I think this young lady did a fantastic job with this. Bravo!
I think this young lady did a fantastic job with this. Bravo!
I just met her in Tokyo two nights ago! She's great!
Ha! Easy Meat was completely NOT where I thought that intro was heading
So far I really don't recognize any of this. I guess I'm not much of a Frank Zappa fan.
I love this. The incongruity of this video is outrageous!
WTF? I just noticed there's no sheet music. Off by heart!
Think of a book as a vase, and a movie as the stained-glass window that the filmmaker has made out of the pieces after he’s smashed it with a hammer.
-- Russell Banks (paraphrased)
I can just imagine the conversation before the recital with her parents. "So what will you be playing" "I am going to do a medley of songs whose titles include Easy Meat, Echidna's Arf of You, Dog Breath and Uncle Meat".
Not only did she do an excellent job playing some really challenging Zappa music, but she was able to blend the themes together really well.
Listening to that entire clip, Drowning Witch was the high point. Amazing!
Quiz time:
OK, who can name me the piece that starts at 18:59? Well, she implies it a bit earlier than that but you would know it starting at that point. Winner gets a pair of zircon-encrusted tweezers.
OK, the rubber ducky and the whistle are a bit much. I can imagine her butt (she was on the edge of the bench the whole time), her back (hunched over posture), and her arms and hands really hurt by the time this was over. That said, this was an amazing musical accomplishment, and I think Frank would have been completely blown away by it.
Frank's music was mostly written for ensembles, and therefore a very wide variety of instruments. This piece helps isolate Frank's compositional abilities without that. So that is a positive.
The negative (but it does help us to realize it better) is that Frank intended various parts for specific instruments other than the piano. Adaptations like this cannot fully portray the humor, character, and attitude of Frank's pieces.
I've heard a lot of Frank's music, but I honestly couldn't identify any one piece of his here. I could often recognize it as Frank's style, but his sound often included a wide array of percussion, winds and horns.
In other words, it really wasn't intended for solo piano.
Thanks for sharing. It did open my ears a bit more in identifying some key elements of Frank's style and approach to composition.
Last edited by Jubal; 02-11-2017 at 08:21 AM.
Amazing!! - I like the reprise of tinsel town rebellion material that leads into 'sofa' (and the rest of it!)
was waiting for the theme from 'a penguin in bondage' [after the kazoo - music - "shake up the pale dry ginger ale".....] oh well.
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