Topeka-based composer and musician Von Hansen will present an evening of his music at Fisch Haus on Saturday, April 19.
Titled “Music Is The Best or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Trust Frank Zappa,” the presentation spotlights Hansen’s compositional vision, imagination and sense of humor.
It’s one of several dates he’s mounted in support of his debut album, “Mortal Coil,” which is named after a piece inspired by his father’s final days.
Zappa’s spirit also plays a considerable role in the evening. Hansen was inspired by the late composer’s 1979 rock opera “Joe’s Garage,” which -- like much of Zappa’s work -- traverses the sometimes wide, sometimes narrow distances between the vulgar and the sublime.
Hansen’s program derives its title from the piece “Packard Goose,” in which the character Mary (played by Dale Bozzio) delivers a speech in which she declares that “… information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth, truth is not beauty, beauty is not love, love is not music, music is the best.” (Kansas music historians will also note that Wichita harmonicist Craig “Twister” Steward is heavily featured in the album’s first act.)
Hansen recently spoke with KMUW about “Music Is The Best,” “Mortal Coil” and more.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Could you describe the program that the audience will experience at Fisch Haus?
The program is called “Music Is The Best or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Trust Frank Zappa.” Frank Zappa was a big presence in my house [when I was] growing up. We actually called him Uncle Frank. He was my dad’s favorite musician. His approach to music and to interacting with the world was [similar to] how our household worked: All sorts of genres of music, very satirical views, lots of humor. Throughout the whole thing there’s hints of Frank Zappa, but truthfully Frank Zappa’s a stand-in for my dad. The show is partly [part of] a tour for my album and the main for that is a piece that I wrote for my dad. It’s about how I learned to be an artist and what it means to be an artist from my dad through Frank Zappa.
I feel like sometimes we know someone better through the art they embrace. Sometimes we can communicate better with them when we share books or music.
“Music is the best.” That’s central to this because music contains all of the things that we can’t say in words. You’re able to get this point across and make connections through music. “Music is the best” because [it can help] represent the ways that we interact with the culture or the way that we are introspective. There’s different types of pieces that I play that show how we’re all connected. I have a piece during which I control everybody’s phones from my computer. I turn their phones into speakers. That’s a pretty cool thing. I have a sound bath piece that’s very meditative, very internal. Because it’s Frank Zappa, we talk about his fight against censorship. I have some pieces about that as well.
Given that Frank Zappa was a percussionist and that he had so many fine percussionists come in and out of his band and his love of the composer Edgard Varèse, was that what gave you the percussion bug?
I don’t know. That is really one of the coolest connections with Frank Zappa. One of the first albums he bought was the Edgard Varèse album [“Ionisation”] because he had a big shock of white hair and [Zappa] wanted to know what mad scientist music sounded like. Edgard Varèse wrote the first ensemble percussion piece ever. There’s this connection to my educational world as well. Then all the people that Frank had as well. Ruth Underwood playing all the percussion stuff, but then Terry Bozzio is probably my favorite Frank Zappa drummer. I don’t know if that started me on the drums, but I definitely was hearing all that because my dad was playing Zappa all the time.
Truthfully, I wanted to play the drums, but my parents told my brother he couldn’t play drums because it was too loud. I told them that I wanted to play saxophone and then the saxophone was way more expensive than the beginner drum, so they were, like, “Cool! You can play the drums!” [Laughs.] That’s how I conned them into [letting me] play drums.
[Laughs.] You have a piece on your album, “Mortal Coil,” the title track in fact, which is a confluence of the things we’ve been talking about.
That’s a piece I wrote for my dad. He died in 2017. He was able to come home on a breathing machine. He never wanted to die in a hospital. He came home on oxygen and the compressors were actually in my childhood bedroom. I would go in there and turn them on. I noticed that it made an interesting sound, and I could feel that it was a representation of the last breaths that I would hear from my dad. I took my voice recorder out of my phone, and I recorded that sound.
A few years later, my favorite professor from Central Michigan University asked me to write a piece for his final concert. He said, “It needs to mean something.” I decided that after five years I could use those sounds. I went back and listened to them, and it was less raw. There was more of an appreciation of the breathing machines because they let my dad come home. His brother and sister and relatives and friends got to come and say goodbye. I got to be helpful at the end of his life.
At the start of the piece, you actually hear the recording of the breathing machine and then the rumbling is taken over by a bass drum and then the breaths are taken over by these two cymbals with rivets on them called sizzle cymbals. Those continue throughout the whole piece. You continue to hear this breath until there’s one big, giant breath at the end.
The piece becomes more of a celebration of what I had and a thankfulness for the breathing machines rather than this grinding loss. Time really allowed me to have a better experience writing that piece. It was very cathartic, writing a piece for my dad.
Your compositions are accessible. I can imagine people immersed in “serious music” appreciating it as much as I can imagine people who came to minimalism through Radiohead might.
My wife’s a nurse, and she’s my everyman audience. My music’s gotten a lot less weird and experimental and more about, “Hey, do people like listening to this?” Now, it combines together into stuff where I can still say what I want to say but my average audience is going to be able to grab onto it, too. It doesn’t get so exclusive that only the music nerds think it’s cool.
It seems that there’s a real performance quality to what you’ve put together for what the audience will hear at Fisch Haus. They’re going to hear music, but they’re also going to see a performer.
I’m really loving this tour because it really is a show rather than a performance. It’s not, “Let me play you some pieces that I like.” A lot of times, concerts are, “Here’s some pieces that I like in this order.” I have a story. I talk between each piece. I connect everything together in this story. It’s a one-man show through music. That’s really felt good. I’ve found that over these first few performances, I have this way of hooking it all together. I’ve had a lot of people pretty moved by it because it works with the connection to my dad and the loss of my dad, but going through that with thankfulness and being able to weave in the humor because, with Frank, there’s always the humor, too, and that’s me as well.
Percussion’s a very visual medium so you get to watch me play the stuff, too. My first piece is a snare drum, a bass drum thing where I cut up some of the Frank Zappa “Music is the best” speech. That’s all mashed up while I do that. Everything is on vibraphone, which is like a metal xylophone, basically. Everything has a backing track, and I made a video to go with it, too. There’s a video component, there’s my life component, there’s the audio, and then there’s the story with it. It really is a guided tour through this experience with my dad and with Frank Zappa.
