Coda

Frank Zappa - Zoot Alors! (2017) {4CD Set Coda Publishing CPLCD248 rec 1975-1981}
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© 1975-81, 2017 Coda Publishing / Stormbird | CPLCD248
Rock / Experimental Rock / Avant-Garde / Art Rock / Jazz Rock

This powerful four disc anthology is a wonderful illustration of the genius that was the late, great Frank Zappa in performance and broadcasting live to air. Zappa always defies categorisation. He blended humor, satire, virtuoso guitar, challenging lyrics, bawdy tales, brilliant compositions, and inspired improvisation and somehow managed to make those diverse elements work together in a unique, musical form which defies categorisation, and is known to posterity by the term "Zappa".

Released two years after the 1980 death of John Bonham, Coda tied up most of the loose ends Led Zeppelin left hanging: it officially issued a bunch of tracks circulating on bootleg and it fulfilled their obligation to Atlantic Records…

D.S. Al Coda is the third album by the progressive rock and jazz fusion group National Health. It is a tribute to former member Alan Gowen, who died of leukaemia in May 1981, and consists solely of compositions written by him. Most of these had not been recorded in the studio before, although "TNTFX" and "Arriving Twice" both appeared earlier on albums by Gowen's other band Gilgamesh.

Released two years after the 1980 death of John Bonham, Coda tied up most of the loose ends Led Zeppelin left hanging: it officially issued a bunch of tracks circulating on bootleg and it fulfilled their obligation to Atlantic Records…

Extending the concept initiated with his critically-acclaimed Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Update album, described by Down Beat as “pretty fantastic”, Michael Mantler radically reworks music from several phases of his career. On Coda he shapes favourite pieces – a personal “best-of” - into new musical suites, now played by an orchestra comprised of both jazz and classical players. Source material is drawn from the albums 13 and 3/4, Cerco un paese innocente, Alien, Folly Seeing All This, For Two and Hide And Seek. Coda was recorded at Vienna’s Porgy & Bess Studio in September 2019, and mixed at Studios La Buissonne in the South of France.

Howard Shelley’s light touch, fresh and colourful orchestral playing, and excellent recording, make this very well worth hearing on its own account, not simply as a rediscovered rarity.

On this generous last instalment of their Schubert-Brahms pilgrimage, Pieter Wispelwey and Paolo Giacometti serve us three iconic sonatas, including a world premiere. In its original hue of G Major, Brahms’ first violin sonata op. 78 is more scintillating and transparent than the D-major cello adaptation, and much more enchanting in its opening Vivace. Brahms’ third violin sonata op. 108 fuses surprising ebullience with superior mastery of form, in an epic piece which is an undiluted kick in the groin when played on a cello. And thankfully, Pieter and Paolo revisit Schubert’s Arpeggione, that gem of intimacy, fragility, frivolity and humbling, unattainable beauty. A fitting final, in all respects.