DON PRESTON EMARKS ON FIRST EUROPEAN SOLO TOUR

From GlassOnyon PR

Mothers of Invention Keyboard & Synthesizer Legend Don Preston Embarks on First European Solo Tour September 2024
Pianist & Synthesizer legend Don Preston will be touring Europe starting in September (tour dates below). Don Preston leads a life filled with music, innovation, and experimentation in acoustic and electronic music. “Groundbreaking” is a phrase that is clearly overused. With Don it rings true. One of the first performers to drag a pile of oscillators and filters onstage, he brought his classical training to the Avant Garde. In the early 60s Frank Zappa would come to see Don’s “electronic music with films of bacterial life” shows in Los Angeles. Don was soon in Zappa’s radical new group The Mothers Of Invention, touring and playing on classics like “We're Only In It For The Money” and “Roxy & Elsewhere” from 1966 to 1973.

Don has played with everyone from Elvin Jones, Gil Evans, and Nat King Cole to The Residents, Jack Bruce and Robbie Krieger. His keyboard solos on Zappa albums, as well as countless soundtracks like Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” are considered ground-breaking moments in synthesizer music history.
Still very active in his 90’s, Don was there for the dawn of electronic musical performance, and today grafts new technologies into his experimental palette with software synths & iPhone apps, blending jazz, rock, comedy, magic and ambient synths into a captivating performance.

DON PRESTON SOLO EUROPEAN TOUR

9/24 Porgy & Bess Vienna
9/25 Prague Czech
9/26 Prague Czech
9/27 Broumod Under
9/29 NordHausen, Germany
9/30 Bb (Jazz Club) Berlin, Germany
10/2 Weert, Netherland
10/3 Russelsheim, Germany
10/5 Brussels, Belgium
10/6 Stuttgart, Germany


“The guy that really impressed me was Don Preston, I didn’t know what that stuff was when I heard it on Frank Zappa's records. I said, ‘Man!’” - GEORGE DUKE

“Preston not only brought his skewed piano sensibility into the creative jazz context, he lugged along a little of his zany synthesizer as well…touching on all these associations (Carla and Paul Bley, John Carter, Zappa and Cole Porter), showing what he can do twisting a standard around and delving a bit into his own compositional bag as well. Preston resides on the edge of tonality, toying with it.” – DOWNBEAT

“Revisiting choice moments of weirdness and glory, as well as dig into original works and unlikely standards, is not to be missed. The range of program is somewhat camouflaged by the seamless interplay of Preston and cohorts. They possess a cohesion born of fluidity that is reminiscent of Paul Bley’s 60’s trios, but they have their own crisp edge. It is a high common denominator for such a diverse program.” – JAZZTIMES

“Best known as the first synth wielding Mother of Invention - Frank Zappa’s keyboardist aide de camp, to others he is an avowed New Music experimentalist, whose work in theatre, and with assorted sonic daredevils is the stuff of underground acclaim.......in the jazz orbit Preston’s credits have included Gil Evans, Carla Bley, Buell Niedlinger, Michael Mantler, John Carter, and Bobby Bradford” – DOWNBEAT

“Preston demonstrated anew that he is one of the most consistently exciting keyboardists anywhere, he plays with an intensity and a rhythmic vitality that approached the demonic, at climactic moments smashing the keys with a forearm and elbow, as if the piano were just not instrument enough for him.” - LA JAZZ SCENE