Happy Frank Zappa Day!

In case you missed the announcement, today is Frank Zappa Day in Baltimore, Maryland. The Mayor's proclamation begins "The City of Baltimore is proud of its rich musical heritage, and is honored to claim the prolific composer, musician, author, and film director Frank Zappa as a native of our fair city."

Zappa is one of my favorite musician/composers to teach because he crossed so many boundaries in his music. Here is a man who was incredibly influenced by Edgard Varese (finding the composer after reading an article that described his music as "a weird jumble of drums and other unpleasant sounds") and claimed influences as wide ranging as Igor Stravinsky, Anton Webern, R&B, Doo-wop groups, and modern jazz. His music, which can be found on the over 60 albums he recorded during his lifetime, is as eclectic as you might imagine, but is inventive and refreshing and audacious. Never one to mince words, he also regularly made proclamations on music like:

"The creation and destruction of harmonic and 'statistical' tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consonant and 'regular' throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only 'good guys' in it, or eating cottage cheese."

Or on the power of music to influence our moral behavior:

"There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another."

And then there are the quotes just designed to show off his wit such as "There is no hell. There is only France. Or "Tobacco is my favorite vegetable." Or perhaps my favorite from an interview when he was asked "So Frank, you have long hair. Does that make you a woman?" and he responded "You have a wooden leg. Does that make you a table?"

In the final years of his life, he stopped writing rock albums (he was a phenomenal guitar player) and began writing orchestral music. He was invited the year before he died to write for and conduct the prestigious German group "Ensemble Modern." Fortunately the results were televised, so I leave you today with a bit of Zappa's orchestral writing that demonstrates his remarkable synthesis of musical style. Here's the "BeBop Tango:"


Be sure to notice the piano player performing the very Henry Cowellesque piano clusters. This is why I teach him and why Baltimore is honoring him today. So check out the rest of his music, but do be warned that he does tend to talk dirty.