Ave Maria
Ave Maria (1825) is a famous religious composition by Franz Schubert about the Virgin Mary.
Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa covered Ave Maria in 1978 at the Deutschlandhalle in Berlin, Germany (15 February), at the Falkoner Theatret in Copenhagen (17 February) and at the Konserthuset, Stockholm, Sweden (19 February 1978)]] [1].
In 1980, he also performed it at the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall in Kansas City (13 April). [2], at the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Canada (11 November) [3], Uptown Theater Chicago, Illinois (28 November) and the Civic Center in Des Moines, Indiana (30 November). [4]
Frank Zappa about Ave Maria
"We once played a horrible venue -- some kind of sports hall -- in southern Illinois. The band was set up on the floor, and our amplifiers were playing straight into a concrete wall about two stories high, with the audience at the top of it -- looking down. Can you visualize that? It was the worst setup imaginable. So, naturally, I decided to try some 'audience participation' (like we can barely see them, and I want them to 'participate.' Surrrrre you do). I divided them into five sections, according to the way the seats fanned out -- each section was going to be a different part of a mass chorus of maybe five thousand people. I said, "Now, you guys over here, you're going to sing 'Harbor Lights.' ' They had never even heard of "Harbor Lights," but we showed them how it goes. Then I said to each of the other sections, "You are going to sing 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.' You're going to sing the opening bassoon solo from The Rite Of Spring. You're going to sing the Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin, and you lucky folks over there get 'Ave Maria.' I'll show you when to come in." What a noise that was." - Frank Zappa in The Real Frank Zappa Book.
