A new two-CD release showcases the live performance of Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels (The Suites) by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and L.A. Master Chorale at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on 23 October 2013…
Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted this complete orchestral recital of Zappa’s 200 Motels to launch the L.A. Philharmonic’s tenth anniversary season in the venue. The occasion echoed the first public performance of the songs by the same orchestra way back in May 1970, then conducted by Zubin Mehta at UCLA’s Royce Hall.
The music was written mostly in motel rooms while Zappa and his backing band The Mothers Invention were on tour, and a selection of the ‘suites’ were then used as the soundtrack to the surrealist 1971 musical movie 200 Motels, co-written and directed by Frank Zappa and Tony Palmer, which depicted rock musicians’ high-jinks on the road and starred Zappa himself (and Ringo Starr, among others). |
