Jean-Luc Ponty

With the help of more than 10,000 dedicated Zappa fans, this is the long-awaited definitive documentary project of Alex Winter documenting the life and career of enigmatic groundbreaking rock star Frank Zappa. Alex also utilizes in this picture thousands of hours of painstakingly digitized videos, photos, audio, writing, and everything in between from Zappa's private archives. These chronicles have never been brought to a public audience before, until now.

The music label MPS (Musik Produktion Schwarzwald) from Villingen is known worldwide to fans, musicians and lovers of jazz. Legends such as Oscar Peterson, Duke Ellington, Friedrich Gulda, Monty Alexander, George Duke, Freddie Hubbard, Jean-Luc Ponty or the Singers Unlimited traveled to the small Black Forest town from the mid-1960s onwards to take in the entrepreneur's son Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer. Around 500 albums were released on MPS, many of which are long-established classics. Thus, for two decades Villingen became a jazz mecca, which stars Jean Luc Ponty, Jasper van't Hof, Monty Alexander, Rolf and Joachim Kühn or Gunter Hampel, as well as Charly Antolini, Daniel Humair, Alexander von Schlippenbach and Eberhard Weber still rave about today. The documentary takes viewers on a fascinating journey into the 60s and 70s and tells one of the most incredible chapters in jazz history, which originated in southwestern Germany.

Utilizing potent TV interviews and many forgotten performances from his 30-year career, we are immersed into Frank Zappa’s world while experiencing two distinct facets of his complex character. At once Zappa was both a charismatic composer who reveled in the joy of performing and, in the next moment, a fiercely intelligent and brutally honest interviewee whose convictions only got stronger as his career ascended.

A wonderful jazz concert with Jean-Luc Ponty on the violin, Bireli Lagrène on the guitar and Kyle Eastwood on the bass. Biréli Lagrène is a regular at the Au Grès du Jazz festival, which takes place in La Petite Pierre, in the Vosges. He has been on stage for the past 40 years and has played with Benny Carter, Cream or Elvin Jones. Kyle Eastwood began his career in the 90’s in L.A. and New York and has already produced 8 albums. Jean-Luc Ponty, a living legend of jazz-rock, has played next to Frank Zappa and Elton John.

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This episode focuses on Zappa's early 70s albums, Overnight Sensation (1973) and Apostrophy (') (1974). Together they encapsulate Zappa's extraordinary musical diversity and were also the 2 most commercially successful albums that he released in his prolific career. Included are interviews, musical demonstrations, rare archive & home movie footage, plus live performances to tell the story behind the conception and recording of these groundbreaking albums. Extras include additional interviews and demonstrations not included in the broadcast version, 2 full performances from the Roxy in 1973 and Saturday Night Live in 1976, and new full live performance done specially for these Classic Albums.

The documentary examines Frank Zappa and his music through archive footage, including unique video excerpts from Austrian television archives featuring interviews with Zappa and backstage scenes from the 1970s and 1980s. The entire film is divided into chapters discussing the most important themes in Zappa's life and work.

Guitarist Al di Meola, violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, and bassist Stanley Clarke, all of whom recorded numerous albums as leaders during the 1970s and 1980s, join forces for this 1994 concert in Montreux. Each musician's compositions are featured in this mostly acoustic performance, though charts were necessary to help them find their way through unfamiliar pieces. There is a noticeable lack of ego apparent on-stage, with no one player trying to steal the spotlight. For his solo feature, "Eulogy to Oscar Romero," Ponty incorporates the use of a digital delay to accompany himself, while Clarke's and di Meola's solo performances are more in the context of the concert. CD The Rite of Strings, which was recorded the following year.

TV concert from Zappa, footage from the warm-up was also tapped