View source for Zappa (Royal Academy of Music)

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{{Album Release Infobox |
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    Cover          = zappa_RAoM.jpg |
    Name           = Zappa |
    Released       = April 2011 |
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==Players==
The Manson Ensemble of the [[wikipedia:Royal Academy of Music|Royal Academy of Music]]
==Tracks==
#[[Peaches En Regalia]] arr. [[Ali N. Askin]]
#[[Big Swifty (1972 - Paramount Studios)|Big Swifty]] arr. Jon Nelson ([[Meridian Arts Ensemble]]) for Brass Quintett
#[[Dupree's Paradise]] 
#[[Twenty Small Cigars]] trans. Chris Lyons
#[[A Pound For A Brown On The Bus|The Legend Of The Golden Arches]] trans. Robert Peate
#[[St. Alphonzo's Pancake Breakfast]] trans. Charlie Piper
#[[Little Umbrellas]] trans. Joseph Davies
#[[The Black Page|Black Page #2]] trans. Philip Cashian
#[[Music For Electric Violin And Low Budget Orchestra|Music For Low-Budget Orchestra]] arr. [[Ian Underwood]] from [[The Frank Zappa Songbook Vol.1|Songbook Vol. 1]], transcr. Philip Cashian
#[[Alien Orifice]] ([[Munchkin Music]] arr.) trans. Philip Cashian
#[[Little House I Used To Live In]] (from [[The Frank Zappa Songbook Vol.1|Songbook Vol. 1]]) trans. Philip Cashian
#[[The Perfect Stranger]] (Movements I and II) 
#[[G-Spot Tornado]] arr. [[Ali N. Askin]]

==Release Notes==
Recorded at the Royal Academy of Music on 14th, 15th and 16th November 2010.<br>
<br>
Produced by: Daniel-Ben Pienar<br>
Consultant: Philip Cashian<br>
Executive Producer: Jonathan Freeman-Attwood<br>
<br>
Recorded and edited by Kirsten Cowie and mastered by Tom Leader at LCL Digital.<br>
<br>
Cover Image © 1974 Zappa Family Trust. Used by Permission.<br>
Recorded by kind permission of Gail Zappa and European American Music Distributors Company, Agent of the Work of Frank Zappa.<br>
<br>
The album features reworked versions of various compositions by Frank Zappa, performed by the Royal Academy of Music Manson Ensemble and conducted by Franck Ollu.<br>
The recording was made immediately after a 2010 concert forming part of a major Zappa festival to mark what would have been his 70th birthday.<br>
The repertoire was transcribed by Academy students Chris Lyons, Charlie Piper, Robert Peate and Joseph Davies, as well as Head of Composition Philip Cashian.<br>

==Background Information==
Performance and recording of this event was part of the event "Zappa At The Roundhouse" in celebration of the 70th birthday of Frank Zappa in [[London]], UK.

==Versions==

Royal Academy of Music, RAM 045, 2012

==Reviews==

<blockquote>This album of orchestrated Frank Zappa arrives, as such albums tend to, with a fawning booklet-note by a classical composer – hello Philip Cashian, who’s clearly in love with the Zappa mythology. As Cashian points out, Zappa was indeed a ‘guitarist, songwriter, composer, film-maker, satirist, writer and social and political commentator all rolled into one’ and while, fair comment, it’s true that ‘you could never tell which combinations of those elements would come out in Zappa’s music’, that doesn’t mean everything he touched turned to gold. The big feature here is The Perfect Stranger, which Zappa, with characteristic chutzpah, managed to persuade Pierre Boulez to record in 1974.
With the best will in the world, though, one can’t envisage Boulez really digging its Stravinsky-meets-film score orchestral clutter, structural flaccidity and harmonic inertia. Zappa’s professed models were Stravinsky, Varèse and Xenakis. He was very quick to pounce on what he perceived as the ‘bourgeois’ failings of others, so it’s fair enough, I feel, to point out that The Perfect Stranger probably wouldn’t have got anywhere had it not been by Zappa. The RAM Manson Ensemble deliver a glossy, seamless performance of this relentlessly ‘so what’ music.

The remainder is a mixed bag of Zappa transcriptions. Jon Nelson’s brass quintet realisation of Big Swifty creaks at its many edges, while Little Umbrellas, Twenty Small Cigars et al sound like melodically insignificant doodles stretched around indulgent Broadway-infused orchestrations. Ali N Askin’s take on G-Spot Tornado at least injects some fun into this po-faced homage and his arrangement of Peaches en Regalia, with its grooving rhythm section and unruly wind parts, challenges the players. Then again, there was never anything wrong with the brilliantly idiomatic playing. It’s the music that stinks. [https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/zappa Philip Clark - Gramophone] </blockquote>
[[Category:Tributes &amp; Cover Albums]]