zpz

Zappa Plays Zappa -
The Official Authourised Announcement
Ahmet and Dweezil Zappa Perform The Music of Frank Zappa
Major 2005 European Tour with Surprise Special Guests

-- canceled -- canceled -- canceled -- canceled -- canceled -- canceled --

2005/10/25 ZAPPA - Olympic Pavillion, Barcelona, Spain
2005/10/27 ZAPPA - Milan Forum, Milan, Italy
2005/10/28 ZAPPA - Palalottomatica, Rome, Italy
2005/10/31 ZAPPA - Wolverhampton Civic Hall, Wolverhampton, England
2005/11/01 ZAPPA - Brighton Centre, Brighton, England
2005/11/02 ZAPPA - Royal Albert Hall, London, England
2005/11/04 ZAPPA - Carling Apollo, Manchester, England
2005/11/05 ZAPPA - Glasgow Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow, Scotland
2005/11/07 ZAPPA - Le Zenith, Paris, France
2005/11/08 ZAPPA - Kongresshaus, Zurich, Switzerland
2005/11/10 ZAPPA - Heineken Music Hall, Amsterdam, Holland
2005/11/11 ZAPPA - Forest National, Brussels, Belgium
2005/11/13 ZAPPA - Falkoner Theatre, Copenhagen, Denmark
2005/11/14 ZAPPA - Spektrum, Oslo, Norway
2005/11/15 ZAPPA - Hovet, Old Ice Stadium, Stockholm, Sweden
2005/11/17 ZAPPA - Arena Treptow, Berlin, Germany
2005/11/18 ZAPPA - Phillipshalle, Dusseldorf, Germany
2005/11/20 ZAPPA - T-Mobile Arena, Prague, Czechoslovakia
2005/11/22 ZAPPA - Budapest Sportarena, Budapest, Hungary

-- canceled -- canceled -- canceled -- canceled -- canceled -- canceled --

Here's a transcript of the Ahmet Zappa interview that got broadcast on the Cucamonga radio show on Belgian radio one on 2006 05 22

* * * FRANK ZAPPA : The Uncle Frankie show ( Joe's xmasage)
label/referentie: VAULTernative/import/VR20051 - http://www.zappa.com/splash.html

* * * FRANK ZAPPA : Mr. Clean (alternate mix) ( Joe's xmasage)
label/referentie: VAULTernative/import/VR20051 - http://www.zappa.com/splash.html

Mr. Clean en dat kwam uit Joe's xmasage, een eind vorig jaar verschenen cd met allerlei rariteiten uit de prille beginjaren van Frank Zappa. Deze versie van Mr. Clean bijvoorbeeld dateert van 1963. Echt wel stuff voor Zappafielen dus! Maar er kwam nog een tweede nieuwe plaat uit met archiefmuziek van Frank Zappa: Imaginary diseases, verre van zijn beste, maar toch al wel voor een iets ruimer publiek. Straks hoor je daar wat uit, nu eerst Zappa plays Zappa, de avond rond Frank Zappa die dinsdag 30 mei plaatsheeft in Vorst Nationaal. Er zijn wel meer groepen die muziek van Frank Zappa spelen, maar het bijzondere aan dit concert is dat het van en met zijn beide zonen is. En ik moet zeggen: ze zijn heel zeker van hun stuk!

AHMET ZAPPA: If you're a pre-existing Zappa fan it's pretty important in your life to listen to music that is creative and satisfying. If Frank fills that need in your life chances are you haven't seen people play his music in the last ten years as accurately as my brother and I are going to do it. Plus this is the first Zappa-approved Zappa concert. For reasons that are really hard to explain emotionally for us, being the sons of Frank and mourning his loss, it couldn't have happen before. I just think the time is right to let Frank's voice and his music and showcase what his sense of humour was like. Because my brother and I also have our father's sense of humour, so...

Dat was Ahmet Zappa. Hij en zijn broer zullen er uiteraard bij zijn in Brussel, naast onder meer Steve Vai, Terry Bozio en Napoleon Murphy Brock, allemaal ouwe gedienden en zelfs Zappafreaks zullen dus met wat nostalgie gaan kijken. Maar Ahmet en Dweezil willen daar liefst niet van weten.

AHMET ZAPPA: It's not a nostalgia tour! It's really a celebration of Frank's work. We're going to try to showcase his earliest records to his latest, the last records he recorded. So in doing that my brother and I we've picked our favourite songs and what we think are the fans' favourites. We're going to have three months of rehearsal, like my father had, to try to twiddle down from the seventy songs that we really like try to get about forty that we can play as best as humanly possible, up to Frank Zappa standard. In figuring all this out we thought it would be nice some of Frank's ex-band mates, people that my brother and I really respect and obviously grew up loving, to come out on the road with us. Let's just say: if you're a Zappa fan and you wish that a certain band member of Frank was coming on the road, like someone you really think is one of your favourites, chances are he'll probably be there and make an appearance, at least at one of our shows. We are trying to have a bunch of special surprises and before the concert there isn't going to be an opening act, but what we will have, is a little documentary that kind of explains who Frank is and what his music is really about, who he is as a composer. Because that's what Frank really was: all of his songs were composed. They were very difficult and they're all written out. He was just an exceptional musician. It's not simple music to play. I think people will be excited to see the documentary and then hear some kick-ass musicians rock the mike.

* * * FRANK ZAPPA : Father O'Blivion ( Imaginary diseases)
label/referentie: Zappa/import/ZR 20001 - http://www.zappa.com/splash.html

Father O'Blivion, Frank Zappa live in 1972. Het kwam uit de nieuwe cd Imaginary diseases. De Zappadagen nog eens herbeleven kan dus met Zappa plays Zappa op dinsdag 30 mei in Vorst Nationaal.

Better Sound in Small Packages

By MICHEL MARRIOTT
Published: May 25, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/technology/25sound.html

Not long ago, Pamela Henning, an executive at a New York-based film company, listened to her music over an expensive stereo system loaded with 2,000 of her favorite CD's. But, she said recently, it was a bit too much to handle. She bought a five-CD changer, later replaced with a single-CD player. Eventually, she chucked it all.

"I found the old-world technology so time-consuming," said Ms. Henning, senior vice president for integrated marketing for the Weinstein Company.

She decided to transfer all of her music, from Shirley Bassey to Trane, onto Apple iPods, and then back up the iPods on a hard drive, backed up by a second hard drive.

Finally, her music was portable and quickly accessible. And when she wanted to listen in her Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan, she often snapped one of her four iPods into a stereo docking system.

There was just one drawback, she noted: the musical experience was not as rich as the one her old stereo provided.

With the popularity of iPods and other hand-held digital music players - 140 million were sold worldwide last year - many consumers have made a similar compromise, trading music fidelity for portability. The era of big-box home loudspeakers with broad-shouldered stereo amplifiers and their full-bodied sound has been overtaken by microchip-driven miniaturization and home theater systems that tend to be optimized for listening to movies, not music.

"The thing that has changed is the consumers' perspective of what they expect from audio," said Dweezil Zappa, the 36-year-old musician who is performing the music of his late father, Frank Zappa, for new audiences. "I think younger consumers aren't familiar at all with really high-quality audio because for them a CD is the best thing they have ever heard."

But innovation is restless, suggested Mahesh Sundaram, vice president for marketing for Audistry, an Australian-based audio company established early this year as a subsidiary of Dolby Laboratories.

He said technologies that helped put consumers' music at their fingertips could also be used to make that music sound much better than what many have grown accustomed to. "Their reference point is going to shift dramatically," he noted.

The goal, many audio experts say, is to improve sound quality both on portable devices and in the living room. The methods are taking different paths. In some instances, digital technologies are being applied to a new crop of audio components, including speakers, headphones and portable music players, to enhance existing audio recordings. Other approaches include attempts to create richer, fuller recordings in studios and in live performances.

Major audio electronics companies like Creative and SRS Labs, along with Audistry, are increasingly turning to psychoacoustic technologies, which manipulate sound waves to convince listeners that they are hearing much more than they actually are.

Others, like the chip maker Advanced Micro Devices, are investing in supporting PC-like platforms to help musicians, recording studio engineers and producers to capture, store and mix music more accurately. Charlie Boswell, director of Advanced Micro's digital media and entertainment group in Austin, Tex., said the goal was recordings that sound vastly better and computer-driven technologies that do not get in the way of the artistic process.

For example, equipment using Advanced Micro's latest dual Opteron processor was used last month in New York to record the Jammys, an awards event honoring live music performances. Mr. Boswell said the program, which included, among others, Peter Frampton, Dweezil Zappa and Richie Havens, would be available in the fall on a special 5.1 surround-sound DVD (using five speakers and a subwoofer).

The DVD, as well as a series of others made with Advanced Micro chips, can be played in any DVD player but is best appreciated on higher-end music and home-theater systems, offering nuances, warmth and dynamics often not found in live recordings, whether on CD or vinyl, Mr. Boswell said.

Frank Filipetti, a Grammy-winning studio engineer and producer, said he was so impressed with the audio possibilities of DVD's that he is pushing for the recording industry to use them exclusively and phase out CD's. DVD's have enough storage capacity for an album's worth of uncompressed music on them; CD's require compression, though not as much as MP3's and other formats read by digital audio players.

"Why shouldn't the listener at home hear what I hear in here?" Mr. Filipetti said during an interview in a Midtown Manhattan studio while playing back a Frank Zappa track he was readying for a new collection.

But companies that work mostly with compressed music say much can still be done to make it sound better. "We are trying to add back a layer of quality, a layer of experience that people don't realize that they are missing," said Chris Bennett, president of Audistry.

One of his company's offerings is a "sound space expander." Its purpose, Mr. Bennett said, is to convince listeners that music played from speakers that have very little physical separation from one another, as in portable stereos and many music docking stations, sound as if they do. By using a series of proprietary algorithms that will run on the system's microprocessors, Audistry technologies create an impression that the sound is being heard from widely separated speakers, Mr. Bennett said.

At the same time, the technology creates what Audistry calls a "wide stereo image," meaning the space between the music's instruments also seems to widen without distorting vocals at the center of the mix.

Some of the first consumer products using Audistry audio enhancements are going on sale in the United States this month. Among them is the SD-SP10, a 2.1 home audio-video system by Sharp Electronics. The system will cost $350, said Sharp said.

Similarly, Creative Technology, the Singapore-based digital audio pioneer, is turning attention to improving sound quality in consumer products, said Steve Erickson, general manager and vice president for Creative audio products. Last year, Creative released its Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity processor, which is armed with 51 million transistors and is 24 times as powerful as the company's previous audio chip, Mr. Erickson said.

A number of versions of the sound card with varying abilities are available for use in PC's, ranging in price from $130 to $400. But this year Creative's audio enhancement technologies are migrating to a broader range of applications and products. For example, aspects of its digital signal processing abilities could be applied to stereo headphones to create a more natural three-dimensional sound than current headphones can, Mr. Erickson said.

SRS Labs, with its headquarters in Santa Ana, Calif., offers what David Frerichs, the company's executive vice president for strategic marketing and corporate development, calls a "whole eco-system of things we do to leverage our experience" with high-quality audio technologies.

One of the company's newest advances is SRS Mobile HD, designed for digital broadcast and downloads. The technology also enables headphones made for mobile phones and portable media devices to play audio in 5.1 surround sound.

SRS said the technology was so new that it had not yet been licensed to any manufacturers. But one of its similar technologies, called SRS WOW HD, is integrated into a number of consumer products, including a range of MP3 players by Samsung and Alienware.

Like many consumers, Ms. Henning, the film company executive, said she was not overly concerned with the details. She only wants to get the best sound she can with the ease of pressing a button.

Mr. Bennett of Audistry said he was confident that the electronics industry could deliver on that. But he cautioned that consumers should listen not just to claims, but to the approaching waves of improved audio.

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ZAPPA TICKET AUCTIONS & FAN PRE-SALE
Starting this week and running into next week, for select Zappa Plays Zappa shows, you can bid on the best seats in the house!

Ticket auctions are running in these markets below and include great seats, access to soundcheck, and a tour poster.

*Oct 22 - Canton, OH (Cleveland): Auction starts next week - check the ZPZ site on Monday for more details!

And finally, for the above dates and all others, there will be a Zappa Plays Zappa pre-sale FOR YOU starting at 7-19 @ 10 am eastern - click here on that date and time to get your tickets: http://zappa.frontgatetickets.com

18-Oct Denver, CO Paramount Theatre - On-sale 7/22 thru Ticketmaster
19-Oct Kansas City, MO Ameristar Casino - On-sale 7/24 thru Tickets.com
20-Oct Minneapolis, MN Orpheum Theatre - On-sale 8/5 thru Ticketmaster
22-Oct Canton, OH Canton Palace Theatre - On-sale 7-29 thru Ticketmaster
23-Oct Buffalo, NY Univ Of Buffalo - On-sale 7/21 thru Ticketmaster
24-Oct Montreal, QC Metropolis - On-sale 7/21 thru www.ticketpro.ca
25-Oct Providence, RI Prov. Performing Arts Ctr - On-sale 7/27 thru Ticketmaster
27-Oct Atlantic City, NJ Borgata - On-sale 7-29 thru www.TheBorgata.com
29-Oct Wallingford, CT Chevrolet Theatre - On-sale 7-29 thru Ticketmaster
30-Oct Washington DC Warner Theatre - On-sale 7-29 thru Ticketmaster
31-Oct New York, NY Theatre At MSG - On-Sale now at Ticketmaster! (Special Halloween show!)

We believe these dates to be self evident and confirmed. But right now we're just giving you an ears up. Soonly we will post an official confirmation and ticketing information.

Zappa Plays Zappa, the concert experience that brings the music of the late Frank Zappa to the stage, under the direction of Dweezil Zappa, will this summer again embark on a North American tour. The tour starts July 18 at Winnipeg's Centennial Hall with a total of 30 performance dates set for the tour's first leg which concludes in Los Angeles at the end of August. Following a break, Zappa Plays Zappa embarks on a 17 city European tour including dates in the UK, Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

In concept and performance, Zappa Plays Zappa offers audiences an opportunity to spend an evening with Frank Zappa's music, performed meticulously by a group of top flight musicians who have been schooled in its subtleties. Far from a "tribute band," Zappa Plays Zappa is more of a vehicle that underscores the compositional genius of Frank Zappa much as a symphony orchestra would perform pieces by a master composer. Nate Chenen, writing about Zappa Plays Zappa in the New York Times recognized this when he wrote that the show fully realized Dweezil's intent for it to be "an argument for Frank Zappa's legitimacy as a composer."

Frank Zappa died in 1993 after a career that saw him record over 80 albums. Today, the younger Zappa and his band mates are taking full advantage of the wealth and breadth of the material contained therein. "What we're preparing to do for this tour is perhaps even more complex than what we did on the first tour," says Dweezil. "Last year we learned about 40 songs from a very popular period of Frank's career and this year we will be learning about 30 more new ones that are somewhat more obscure. The tour will include material from 'We're Only In It For The Money,' 'Absolutely Free,' 'Weasels Ripped My Flesh,' 'Joe's Garage,' 'You Are What You Is,' The Yellow Shark' and much more, including orchestral works."

Frank Zappa will be, quite literally, visible during the Zappa Plays Zappa concerts. Large screen video of Zappa will be accompanied musically by the band enabling concert goers who might never had the opportunity to see Frank Zappa on stage in person to have this experience first-hand. Dweezil will rotate Frank Zappa video performances over the course of the tour.

The band Dweezil (lead guitar) has assembled for this year's Zappa Plays Zappa is composed of veterans of last year's tour including Joe Travers (drums), Billy Hulting (percussion), Scheila Gonzalez (keyboards, saxophone, vocals), Aaron Arntz (keyboards/trumpet), Peter Griffin (bass) and Jaime Kime (rhythm guitar). Joining the tour this year is Ray White, the vocalist who toured and recorded with Frank Zappa during the period of such albums as "Tinsel Town Rebellion," "You Are What You Is" and "Zappa in New York" (his is the lead vocal on beloved song "The Illinois Enema Bandit").

Dweezil is also working on bringing Zappa Plays Zappa into the home with a feature length performance DVD that documents the 2006 tour. It is expected to be released early this summer, concurrent with the 2007 tour.

Zappa Plays Zappa is an undertaking with a higher purpose in mind beyond filling seats with concert goers. Dweezil Zappa explains, "I think my Dad's music deserves to be heard by a wider audience. I really think he's been misunderstood for far too long, which brings me back to why I'm doing this: I'm so in awe of his accomplishments and want more and more people to know about him, and I think the best way for people to first discover his music is on a visceral level in a live situation. I think you have to be confronted with the complexity and the beautiful subtlety of all of it to fully appreciate the artistry of it."

A few years ago, Frank Zappa's eldest son Dweezil decided that his father's music had been missing from the musical landscape for far too long. He created ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA, an extensive concert tour that brought selected compositions from Frank's body of work to the stage. In 2006 two ZAPPA PLAYZ ZAPPA shows were filmed and recorded to capture the experience to reach an even larger audience on DVD.

(New York, NY) - On April 29th, Razor & Tie Entertainment will release ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA on DVD. The DVD features the astounding music of Frank Zappa played by an expert ensemble led by his son, Dweezil, an accomplished musician in his own right.

Considered by many to be a genius composer, guitarist and producer, Frank Zappa's body of work is as vast, as it is diverse. His untimely death in 1993 left legions of loyal fans missing his satirical flair and brilliant musicianship. A few years ago, Dweezil decided that his father's music had been missing from the musical landscape for far too long and chose to dive headlong into the massive undertaking that became ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA. This extensive concert tour respectfully brings selected compositions from the elder Zappa's body of work back to the stage.

Dweezil states, "Frank's music is unique. It deserves to be discovered by today's audience. They don't have any idea what they are missing. His music is not going to suddenly appear on popular radio or TV programs and it's not going to get massive exposure in the media, so the only way to introduce it to new people is to play his music live. Frank always called his music the 'World's Finest Optional Entertainment' and it really is." The ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA tour offers audiences an opportunity to spend an evening with Frank Zappa's music, performed meticulously by a group of top-flight musicians who were schooled in its subtleties.

The ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA tour will be playing select dates (including festivals) beginning in June, with more dates to be announced for the fall. This year's ZPZ line-up features: Dweezil Zappa (guitar, vocals), Aaron Arntz (keyboards and trumpet), Scheila Gonzalez (saxophone, flute, keyboards and vocals), Pete Griffin (bass), Billy Hulting (marimba, mallets and percussion), Jamie Kime (guitar), Joe Travers (drums and vocals) and special guest Ray White (guitar and vocals). Please see below for confirmed shows to date.

In 2006, two ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA shows were pristinely filmed and recorded (in Portland, OR and Seattle, WA, respectively) to capture the experience. The result is a double-DVD set with a 12-track bonus audio CD. Produced by Pierre and Francois Lamoureaux for Strobosonic, the DVDs feature over three hours of performances of Dweezil's "rocking teenage combo", including previous 2006 tour special guests: Steve Vai, Napoleon Murphy Brock and Terry Bozzio. A limited edition fanpack will also be available which features the two-DVD set and three CDs containing the entire audio content, totaling 270 minutes.

	zappa plays zappa: zappa plays zappa (2007, 2dvd, eu, strobosonic strobo-d-100) - all compositions by frank zappa, feat.dweezil zappa, n.m.brock, s.vai & t.bozzio
	zappa plays zappa: zappa plays zappa (2008, cd, , usa, razor & tie 7930182993-2) - all compositions by frank zappa, feat.dweezil zappa, n.m.brock, s.vai & t.bozzio
	zappa plays zappa: zappa plays zappa (2008, 2dvd, , usa, razor & tie 7930182997-9) - all compositions by frank zappa, feat.dweezil zappa, n.m.brock, s.vai & t.bozzio
	zappa plays zappa: zappa plays zappa (2008, 2dvd + 3cd, , usa, razor & tie 7930182997-9) - all compositions by frank zappa, feat.dweezil zappa, n.m.brock, s.vai & t.bozzio