For nearly 50 years, George Clinton has taken his brand of groundbreaking funk basically wherever a Mothership can fly.

An opera house was a new twist, however.

Symphonic PFunk: Celebrating the Music of Parliament–Funkadelic was staged Saturday night, Jan. 31 at the Detroit Opera House, in the city where Clinton recorded the bulk of his classic catalog during the late ’60s and ’70s.

You can see the full set list and dozens of photos from the show below.

Read More: How George Clinton Re-Booted P-Funk With ‘Computer Games’

The concept was in the title – P-Funk’s enduring favorites, and some nice deep digs, recreated by the band with arrangements for the 14 songs by Dancing With the Stars‘ Ray Chew, who also conducted the Detroit Opera Orchestra during the two-part, hour-and-45-minute concert.

Suffice to say that Cosi fan tutte it was not — and while the assemblage on stage (which included guests Vernon Reid of Living Colour, Nona Hendryx and Rahsaan Patterson) looked positively operatic, you’d be hard-pressed to name an opera that has an audience standing, dancing, arm-waving and whooping for most of the night.

That’s just the way it should be, of course, and while the orchestrations were subsumed beneath the amplified power of the current P-Funk band there was still a discernible richness and extra layer of musical muscle that occasionally cut through the mix.

The 84-year-old Clinton spent more than half of the show on stage himself, dapper in a suit and fedora and energetic as he prowled around the stage, vamping with Chew and the Brides of Funkenstein backing vocal trio (including Sheila Brody Amuka in a tall Brides wig and glittering bikini). He spent some time seated, but still animated, in a swivel chair, visibly reveling in this kind of presentation of his music.

“This was always my dream, to carry on to that point of respectability and to always try to prove that we were worthy of that,” Clinton told UCR prior to the concert. “All this music needs to be classical, orchestrated and cataloged, curated for the next 100 years. I think we did our part in creating something that lives up to that. The musicians we’ve had over the years were all classic musicians. They put a lot of work into it. They made the music worthy of being historical.”

Symphonic PFunk was the brainchild of Chew’s wife Vivian Chew, whose New York-based Chew Entertainment works with Clinton on a variety of projects — including a planned July launch of a new Mothership to celebrate its 50th anniversary (the original resides in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.).

“This is really an ode and tribute to the vast catalog that George and P-Funk have created,” she explained. It’s a show they hope to maintain; representatives of other venues, including the Hollywood Bowl, were in Detroit to check it out.

“The idea’s wonderful,” notes Ray Chew, “bringing the music of George Clinton, Parliament, Funkadelic to a wider audience.” In creating the arrangements, Chew says he wanted “to be true to the music and be authentic to what it is. We’re not inventing any new notes; there are plenty of notes already there that are exactly what the (composer) wanted. That we’re able to produce this music with an orchestra, that widens the appeal, widens the vocabulary.”

Accompanied by a variety of visuals, including an animated Mothership landing, “Symphonic PFunk” focused primarily on the Funkadelic side of Clinton’s catalog.

The night was heavy with the hits, including “Mothership Connection (Star Child)” with Hendryx, a “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)” that lived up to its name and a “Cosmic Slop” that featured Reid. P-Funk mainstay guitarist Michael Hampton shredded on “Maggot Brain” and “Alice in My Fantasies,” while alumni Sheila Horn, Paul Hill and drummer Gabe Gonzales piled on for “Red Hot Mama.”

P-Funk aficionados were certainly happy to also hear the likes of “Standing on the Verge of Getting It On” and “(Not Just) Knee Deep.”

And the whole company finished the night with a joyous medley of “One Nation Under a Groove” and Parliament’s “Flash Light,” as well as an off-the-hook encore of “Atomic Dog” that featured a dance team from the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, which danced through the Opera House aisles on its way to the stage.

Clinton, for his part, plans to keep barking. In addition to the upcoming Mothership shows and more Symphonic PFunk, he promised to Billboard recently that, “I’ve definitely got some fresh funk coming in and out of that, very soon, very interesting stuff.”

And to UCR he added, “Y’know, this is my life. This is what I live for. I’m gonna keep doing it, man, until I can’t — and I hope that won’t be for awhile, y’know?”

January 31, 2026 ‘Symphonic PFunk’ Set List: 

1. “P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)
2. “Standing on the Verge of Getting It On”
3. “(Not Just) Knee Deep”
4. “(I Wanna) Testify”
5. “Aqua Boogie ( A Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop)” (with Rahsaan Patterson)
6. “Mothership Connection (Star Child)” (with Nona Hendryx)
7. “Alice in My Fantasies” (with Vernon Reid)
8. “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)”
9. “Cosmic Slop” (with Vernon Reid)
10. “Red Hot Mama” (with Vernon Reid, Nona Hendryx and  P-Funk alumni Sheila Horn, Paul Hill, Gabe Gonzales)
11. “Maggot Brain”
12. “One Nation Under a Groove”/”Flash Light” (with Rahsaan Patterson, Nona Hendryx, Vernon Reid)
13. “Atomic Dog” (full company)