Personalities | Frank Zappa | Contemporary | Classical
1940–93
American composer, rock musician
Zappa, the anti-establishment rock musician and founder of The Mothers of Invention, was inspired as a teenager by the music of Varèse, Stravinsky and Webern, and wrote fully notated avant-garde-style pieces while still at school. In 1970 he performed material from his forthcoming film 200 Motels with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and in his last decade initiated collaborations with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Ensemble InterContemporain (The Perfect Stranger, 1984) and the Ensemble Modern (The Yellow Shark, 1993). The short pieces on these albums, with their bizarre titles and incongruous storylines, are technically demanding and approach atonality. He recorded his own arrangements of music by the composer Francesco Zappa (1717–1803): they are not believed to be related.
Recommended Recording:
The Perfect Stranger, Ensemble InterContemporain (cond) Pierre Boulez (Zappa Records)
Introduction | Contemporary | Classical
Personalities | Bernd Alois Zimmermann | Contemporary | Classical
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