Sinister Footwear, 3rd movement

I can present this to you only due to the graciousness of a guy called LudzNL, thank him, not me. This is a radio bootleg, so please excuse the shitty audio.

Kent Nagano, The Berkeley Symphony And Sinister Footwear
By Sarah Cahill
Option, March/April 1987


Kelly Johnson, the manager of the Berkeley Symphony, would rather not talk about the Zappa Affair, which was one of the symphony's most exciting, and most damaging, productions. Johnson would like to forget what he calls the "nightmare of 1984" and concentrate on the very successful current season. It seems as if no one who had a part in the Zappa concerts wants to be reminded of the experience; one past board member says her "blood pressure goes up every time I think about It." Even now, several years after the Zappa extravaganza, people talk about it with hostility and anger.

What went wrong? Why is it a sore point in the symphony's history? After all, the show was a big critical success. The way it combined theater and dance and larger-than-life puppets with Zappa's music produced "one of those rare times," said the Oakland Tribune, "when a wild new concept is fully realized." The San Francisco Examiner called it "an example of exciting and worthwhile theater." But while it was a dazzling and engaging production, It was also an expensive and disorganized one. What began innocently enough as an evening of Zappa's music, played by the Berkeley Symphony, was expanded into a multi-media performance, and the artistic visions of the people who planned it ended up being far too ambitious for the budget.

The Skaggs Foundation gave the symphony $20,000 for the Zappa project, but the grant hardly began to cover expenses. "I saw the budget go from $50,000 to $100,000 to $130,000," says Johnson, who had just assumed the position of manager and found that all the decisions had been made by the time he arrived. Among choreographers Tandy Beal and Joan Lazarus, designer John Gilkerson, conductor Kent Nagano, and Zappa himself, there were bound to be some personality clashes, which hampered the project. The Oakland Ballet was scheduled to perform, and pulled out halfway through the planning stages. After the show, bills were left unpaid, tempers were high, and the Berkeley Symphony was getting a bad reputation. No one could control the budget; the symphony was going hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt. Johnson describes his first few weeks on the job, and the mental strain of receiving nasty phone calls all day long from everyone involved: "I would come to work, get beaten up, and go home; come to work, get beaten up, and go home."

An outside observer, on the other hand, would say that the Berkeley Symphony's Zappa Affair was a real coup, and typical of the symphony's adventurous dedication to excellent performances of contemporary music. In its previous incarnation, as the Berkeley Promenade Orchestra, the group played standard informal concerts of well-known and well-worn repertoire. Kent Nagano, who took over as conductor in 1977, has trained and polished the orchestra so that now, he says, "We've accepted the responsibility to play contemporary music, which, relatively speaking, we play more than anybody else in the Bay Area, and we're not afraid of any type of repertoire. We've played the most difficult repertoire that exists."

From wiki jawaka

Category:

Music

Tags:

• sinister
• footwear
• frank
• zappa
• orchestra
• version
• 1984
• kent
• nagano
• berkeley
• symphony

[Farksisten]

Awesome! I didn't know this piece was actully played by a real orchestra!

[sterbus79]

Very, very interesting piece and notes, I've never listened to this before! Thanks

[HomelyCooking]

There's a really great lyricism to this movement - it doesn't sound as contrived as its origins suggest. Thank you so much!

[ShutupNPlayDMusic]

Pity there arent that many FZ-fans who are familiar with the Sinister Footwear Suite.

Id say that it is my favorite of Zappas orchestral works.

Please check out my personal video of Sinister Footwear 3.

Thanks.

[muthashipconxon]

I saw Kent Nagano conduct Brahms' German Requiem a few years ago. that must have been a piece of cake compared to this! Great conductor, great players, and great composition!

[dunnged]

man this is one of my top five zappa tunes, the way it came about is so convoluted, gotta love the story, what i know of it anyway.

[sdgakatbk]

First time I've heard this piece. It totally blew me away!