Kent Nagano first worked with Zappa in January 1983, when he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra for a concert at the Barbican Centre and recordings at Twickenham Film Studios that resulted in the albums London Symphony Orchestra Vol. I (1983) and London Symphony Orchestra Vol. II (1987).

The following year, he conducted the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra during “A Zappa Affair” at the Zellerbach Auditorium, a performance which also featured life-size puppets.

With these two orchestras, Nagano conducted the world premiere performances of a number of Zappa’s orchestral works, including Bob In Dacron, Sad Jane, Mo ‘N Herb’s Vacation and Sinister Footwear.

Since working with Zappa, Nagano’s career has skyrocketed. He was music director of the Opéra de Lyon (1988–1998), principal conductor of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester (1992-1999), principal conductor and artistic director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (2000-2006) and music director of the Bavarian State Opera (2006-2013).

In 2006, he also became the music director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal. Since 2015, Nagano has been the general music director of the Hamburg State Opera. In 2026, he will become the Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Spanish National Orchestra.

Back in 1990, all it took was a casual remark by the editor of the British Zappa fanzine T’Mershi Duween, a couple of phone calls and four days later I was nervously sitting in the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank watching Kent Nagano rehearse the London Sinfonietta, a borrowed caseette recorder in my hand.

Nagano was taking the relaxed nine-piece ensemble through Pierre Boulez’s Mémoriale in readiness for a concert that evening commemorating Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu’s 60th birthday.

The rehearsals over, I was ushered into the Green Room to chat with the man about his stick wiggling exploits for Zappa.

Firstly, I’d like to ask you how you met and became involved with Frank Zappa.
I was visiting IRCAM in Paris – some of my friends worked there under the patronage of Pierre Boulez – and I saw the list of the various pieces that were to be performed in the future. Included on that list were some pieces by Frank Zappa. Now, being a Californian and Frank Zappa comes from California too…

You’re based out in America, are you?
I live in San Francisco. Of course, for us Frank Zappa is someone that everyone knows – regardless of whether you’re involved in popular music or not, everyone knows Frank Zappa – he’s one of the most well known people over there.

I was really surprised and I said, “Why are you doing Frank Zappa’s music?” My friend said, “Well, it seems he’s written a number of serious compositions and he wanted the Ensemble to perform it and Pierre Boulez has agreed to conduct it.”

So the next time Frank Zappa toured through the Bay area – the San Francisco area – I contacted his manager.

Bennett Glotzer?
Yes and asked him to request that he send me some scores. Then I got a message that Frank Zappa wanted to meet me during the intermission of one of his concerts.

Was that about 1981 or 1982?
Yes, somewhere around then. It was the first time in my life that I’d been to a rock concert.

It was a phenomenal experience; it was packed, completely sold out, millions of fans, everyone just incredibly excited and enthusiastic.

I remember meeting Frank Zappa and his entourage and meeting his bodyguard, John Smothers, who scared the hell out of me!

Anyway, he showed me these scores – which he allowed me to keep – and they were indeed extraordinary. Extraordinary quality, very surprising that anybody could write something so original, much less someone who wasn’t known in the classical music field.
So I asked Frank if I could perform some of the pieces in California because they looked really interesting. So that was fine.

I received a telephone call out of the blue many months later – because I never heard anything from Frank for a long time; he’d said he wanted to think about it because he had had a few performances of his music done recently that were so poorly prepared he was really choosing much more carefully the groups that he would allow to perform his music. He didn’t want his music to be massacred, which is very easy to do; it’s such difficult music.

This is something that has come up in interviews throughout his career – that he’s unhappy with the performances.
He’s absolutely right. People don’t treat them seriously and if it’s not treated seriously it doesn’t give an accurate reading of what the piece is.

So he was considering whether or not he would let me perform the music with my orchestra for several months. I never got a positive or a negative answer from him. But what I did receive about four months later was a telephone call asking if I’d be interested in recording a couple of albums of his music with the London Symphony.

Had you worked with them before?
No, in fact I had never really worked with any, what I would call, strong world-class orchestra before.

Just the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra?
Yes, they were a small Symphony… they were not really a full big-time orchestra. Now they are, but at the time they weren’t full time.

So, of course, I was delighted. It was much more than ‘would I be interested’; I considered it a privilege, a real honour to be able to work with someone like Frank.

We did some initial rehearsals together at his home in Los Angeles and there I realised that it was indeed going to be an extremely exciting project.

From my knowledge of his music and his incredible musicianship, I knew that for him it was just as important to have music performed as close to perfection as possible as it was for me. That’s one reason why I got my reputation - both negatively and positively - because I rehearse until it’s really very, very accurate.

I think he was unhappy with the amount of time the LSO rehearsed his pieces.
It was a phenomenal amount of time for the London Symphony. But in all fairness, the writing is extremely difficult – it’s very, very difficult – and that was such a gruelling and intense period.

I think it’s fair to say that the London Symphony, when they heard they were doing Frank Zappa’s music, had no idea what that really meant in terms of the complexity. But I will say that they were really quite exceptional; they worked so hard and I really fell in love with the orchestra – just as a group.

As they did with you – didn’t they hang a sign on your podium?
Yes [laughs]! They hung a sign on my podium, which they had torn off of one of the electrical transformers, which said, “DANGER – LIVE CONDUCTOR”. I still have that plaque.

But they really gave 100% and they appreciated Frank’s music. At the end they gave an ovation that was for Frank and for his music. It was wonderful.

At the time, I think Frank was quite happy too, but subsequently he’s made a few comments about their performance at the Barbican. There’s a huge bar at the back and he was unhappy with the second half of the show – he thought they had been drinking too much.
Um…well, I don’t know. I wasn’t aware of any of that.

Also, on the last recording session, the trumpet section was late back, necessitating 50 edits in six and a half minutes of music. I certainly could not pick up any errors from what I’ve heard on the recording on London Symphony Orchestra Vol. II!
Well, that’s because Frank is such a superb editor. In fact, I’ve even entertained thoughts of doing a classical record with him in the recording truck – because he’s an incredible, incredible musician.

I just did a re-performance of some of his pieces in Lyon.

Yes. Did you get to record Sinister Footwear? I heard that was due to be recorded and the Ballet was going to tour with the tape.
That’s what we wanted to do. When I requested a number of rehearsals, that wasn’t so much of a problem – that’s why I felt so enthusiastic that we could finally get it because there, since I’m Musical Director, I can book as many rehearsals as I feel necessary.

The problem came with the fact that there were a number of instruments that we didn’t normally carry in the orchestra – like bass flute, alto flute, contrabass clarinet, things like that – and the enormous expense of hiring all the extras, we would have had to hire something like 35 extras and that’s when it became fiscally impossible.

So you didn’t do any recordings of the performances at all?
Unfortunately, we didn’t. I was really sad about that actually, because Sinister Footwear for me is… that’s a great piece.

The only orchestral works I really know are Zappa’s and those by people that have inspired him – like Webern and Varèse. That I find is one of the more accessible pieces.
Sinister Footwear to me is one of the best pieces that he’s written and it doesn’t exist in a recording.

Is it within your power to commission a piece by Zappa so that he can write for the instruments that are readily available to you?
Yeah, it is possible. At this point Frank doesn’t seem to be interested in writing for human orchestras.

He’s playing with the Synclavier down in his basement.
And he’s been frustrated in a sense; the way that his mind works – it’s such a sophisticated, complex mind that his impatience when people can’t go at the same pace gets him down sometimes. I think he has been frustrated that musicians just don’t… yeah, we don’t care enough really, we don’t care to the point where we will practice until it’s perfect. I mean most of us don’t. For me, it makes a big difference, but the real constraints of the economic realities of a symphony orchestra do place economic limits on how much time you can place…

Have you read The Real Frank Zappa Book? It goes into great detail about the complexities of organising a performance of one of his pieces and the phenomenal cost of it all.
You know, when Frank does his rock music, it’s no less complicated. But they rehearse until its perfect and then they go out on the road. Which means if it takes two months of rehearsal, it’s two months of rehearsal.

In the symphonic world, the financial realities just don’t make that possible right now. It is frustrating for someone who’s written music that he knows is totally playable, given enough rehearsal time.

I totally understand his point… he’s right, in fact.

Do you plan to get together again some time?
Well, every time I’m in Los Angeles, I go and visit the Zappa family. I have enormous respect for Frank. For several reasons: one, because he’s a great composer; and two, because he gave me my first chance.

People don’t realise that he recognised… he made telephone calls and he did investigations of what my reputation was – but someone has to give a young conductor their first chance. Frank gave me my first chance and I’ll always be grateful to Frank for that.

He pays tribute to you as well; he thinks you are a world-class conductor and he thinks you can do things that conductors who have been working for 50 years can’t do.
Really? I didn’t realise that. When you stop and think about it, someone in his position could have hired anybody that he wanted and the fact that he gave me a chance... I never ever will forget that. Because I have a career now.

 

Interview conducted on Friday 23rd November 1990. The complete interview with Kent can be found in my book Frank Talk: The Inside Stories Of Zappa’s Other People (Wymer UK, 2017). Photo of Kent at the Queen Elizabeth Hall taken by the Idiot Bastard on 23 November 1990.