Official Release #63. This is Zappa's masterpiece of electronic music, conceived, composed and performed on his Synclavier, a computer system for music composition and recording. Civilization Phaze III is an astounding work, taking Zappa nearly ten years to finish. Released posthumously, this 2 CD set is a testimony to Zappa the composer, containing the pure fruits of his imagination and the hard work he continued until his death in 1993. Continuing the story of the piano people from Lumpy Gravy (and utilizing much of the same tape source material for it's interludes) the album fulfills on the promise of his Grammy-winning Jazz From Hell, the first album released of his Synclavier music.
In a day and age when so much of what is considered jazz is merely fluffy pop instrumental music designed for the safety of radio play, Lipstick Records is a godsend for fans of high-caliber, adventurous ensemble playing. The label's latest project joins two old pals - both veterans who have played everything from light pop-jazz to classical and powerhouse fusion - and places them in a free-flowing studio setting where anything is possible and the unexpected is bound to occur. The multi-faceted, multi-keyboardist Mitch Forman first met guitarist Chuck Loeb in the early '80s when the two toured for several years with Stan Getz. As the liner notes explain, "At our first rehearsal, we resolved to start our own band.
Internationally known harmonica player and vocalist WILLIE J. FOSTER (1921.09.19/Leland, MS – 2001.05.20/Jackson, TN) played with blues greats Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, and others during the 1950s and early 1960s. Despite health problems later in his life, he toured often and performed in many countries. Foster always returned to his roots in Mississippi’s Delta region, though, where he was known as the “Godfather of the Blues.”…….
Gheorghe Zamfir is a Romanian musician, known as "The Master of the Pan Flute", a leading figure within the history of international pan flute music. Zamfir is known for playing an expanded version of the traditional Romanian-style pan flute (nai).
Civilization Phaze III is the sixty-third album by Frank Zappa, released posthumously as a double album on October 31, 1994. It was the first studio album of new material from Zappa since 1986's Jazz from Hell. The album marks the third part of a conceptual continuity that started with We're Only in It for the Money (1968), with the second part being a re-edited version of Zappa's 1967 album Lumpy Gravy. Zappa described the album as a "two-act opera", but in lieu of traditional recitatives and arias, it alternates brief spoken word passages with musical numbers created on a Synclavier using a combination of sampled and synthesized sounds. Much of the sampled material in the second half of the album was originally recorded by Ensemble Modern and other musicians to Zappa's specifications.
Civilization Phaze III is the last album of new music Frank Zappa completed before his death in December 1993. It belongs to his corpus of "serious music." The composer has revisited the recordings he made in 1967 of various people talking with their heads inside a grand piano (with the sustain pedal depressed, it made quite a resonating room). These conversations were used in part in the 1968 LP Lumpy Gravy, but here Zappa (with the help of less limiting technology) restructured the comments of the "people living inside the piano" into a quasi-coherent plot. Basically, they are either outcasts or in self-exile from the outer world. They hide from a menacing reality. These spoken bits serve to tie together computer and orchestra music.
This recording represents an historic and unique synthesis of the ancient and the contemporary featuring a world premiere recording in the spectacular ambience of the Geghard Monastery in Armenia.
The Orchestra’s Artistic Director and Principal Conductor, American-Armenian conductor Aram Gharabekian, has brought the NCOA into a new era of artistic triumphs and international acclaim since his appointment in 1997. For their outstanding achievements in Armenia and in other parts of the world, Maestro Gharabekian and NCOA have been duly recognized in a proclamation by the United States Congress and televised features on CNN Special and Russian Kultura TV Channel.