“This is a surreal experience!” That’s no understatement, coming from a man named Dweezil.

Frank Zappa’s 36-year-old son was clearly touched as he surveyed his extended New York family at the Beacon Theatre on Monday night. It was a reunion more than 10 years in the making, and well deserving of the standing ovation.

The journey for artists who wish to follow in their fathers’ footsteps can be harrowing. Despite his death from prostate cancer in 1993 at 52, Frank Zappa produced a catalog of more than 60 albums, with styles ranging from 1950s doo-wop and rock ‘n’ roll to big-band jazz and contemporary classical music. Dweezil Zappa had to refine his guitar playing for years in order to do this tour, trading in his Eddie Van Halen licks and re-connecting with his father’s far-reaching and sometimes overburdening legacy.

Backed by an enthusiastic eight-piece ensemble fronted by the saxophonist and vocalist Napoleon Murphy Brocke – a member of Zappa’s band from 1973 to 1976 – Dweezil tore through some classics from his father’s seminal 1960s albums, “Freak Out!” and “We’re Only in It for the Money.” Zappa archivist and drummer Joe Travers was the engine behind an extremely tight and well-rehearsed ensemble, having just come off the European leg of the tour. The lyrics to “Hungry Freaks,” “Daddy,” and “Trouble Every Day” never sounded more contemporary, and Brocke’s mugging and dancing were the perfect accompaniment.

Dweezil then moved on to some of his father’s more challenging material from the 1970s. The band reproduced nearly the entire “Roxy and Elsewhere” album from 1974 with note-perfect execution. The complex, Stravinsky-like meter changes and odd note groupings of “Echidnas Arf (Of You)” flowed almost as effortlessly as in the original version. But it was during Dweezil’s guitar solos, particularly in “Inca Roads,” that the son most successfully infused his own voice into that of his father’s, making it an evening of interpretation and exploration rather than mere reproduction.

The audience, comprised of teenage fans and veteran Zappa admirers alike, came prepared for anything. Young and old belted out the lyrics with abandon. And people literally jumped at the chance to participate in a reggae version of the instrumental “King Kong”: Dweezil con ducted both the audience and the band in much the same way his father did, using hand signals and gestures as cues.

The highlight of the evening came when guest drummer Terry Bozzio and guitarist Steve Vai, both Zappa alumni, took the stage to help perform “The Black Page,” parts I and II. Originally written as a drum solo much in the style of Zappa’s favorite composer, Edgard Varese (specifically the piece “Ionization”), “The Black Page” Part I is a virtuosic study for percussionist and audience alike. The fact that Zappa set this incredibly complex piece to a disco beat and wrote a melody for it in Part II highlights the two questions he wrestled with throughout much of his career: Should art be entertaining, and, more important, can entertainment be art?

In Zappa’s universe, the answer to both is a resounding “yes.” Songs like “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” or “St. Alphonso’s Pancake Breakfast” might appeal more to serious music fans were their titles more conservative. But they wouldn’t be half as fun.

Dweezil will continue to follow in his father’s footsteps when he resurrects the ultimate Zappa tradition: a Halloween concert at the theater in Madison Square Garden. In the words of Suzy Creamcheese, Frank’s ubergroupie: “Wowie Zowie!”