When Frank Zappa was a young teenager in high school he bought an Edgard Varèse album (The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse, Volume One) that spoke to him; the Rite of Spring excited him, too, as did an album by Webern. From the age of 14 he wrote chamber music; he was 22 before he wrote a lyric. Indeed, the influence of Varèse is audible in much of his music. In Thorsten Schütte’s absorbing, revelatory documentary, Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words, it’s never clearer than when we hear Pedro’s Dowry (1979) with its distinctive 20th-century noodling. Schütte spent years “snuffling out Zappa truffles in television archives, finding an amazing treasure trove of interviews, TV appearances and concert recording” before celebrating the man and his extraordinary musical and political legacy through the prism of this archival footage in his finished film.

Excerpts from 28 of Zappa’s compositions, including the very early Improvised Piece for Two Bicycles, Pre-Recorded Noise and Orchestra he performed on the Steve Allen Show in 1963 (alongside the bemused host), make up the rich soundtrack. Fascinating archival footage ranges from two interviews from the 1980s with Chuck Ash, a Pennsylvania State Trooper in full uniform, to a remarkable reception by Czech president Vaclav Havel which formalized the state acceptance of his music by a country whose citizens first fell in love with it in 1972 causing it to be banned by the then Soviet bloc country.

With his unruly hair and soul patch, Zappa appeared to embody the 1960s generation gap, his appearance alone an affront to straight society. Yet he barely tasted cannabis and banned drug taking by his band on road trips. A master showman whose acute social observations led to lyrics that caught the zeitgeist (while mocking and offending the establishment), Zappa was an articulate defender of free speech and a self-proclaimed conservative with a wife, four children and a mortgage. A gifted guitarist who led small and large groups of musicians, he considered himself primarily a conductor who was also the music’s composer.

For a man who “always wanted to be a serious musician,” who hired the London Symphony Orchestra and the 31-year-old Kent Nagano to perform and record several of his complex scores in 1983, and who believed that “the whole body of my life is one composition,” it’s fitting that Schütte’s final images of Zappa in the film show him conducting Varèse’s Ionisation (the only music in the film Zappa didn’t write).

Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words began its exclusive Toronto engagement at TIFF Bell Lightbox July 8.

Morgan Neville, fresh from his Oscar-winning documentary, Twenty Feet from Stardom, has crafted his most personal film to date with The Music of Strangers, a joyous account of Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. Neville, a musician himself, found working with “these great musicians almost a religious experience.” His devotion shows in the three and a half years of work that took him all over the globe to tell the film’s uplifting story of the power of music to speak to disparate audiences and unite diverse performers.

Ma literally grew up with music and fell into being a professional musician without having found his voice (according to the composer Leon Kirchner who was one of his Harvard professors). But he would do so through his association with the worldwide collection of upwards of 50 musicians who comprise Silkroad. A constant questioner, Ma was influenced by Leonard Bernstein’s 1973 Norton Lectures that sought a universal explanation of music. The cellist’s search for the origins of creativity took him to the intersections of cultures.

Neville focuses on Ma but also brings us the stories of several key Silkroad participants: Kinan Azmeh, the genial Syrian clarinetist, who found refuge in New York City from his country’s civil war; Wu Man, pipa virtuoso extraordinaire, who was part of the first class to enter the conservatory in China following the Cultural Revolution, and who benefitted from Isaac Stern’s historic master classes [see the 1979 documentary From Mao to Mozart]; and Cristina Pato, the Galician bagpiper whose enthusiastic musicianship is contagious, and whose dog is named Yo-Yo.

Neville said after last September’s TIFF premiere that he thinks of culture as the plate the cake sits on -- it’s “the most essential thing, not just the frosting on the cake.” The Music of Strangers is prima facie evidence of that essence.

The Music of Strangers plays the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema [formerly the Bloor] from July 8 to 14.

De Palma, the indispensable documentary about Brian De Palma, directed by Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow, is a candid, highly entertaining and illuminating look at one of Hollywood’s longest directorial careers from the mouth of the man himself. In compulsively watchable detail, De Palma -- who considers himself “the one practitioner who took up Hitchcock’s form” -- talks about each of his 29 features, dropping one factual nugget after another. (As a child, the fledgling director saw a lot of blood watching his orthopedic surgeon father operate; later he would follow his father hoping to catch him cheating on his mother.)  Anecdotes and analysis range from camerawork and direct influences to gossip about famous actors not learning lines (Orson Welles).  

Baumbach and Paltrow seamlessly intercut scenes from 45 years of filmmaking; the comfort level among the three men (who have known each other for ten years) is key to De Palma’s ease and forthrightness as he examines his entire career.

De Palma has worked with the cream of film composers, from Bernard Herrmann (“who sees the movie and goes off and writes the score”) on Obsession and Sisters to John Williams (Williams’ 1978 score for The Fury was one of De Palma’s favourites); Danny Elfman (Mission: Impossible), Mark Isham and Ryuichi Sakamoto to seven with Pino Donaggio (Carrie, Dressed to Kill etc). The idea for Phantom of the Paradise came from hearing a Beatles song playing as Muzak in an elevator; Paul Williams, its composer, was able to write parodies of all sorts of pop music forms. De Palma offers several insights into Ennio Morricone’s work on The Untouchables. (“Give a composer the time and space to develop the scene… the sequences inspire the composer.”)

And to think it all began when De Palma saw Vertigo at Radio City Music Hall as a teenager in 1958.

De Palma opens at TIFF Bell Lightbox June 17. Split/Screen: The Cinema of Brian De Palma – also at the Lightbox – runs from June 18 until September 3 screening 25 of his feature films.

Nettie Wild’s magnificent new documentary, Koneline, is a fully fleshed-out portrait of a place and its diverse inhabitants. Shot in northwestern B.C. in the region of the Stikine River and the Cassiar Mountains, it’s a film of contrasts anchored by an inclusive even-handedness that reflects the filmmaker’s mature view of her subject, a wild habitat of pristine beauty and precious natural resources that is home to the Tahltan First Nation, fishermen, miners, hunting guides and hydro workers, all of whom are in thrall to the area’s remoteness.

Some are attracted by the Northern Lights, the snow-covered mountains, glaciers and the howling wolves; others by the Stikine River valley (“the Serengeti of North America”). The Tahltan First Nation elders are worried about Imperial Metals’ mine (Wild cuts from their meeting with the mining company’s supervisor and B.C. Cabinet Minister to a pristine birch grove but also pointedly shows the bonds between the elders and a young Tahltan miner who welcomes the opportunity to feed his family and the compromise that seems to be the modus operandi of everyone involved).

A Tahltan father and son spend a day killing and cleaning a moose, then the evening playing fiddle and guitar in a dance band; a woman who hunts in the bush also makes moccasins with her husband; others fish the river as their ancestors did 8,000 years ago; and there are those whose love of stick gambling is vocation enough. A hunting guide clears 100 miles of trails and guides her pack of horses from a motorboat as they swim across a wide river to prepare for a season of 14-hour tourist-driven days of hunting.

The astounding images and the stories of the people who live within them are enhanced by Koneline’s evocative electronic score by Jesse Zubot and Hildegard Westerkamp, whose fingerprints seem to be all over the soundtrack. Known for her work as a founding member of R. Murray Schaefer’s World Soundscape Project, soundwalking -- her own environmental listening events -- and her considerable contribution to several films of Gus Van Sant, Westerkamp is able to contextualize an individual within his surroundings using an uncanny blend of natural and electronic sounds. At one point the sound of ice pellets and the wind merge into a melodious hybrid; sometimes we seem to be listening to a concerto for wind. At others, the soundtrack varies from wariness and apprehension to inspiration, intensifying Wild’s narrative.

Koneline [Kóh - nah - lee - nah] won the Best Feature Documentary Award at the 2016  Hot Docs Canadian and International Film Festival.

Koneline: our land beautiful begins a limited week-long engagement June 10 at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema.

Recently several colleagues had urged me not to miss Tapestry Opera’s world premiere production of Rocking Horse Winner. This co-commission with Scottish Opera had been playing since the end of May and I was interested to see how the spare narrative of D.H. Lawrence’s short story, required reading in high school literature classes of my generation, would be translated to the operatic medium.

Perfectly sized for the Berkeley Street Theatre, the production by Tapestry’s artistic director Michael Hidetoshi Mori was skillfully paced, permitting the cast of eight to fill the intimate space. Music director Jordan de Souza led an accomplished string quartet plus piano in Gareth Williams’ sparse score which provided ongoing commentary comfortably suited to the shifting moods of the hour-long drama.

Traditional wisdom says that English is one of the hardest languages to sing clearly. This was not the case on Saturday evening, June 4. From soprano Carla Huhtanen’s first tentative lines in the role of Ava, the deceptively simple, poetic libretto by Anna Chatterton rang out distinctly, even in the quietest moments, easily inviting the audience into the drama from the outset. In the challenging role of Paul, Ava’s young son, tenor Asitha Tennekoon captured the right tone and physicality to convey the obsessed yet endearingly damaged boy who uncannily predicts horse race winners. His scenes with his mother, also a broken victim, were particularly moving. Completing the cast were tenor Keith Klassen as Paul’s greedy Uncle Oscar and baritone Peter McGillivray as Bassett, Paul’s equally mercenary caregiver. As Paul’s major male influences, both presented contrasting portraits of avaricious protectors who were out for themselves while still professing to care for their young charge. A unique feature of this work is the four-member chorus which embodies the spirit voices of the stifling house. Tenor Sean Clark, baritone Aaron Durand, mezzo-soprano Erica Iris, and soprano Elaina Moreau, fashioned an atmosphere at once terrifyingly believable and haunting.

Camellia Koo’s two-level set ushered us into a cozily domestic but claustrophobic home with the upper part reserved for Paul’s cramped bedroom with its eerily over-sized rocking horse. This platform also served well as the race track where Oscar, Bassett and Paul excitedly cheered on the winners (and losers) of the horse races.

Overall, this was a compelling theatrical experience and can easily rest alongside Tapestry Opera’s other successes such as Nigredo Hotel, Sanctuary Song, Iron Road and M’dea Undone. The company continues to grow in stature as an alternative source for new opera of the highest quality.

Daniel Cross, the writer and director of the lively new documentary, I Am the Blues, believes that the blues is the root of all music. “It’s about the first-person lived experience,” he said after the film had its Canadian premiere at the recent Hot Docs film festival. At 18, he had his own experience with bluesmen when he went on a vodka run at a blues festival on the West Coast and returned with his bounty and was welcomed with open arms by a number of legendary musicians.

Now, more than three decades later, his mission to record the last of the original blues devils still working the Chitlin’ Circuit has born fruit with this joyful testament. The film is a musical journey through the swamps of the Louisiana Bayou, the juke joints of the Mississippi Delta and the moonshine-soaked BBQs in the North Mississippi Hill Country. Several octogenarians act as guides on the journey, telling the stories behind the songs and jamming on a front porch. Bobby Rush, 80ish, gets his inspiration these days while driving his car on the back roads; at seven, while he was picking cotton, he passed the time imagining himself on stage with Muddy Waters or Cab Calloway. In Chicago in the 1950s, he played behind a curtain -- white customers didn’t want to see the faces of black musicians.

Lil’ Buck Sinegal, the “Master of the Stratocaster,” plays an electric blues riff as a crawfish boil is cooking. “The blues made me and I’m making blues now,” he says before talking shop with Blues Hall of Fame member and master of the harmonica, Lazy Lester, while picking crawfish out of the bowl. Barbara Lynn, a youngster in her mid-70s joins Bobby Rush and Lester in an impromptu Stagger Lee that jumps with life. There’s a memorable moment with L.C. Ulmer just months before his death. Soul blues diva Carol Fran shows her stuff. Making music nourishes their spirit.

Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, the proud owner and operator of the legendary Blue Front Cafe, the centre of musical life in Bentonia, Mississippi, has carried on the business his parents opened the year after he was born in 1948. Bud Spires, another mouth harp virtuoso learned from his father from the age of five. That is how the blues survived.  I Am the Blues wonders if the tradition can regenerate, even as the film presents a great case for those who carry it on and Skip James, Bentonia’s most famous son, belts out Crow Jane as the credits roll.

I Am the Blues plays a limited engagement at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, June 3 to 9. Held over at the Bloor, it expands to Cineplex Canada Square and the Kingsway Theatre beginning June 10.