In February 2019, The Black Page Piano Solo by Frank Zappa will be released on Label Musikfabrik, arranged and performed by Ulrich Löffler.

Here Uli tells us something about the making of the arrangement:

Since summer 2005 we have been playing music by Frank Zappa with the Ensemble Musikfabrik. Already back then, our focus was clearly on the rather rocky music of the 70s – Roxy & Elsewhere, One Size fits all, etc. – And in the middle of it all, of course, The Black Page, black with notes, rhythmically extremely tricky, with frantically fast passages.

On the live double album Zappa in New York from 1976, the composer comments: This song was originally constructed as a drum solo. After Terry (Bozzio) learned how to play The Black Page on the drumset, I figured, well, maybe it would be good for other instruments, so I wrote a melody that went along with the drum solo. And that turned into The Black Page, part 1, the hard version.

And at some point I put a simple accompaniment for the left hand underneath this notorious melody with all its “hard to reach statistical density” (in its basic form). And that became The Black Page Piano Solo.