, Lynn Angebranndt.

This is a three part post.  Each part is Jarvinen-related. The first is about a concert of Art's music given recently by students at Cal Arts. The second is about a radio show featuring Art's music. You can listen to that online. Finally, I have news of an upcoming live concert performance of While You Were Art, the infamous synthesizer track Frank Zappa named after Art Jarvinen.

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Arthur taught composition at Cal Arts for many years.  He was also an alumnus.  So it makes sense that Cal Arts would present one of the first concerts of his music after his death.  Last Sunday, January 23,  an ensemble of students lead by Amy Knoles performed a dozen works by Art Jarvinen.  They named their concert The Art of Art.

They framed the event with instrumental chamber music - opening with Egyptian Two-Step (which features antiphonal spray cans as part of the rhythm section) and ending with White Lights Lead to Red.   Solo pieces included The Door That Doesn't Open (for marimba and amplified heartbeat) and Carbon (for solo bass clarinet).

There was a tango setting of a poem by Charles Bukowski (Art wrote a number of tangos) plus selections from Arthur's album Edible Black Ink for guitar and bass.  And there were several of his performance pieces which Art called "physical poetry".  One of them was Pop Tarts in which the performer fires a dart gun at an airborne strawberry pop tart as it is expelled from a toaster. 

The enthusiasm and talent of the ensemble was impressive.  Some of the music is fiendishly difficult.  The less technical pieces made me reflect on how Art's own persona contributed to his music.  He was direct, focused and unwaveringly intent as a performer.  Time and again I can remember him performing his musical rituals, riveted to the task.  And, for a few moments, he could share this mental concentration with his audience.  New performers of his music have the task of finding that same concentration in future performances.

 
(You can read a remembrance of Art by Zona Hostetler, the mother of a colleague of Art's, Randy Hostetler, who passed away at a very young age here.  She describes a performance of Pop Tarts by Arthur himself.)

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Jack Vees was a close friend of Art. They met as students at CalArts.  Last December Jack visited radio station WRIU at the University of Rhode Island and played several hours of Arthur's music on a show called Music For Internets.  Better yet, the show is archived online if you want to listen.  Here's a direct link to the audio file.  (The show begins at about three and a half minutes.)

Throughout the show Jack paints a portrait of Arthur through his personal reminiscences and by choosing two different kinds of Art's music. 

On one hand he picks chamber music - Murphy Nights,  The Vulture's Garden and  Goldbeaters Skin. He also plays selections from Art's string quartet 100 Cadences which was written in memory of Art's teacher Lucky Mosko.  There are also excerpts of keyboard works including Queen of Spain (based on music by Domenico Scarlatti) and Serious Immobilities (yes, it's a 24 hour solo piano piece based on Vexations by Erik Satie).

On the other hand there are pieces by several of Art's more (or less) popular music-influenced groups.  Two hysterical tunes by The Mope (“Five Ugly Guys With No Record Interest”)  are Agent Jerry (a spy surf tune like Art's Invisible Guy series) and Drunk Poets Die Young.  Another group, Some Over History is represented Erase the Fake and Cheap Suit Tango.  And there's a cut from Art's Beatles parody: Sgt. Pekker.

Jack also throws in two cuts by Captain Beefheart whose music was a strong influence on Art.  Of course Art had far more influences than you can grasp from just a few minutes of Beefheart.  All together, the show makes a fine introduction to the music of Arthur Jarvinen.

("Blue" Gene Tyranny's review of the album Erase the Fake by Art's group Some Over History can be found here.)

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Another oft-mentioned influence on Arthur Jarvinen was Frank Zappa.  Art was employed by Frank for a few years doing work similar to that which I did.  The best known moment of Art's time with Frank was the infamous While You Were Art "performance". 

That was when the California EAR Unit, including Art on marimba, pantomimed to a recorded synthesizer performance of a transcription of a live Zappa guitar solo called While You Were Out.  It was renamed While You Were Art for that occasion. The Unit did this at the "prestigious" Monday Evening Concerts and no one in the audience noticed that they hadn't actually played the piece.  An awful lot of bad feelings were generated afterwards.  Art himself, after investing much hard work to get Zappa to write a piece for the EAR Unit, keenly regretted the results.

You can read my own telling of what happened and why it was important to me personally in the While You Were Art section of Bill Lantz's monumental David Ocker Internet Interview.  Be sure to click on the white buttons marked Art's Comment! to read the amendations which Arthur added later.  Since Art didn't like talking about this episode during his lifetime, these comments are all the more valuable now.

This coming February 5th (that's a Saturday), at Pomona College there will be a live performance of While You Were Out/Art.  The electric guitarist will be Pomona music professor Joti Rockwell who will play the original guitar transcription (While You Were Out) to the accompaniment of Zappa's later commercial release of the synthesizer tracks (While You Were Art).  The version of the piece played at the Monday Evening event was later suppressed by Zappa.

Here's information about the concert.  It's part of a yearly concert series of electronic music called the Ussachevsky Memorial Festival organized by yet another Pomona prof. Tom Flaherty.  There's a flyer to download here.  (In the 1960s the ersatz college student Frank Zappa briefly studied composition with music professor Karl Kohn at Pomona College.  Kohn is still professor emeritus there.)

Joti Rockwell kindly shared his notes for the concert with me.  He discusses why this piece and the event associated with it is important for academic study.  Here's an exerpt:

By musically comparing the two versions at the historical edges (1981 and 1986), one cannot help but imagine what might have resulted had the collaboration for the 1984 concert gone more smoothly.  Reflection and examination of this sort was the hope of Art Jarvinen, the piece’s namesake, and it will perhaps lead to a better understanding of Frank Zappa, electronic music, the history of music in Los Angeles, and the meanings of contemporary music.

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Art's Music Tags: Arthur Jarvinen. . . Jack Vees. . . Joti Rockwell. . . While You Were Art

Zappa Symphonies

I doubt there is a stranger coincidence among musicians' names than that of Francesco Zappa and Frank Zappa.  Francesco was an 18th century Italian cellist and composer who gathered just enough mentions in history books and left behind just enough manuscripts to avoid being completely forgotten.  The dates of Francesco's birth and death were never recorded.  We only know that he "flourished" between 1763 and 1788 and lived for a long time in the Netherlands.  Frank Zappa was a 20th century guitarist and composer who flourished almost exactly two hundred years later - give or take a few.  According to Frank the two were not related.

I worked for Frank Zappa from 1977 to 1984.  Near the end of that time I was heavily involved in the creation of Frank's Synclavier album entitled Francesco Zappa.  That's the only reason a new commercial release by a period music ensemble of any of Francesco Zappa's music would be of the slightest interest to me. 

Frank Zappa's Francesco Zappa album claimed to have been Francesco's "first digital recording in over 200 years".  But the recent PentaTone album by the New Dutch Academy Orchestra conducted by Simon Murphy really is more deserving of the title "the first recording of the music of Francesco Zappa".  And it too is digital.

I am not certain what the exact album title is.  As you can see from the cover, the phrase Zappa Symphonies gets the most space, but Francesco is only one of five composers.  Francesco gets billing higher than Mozart whose music is also included.  Maybe the name "Zappa" is enough to get this album filed under Rock and Roll in any still-functioning record stores. Or maybe there's a Zappa fan somewhere dumb enough to purchase this disc thinking he was getting newly discovered outtakes from the '88 band.

Printed on the disc itself the album is entitled Symphonies from the 18th Century Court of Orange in The Hague - Zappa, Stamitz, Schwindl, Graaf and Mozart.  That's a pretty good description.  You should know that the Stamitz on this album is not the famous Stamitz, it's his son (who may have been named Dweezil for all I know.)

On the second page of the program book there is an even longer-winded album title:

Crowning Glory

The Musical Heritage of the Netherlands

Dutch Crown Jewels:

Symphonies from the 18th Century

Court of Orange in The Hague

Zappa, Stamitz, Schwindl, Graaf and Mozart

I think we should just call the album Zappa Symphonies.

Zappa Symphonies is a survey of music created at a particular time, roughly defined by Francesco's flourishing almost 250 years ago, and a particular place, the royal court in The Hague.  Clearly The Hague was an advanced center of arts and culture.

Compare that to, say, Los Angeles during the same period.  Around here the natives were just starting to reap the "benefits" of early Spanish missionaries.  The Indians were talked into giving up their earthly paradise in exchange for the promise of another in the next life.  And so the Europeanization of L.A. began.  A long time would pass before Los Angeles started to think it needed classical orchestra music.  And we've happily imported music from Europe ever since. 

As a resident of Los Angeles I can only marvel at what it must be like to live in a place with a such a long local musical tradition as Zappa Symphonies reveals.  It seems entirely reasonable that Dutch musicians would want to preserve their tradition and share it through concerts and recording.  

The New Dutch Academy, as revealed by their recordings and their pictures, is a dedicated group of talented, young, beautiful people.  They call their instruments "authentic", a strange choice of words.  I think I would call the instruments "original" or "period" or maybe just "old".  Listening to this album, however, you could easily miss this aspect.  They clearly have overcome the habitual limitations of authentic instruments and, measured by any contemporary standard, perform at an extremely high level.  You can hear their live recordings on their website.

My biggest disappointment about the album is that the music itself is pretty dull.  Of course I'm comparing these unknown pieces to the great Mozart and Haydn symphonies which appeared just a few decades later - there's no way for me not to make such a comparison.  Unless you are specifically interested in the development of the modern symphony, or music in 18th century Holland, or music by composers with namesakes who lived two centuries later, or in finding out how good performance on period instruments can be, this album falls rather unceremoniously into the category of generic classical instrumental music.  As such, it ought to be a great hit on many of America's remaining classical music stations - especially during drive time.

You might wonder how I could describe any album with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of my favorite composers, as dull.  That would be because the Mozart music in question, a soprano aria plus his Fifth Symphony, was written while he was visiting The Hague - at the age of three.  In a world where so many people have fallen over themselves to believe that playing Mozart to a fetus could make the child more intelligent, it's not so far-fetched that he was only 3 years old.  (Okay, he was actually nine.  Would you believe that he wrote his first piano sonata movement at the age of six weeks?)  In any case, Mozart was young when he wrote his Fifth Symphony and he still had a lot to learn.  (For comparison, Beethoven was 38 when he finished Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. When Mozart was 38 he'd been dead 3 years.)

In the up-coming events list at the NDA's website, they have programmed some of the cello trios by Francesco Zappa on May 29.  These are described as being for three cellos.  This means they are not the same pieces which I entered into Frank Zappa's Synclavier back in the 80s.  Those were scored for two violins and cello.  The sheet music above is the first violin part of one of them. 

The story of how Frank came to discover that Francesco ever existed and how he used his quarter-million dollar Synclavier to create an album, often considered his worst release ever, consisting of nothing but Francesco's string trios and what my part in all that was and what I think of the Francesco Zappa album personally, can be found in the Synclavier Section of the David Ocker Internet Interview.   Scroll down to the line:

A few years before I quit working for Frank a new edition of Groves Encyclopedia...

That's where the story really starts.

One thing I did do for that album was write the program notes - tongue in cheek, of course.  Those notes were edited by Frank and they survived from the LP era to the age of CDs.  But, alas, my album credits disappeared from the CD.  Because I am proud of those credits as Frank wrote them (tongue in cheek, of course), I have reproduced the back cover of the LP and the jacket sleeve.  On the cover it lists  "Synclavier Document Encryption DAVID OCKER" and at the end of the program notes it reads "David Ocker, Assistant Director, Barking Pumpkin Digital Gratification Consort."   (Heck, I wasn't just the Assistant Director.  I was the whole Consort.)  Click on either picture and the text will be just barely readable.  Here's a readable pdf of the program notes.

Obviously the BPDGC never found "a way of liberating some of Francesco Zappa's symphonies from the really dusty libraries in Europe".  We were beaten to the punch, 25 years later, by the New Dutch Academy.   My congratulations go to the victors.

Frank Zappa never wrote anything he called a symphony.  I have suggested in this article that his piece Bogus Pomp could be made more accessible to classical audiences by describing it a Symphony.  I give four possible programs which end with Bogus Pomp.

I write about Frank Zappa on Mixed Meters from time to time.  For example Varese, Zappa and Slonimsky or Paradise, Pomp and Puppets - Performing Zappa's Orchestra Music.   Want to read all my posts which are labeled "Zappa"?  Click here.

If you want to hear the music of Frank Zappa played on old, inappropriate instruments, I cannot recommend the album Ensemble Ambrosius: The Zappa Album too highly. 

Somewhere, out there in the Internet, is a person named Francesco Zappa Nardelli.  He doesn't have anything to do with the subject of this post.

An April, 2010, article in Psychology Today: What's the Size of the Mozart Effect? The Jury Is In.


ADDENDUM

I just discovered that Jacopo Franzoni has created a wonderful Francesco Zappa/Frank Zappa website.  Check it out.

Authentic Tags: New Dutch Academy. . . Frank Zappa. . . Francesco Zappa

Frank Zappa and Alcohol

PART ONE: Zappa Beers A brewing company called Lagunitas started a series of specialty seasonal beers named after early albums of Frank Zappa, each released on the 40th anniversary of the original album. Here's a list of the beers with bits of various reviews I found online:

• Freak Out! Ale - "a bright copper color with a thick, soapy-foamy head and a very citric hoppy nose." (from brugru.com)
• Absolutely Free (also called Kill Ugly Radio) - "Very fruity in its aroma, stinking pleasantly of apricot" (from beerdrinker.org)
• We're Only In It For the Money - "sweet and yeasty with traces of spicy fruit, cinnamon, apples, grapes" (from beeradvocate.com)
• Lumpy Gravy - "Very rich and robust flavor with hints of smoke. Nutty characteristics linger throughout and bring a nice sweetness" (from thefullpint.com)
• Cruisin' With Rueben and the Jets - "Bitter, unsweetened coffee, roasted malt and a little bit of licorice and black pepper [taste]" (from thefullpint.com)

I never found Zappa beers in my neighborhood legal-drug emporium which is just as well because I don't much like beer. These reviews don't make the beers sound terribly appetizing. But I did want at least one empty Zappa beer bottle as a souvenir. In this quest I was helped by Israel Arrieta, who is a musically-talented beer-brewing Starbucks-managing barrista. He gave me an empty. Here's what it looks like. (Click for closer view.) Recently however, through the really fine blog Kill Ugly Radio, I learned that there will be no more Frank Zappa Beers. Supposedly the reason is that the brewing company, Lagunitas, had "a falling out with the family". Family as in "Frank's heirs." The smart money says that the issue was money, as in "only in it for". 

  PART TWO: Orchestral Alcohol Another alcohol-related news story, about problem drinking in English orchestras, has a Zappa connection. The article in the Guardian is entitled "Drinking problems rife in the great orchestras" Here's a quote:

Bill Kerr, the orchestral organiser of the Musicians' Union, recalled some "regrettable incidents" involving alcohol and musicians. One involved one of the UK's most celebrated opera and ballet orchestras "and its heavy brass section. They should have been sacked really but they would have been very hard to replace," he said.

This reminded me of a Zappa music/alcohol encounter that I witnessed directly in 1984. Frank's music was once performed and recorded by the London Symphony. Afterwards he bitched a lot about how drinking by the orchestra meant that he had gotten performances of lower quality for his money. When this subject came up on a Usenet group I wrote about my memories. This was my very first online contribution ever. The year was 1994. Even now you can read what I wrote back then. The piece is called The True Story of the LSO 

PART THREE: An Alcohol-Free Interview The final section is about Zappa but not about alcohol. Joseph Diaz is a musician and Zappa fan in Barcelona. In the year 2000 he emailed me some questions about my work for Frank and I, having just gotten a laptop, wrote and wrote and wrote. Although the answers were originally intended for a fanzine Joseph recently posted my verbiage to his MySpace page, called "J21". Read Part One and then Part Two. You can also read a fascinating interview with my buddy, percussionist Ed Mann and you can listen to some of Joseph's music as well. If you can't be bothered reading the whole thing, the following is a list of Joseph's questions together with very short snippets of my answers (the purple prose) which would actually make some sense in context. J21: What is Music Engraving? DO: I called myself a “computer music engraver” to distinguish what I did from the plate engravers who were rapidly being replaced. I imagined the “real” engravers as little old gnomes sitting in caves that looked exactly like sets for Wagner operas. J21: Steve Vai is one of my favorite guitar players, what are your memories about him? DO: And so ends the story of my relationship with Steve Vai – there isn’t much real information here but I’ve fleshed it out with needless details and other digressions. I hope it held your interest. J21: All the Zappa fans think that the Synclavier is the ultimate instrument, but I think that right now with 10.000$ you can get a digital workstation that does more. What do you think about it? (note: This question was asked 9 years ago) DO: These days [in 2000] that basic 100K$ house costs more like 400.000$. Just imagine what you should be able to do NOW if you put a music system that costs as much as a house on your desk. J21: Did you work on pieces of music for Frank on the Synclavier that are still unreleased? Do you think there’s still good stuff to be released? DO: The conductor was given no discretion. The moral of this is, I guess, that Frank wanted to remain absolutely in control J21: Is still good music in the vault to be released? DO: He may have passed on way too soon, but he personally produced enough music for three lifetimes of mere mortal composers. J21: “Civilization Phaze III” is a great record, but it’s hard to understand for uneducated ears. From a point of view of somebody musically trained like you what do you think are the most interesting thing in the album? DO: I figured out, at least to my own satisfaction why the piano people are essential to the album. They are telling us not worry about understanding the music. J21: What music do you listen to lately? DO: Piazzolla, Karnak, Salsa, Hamza al Din, Don Byron, Raymond Scott, Spike Jones, Mike Keneally and Internet radio.