Zappa Goes Large

In 1983, Zappa hired the London Symphony Orchestra and recorded 90 minutes of his freest, most imaginative and most wickedly entertaining music. Included on the album was the tear-away invention of 'Pedro’s Dowry', a frantic piece that obsesses over repeated fragments with all the primary-coloured brilliance of a cartoon soundtrack. This rampant hyperactivity finds the perfect counterbalance in 'Sad Jane', which is presented alongside its companion piece 'Bob in Dacron'.

'Mo ‘n Herb’s Vacation' is one of Zappa’s most accomplished large-scale orchestral works. Within its three-movement, theme and variations structure, beauty and aggression mingle, paradoxically embodying the sort of ‘sophisticated’ musical archetype Zappa loved to mock. The concert opens with music by Igor Stravinsky, one of Zappa’s principal musical inspirations.