Zappa Plays Zappa

70th Birthday Celebration

December 17, 2010 at Beacon Theatre

About the Show

In honor of the late Frank Zappa's 70th birthday, Dweezil Zappa and the Zappa Family Trust present the music of Frank Zappa. Zappa Plays Zappa will perform the classic album Apostrophe in its entirety at the Beacon Theatre on Friday, December 17.

Featured musicians include: Dweezil Zappa, Scheila Gonzalez,Pete Griffin, Billy Hulting,Jamie Kime, Joe Travers, and Ben Thomas.

Guitarist Dweezil Zappa has cocooned himself away in the studio this past year engineering his own metamorphosis. "In order for me to play my father's music correctly I needed to understand the fundamentals of his music more thoroughly, which meant a lot of studying." His goal was to emerge as a "better musician" as well as a "better guitarist." The autodidactic Zappa utilized the fruits of his labor to startling effect on his first album project in more than six years - Go With What You Know - featuring a unique guitar rendition of the elder Zappa's classic instrumental, Peaches En Regalia. "I actually played along with Frank's guitar solo from the original 'Hot Rats' master tapes. He had dedicated that album to me since he was working on that around the time I was born. It's cool to hear us playing together note for note in a stereo time machine."

The album will be independently released to coincide with the "Zappa Plays Zappa" European tour which hits the road this May. This is the first official live concert event of Frank Zappa's Music since his untimely passing in 1993. Joining Dweezil on stage will be a hand-picked band of new, young musicians.

Dweezil has recorded under his own name and with his brother, Ahmet, in their band Z. Six-string heroics aside, Dweezil has nurtured a successful television career, starting early on as an MTV veejay when he was only 17.

He has appeared in films (Pretty in Pink, The Running Man with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and composed the music for several television shows including the Ben Stiller Show and the hit WB comedy, The Jamie Kennedy Experiment.