Notes

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Mount St. Mary's College, LA
May 19, 1963

* Variables II for Orchestra
* Variables I for Any Five Instruments
* Opus 5, for Four Orchestras
* Rehearsalism
* Three Pieces of Visual Music with Jazz Group

Official release(s):

* The Lost Episodes parts of "Opus 5" as Mount St. Mary's Concert Excerpt
* Video From Hell probably some of the 8mm movies as background for the videoclip of G-Spot Tornado

Tour(s) in which song has been performed (from the FZShows Homepage):

* 1963 Mount St. Mary's College, LA

Comments:

* The Original Concert Program
* Transcription
* The Lost Episodes Edit

FZ on an interview from the 1992 Zappa! tribute magazine (Keyboard and Guitar Player):

Actually, the first time I had any of it ["serious" music] performed was at Mount St. Mary's College in 1962. I spent $300 and got together a college orchestra, and I put on this little concert. Maybe less than a hundred people showed up for it, but the thing was actually taped and broadcast by KPFK. (...) By the time I graduated from high school in '58, I still hadn't written any rock and roll songs, although I had a little rock and roll band in my senior year. I didn't write any rock and roll stuff until I was in my 20s. All the music writing that I was doing was either chamber music or orchestral, and none of it ever got played until this concert at Mount St. Mary's.
Rip Rense on the liner notes of The Lost Episodes:

It took place in 1963 at, of all pastoral places, lovely Mount St. Mary's College, a private Catholic institution perched in the lush Santa Monica Mountains above West Los Angeles. (...) The program included a piece called "Opus 5," aleatoric works that required some improvisation, a piece for orchestra and taped electronic music, with accompanying visuals in the form of FZ's own experimental 8mm films (Motorhead Sherwood described one such film depicting the Los Angeles County Fair carnival, double exposed with passing telephone poles).

The Original Concert Program

MOUNT ST. MARY'S COLLEGE
DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC

presents

THE EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC
OF
FRANK ZAPPA

Sunday, May 19, 1963
8:30 p.m.

Little Theater

Mount St. Mary's College

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Program

I. Variables II for Orchestra
II. Variables I for Any Five Instruments

Intermission

III. Opus 5, for Four Orchestras
IV. Rehearsalism
V. Three Pieces of Visual Music with Jazz Group

Question and Answer Period


Tracklist:


1. (opening comments by Carlos Hagen)
2. Piece #2 of Visual Music 1957 for Jazz Ensemble and 16mm Projector
3. Piano Pieces from Opus 5
4. Collage #1 for Stringed Instruments
5. 2 Fragments of the Prepared Tape to be used in Opus 5
6. Opus 5
7. (question and answer session)
8. (closing comments by Carlos Hagen)