John Zorn
Encyclopedia
John Zorn is an American avant-garde
composer
, arranger
, record producer
, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer. He's had experience with a variety of genres including jazz
, rock, hardcore punk, classical, extreme metal, klezmer, film, cartoon, popular, and improvised music. Zorn brings these styles to his work, which he refers to with the label avant-garde
/experimental
.
Zorn has stated that, "All the various styles are organically connected to one another. I'm an additive person - the entire storehouse of my knowledge informs everything I do. People are so obsessed with the surface that they can't see the connections, but they are there."
Zorn has led the punk jazz
band Naked City
, led the klezmer
-influenced quartet Masada
and composed 'Masada Songbooks' (written concert music for classical ensembles), and has produced music for film and documentary.
Zorn established himself within the New York City downtown music
movement in the mid 1970s and has since composed and performed with a wide range of musicians working in diverse musical areas. By the early 1990s Zorn was working extensively in Japan, attracted by that culture's openness about borrowing and remixing ingredients from elsewhere, where he performed and recorded under the name Dekoboko Hajime, before returning to New York as a permanent base in the mid-1990s. Zorn has undertaken many tours of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, often performing at festivals with varying ensembles to display his diverse output.
After releasing albums on several independent
US and European labels, Zorn signed with Elektra Nonesuch
and attracted wide acclaim in 1985 when he released The Big Gundown
, a cover of music composed by Ennio Morricone
. He attracted further attention when worldwide by following this with the release of Spillane
in 1987, and Naked City
by Naked City
in 1989. Zorn then recorded on the Japanese DIW
label and curated the Avant
subsidiary label before forming Tzadik
in 1995, where he was then prolific in issuing several new recordings each year as well as releasing the work of many other musicians.
, guitar
and flute
as a child. He grew up in a household full of a broad spectrum of sound: his mother listened to classical
and world music
, his father to jazz
, French chansons, and country music
, and his older brother to doo-wop
, and 1950s rock and roll
. Zorn recalled an episode of his life, after buying a record by Mauricio Kagel
in 1968 at the age of fifteen, that influenced his subsequent taste for experimental
and avant-garde music
:
Zorn spent time in his teenage years listening to classical music, film music, and, "listening to the Doors and playing bass in a surf band
." He taught himself about orchestration
and counterpoint
, by transcribing scores and using in his own compositions, a procedure of "plagiarizing, stealing, quoting, or whatever you can call it", of collage and transposition into his own world, that he has been using throughout his career. He also studied music under Leonardo Balada
.
Zorn picked up the saxophone after discovering Anthony Braxton
's album For Alto
(1969) while studying composition at Webster College (now Webster University
) in St. Louis, Missouri
, where he attended classes taught by Oliver Lake
. While still at Webster
, Zorn incorporated elements of free jazz
, avant-garde
and experimental music
, film scores, performance art
and the cartoon
scores of Carl Stalling
into his first recordings which were later released as First Recordings 1973
(1995).
Zorn dropped out of college. Following a stint on the West Coast, Zorn moved to Manhattan
. There he gave concerts in his apartment and other small NY venues, playing saxophone and a variety of reeds, duck call
s, tapes, and other instruments. He founded a performance art
project called Theatre of Musical Optics, in 1975 and became a major participant in the fertile, avant-garde, downtown music scene as a composer
, performer and producer
of music that challenged the confines of any single musical genre. Zorn later used the term 'Theatre of Musical Optics' for the publishing company of his compositions.
(1976), Dominoes (1977), Curling (1977), Golf (1977), Hockey
(1978), Cricket (1978), Fencing (1978), Pool
(1979), and Archery
(1979) which was recorded at Martin Bisi
's studio. His most enduring "game piece" is Cobra
(1984) which he first released on album in 1987
and in subsequent versions in 1992
, 1994
and 2002
, and has revisited in performance many times. Zorn addresses both his own history and the musical philosophy behind his early works in the book Talking Music by William Duckworth.
In 1981, Zorn was "blowing duck calls in buckets of water at fringe venues," which included 8BC
, Roulette, Chandelier, and Zorn's own clubhouse, the Saint. Zorn's first solo saxophone (and duck call) recordings were originally released in two volumes as The Classic Guide to Strategy
in 1983 and 1986 on the Lumina label. Zorn's early small group improvisations are documented on Locus Solus
(1983) which featured Zorn with various combinations of other improvisers including Christian Marclay
, Arto Lindsay
, Wayne Horvitz
, Ikue Mori
, and Anton Fier
. Ganryu Island
featured a series of duets by Zorn with Satoh Michihiro on shamisen
, which received limited release on the Yukon label in 1984. Zorn has subsequently released these recordings as CDs on Tzadik making them more widely available than the original vinyl pressings.
: John Zorn Plays the Music of Ennio Morricone
, where Zorn offered radical arrangement
s of the Roman composer's themes from movie
s including The Big Gundown
(1966), Once Upon a Time in the West
(1968), A Fistful of Dynamite
(1971), and Once Upon a Time in America
(1984). The Big Gundown was endorsed by Morricone who is quoted as saying "This is a record that has fresh, good and intelligent ideas. It is realization on a high level, a work done by a maestro with great science-fantasy and creativity... Many people have done versions of my pieces, but no one has done them like this". Zorn's versions of Morricone's compositions incorporated elements of traditional Japanese music, soul jazz
, and other diverse musical genres. Zorn's 15th Anniversary re-release of the album featured additional explorations of Morricone's work.
He first released the composition 'Godard', a tribute to French film-maker Jean-Luc Godard
whose jump-cut technique inspired Zorn's compositional approach, on the French tribute album
The Godard Fans: Godard Ca Vous Chante? in 1986. Zorn followed this with his second major-label release Spillane
in 1987 composed of three different tribute
compositions. The title track featured text by Arto Lindsay set to an array of sonic film noir
references, 'Two-Lane Highway' a blues-based form to highlight the guitar of Albert Collins
and 'Forbidden Fruit', Zorn's tribute to a Japanese film star, performed by the Kronos Quartet
. Further exploration of film noir
themes were recorded for radio plays and released by Zorn as The Bribe
: variations and extensions on Spillane (1998). 'Godard' and 'Spillane' were re-released as a single CD, Godard/Spillane
, on Tzadik
in 1999.
These pieces are described by Zorn as "file-card compositions", a method of combining composition and improvisation in which Zorn would write down a description of what he wanted on file-cards and arrange them to form the piece. Zorn described the process in 2003. "I write in moments, in disparate sound blocks, so I find it convenient to store these events on filing cards so they can be sorted and ordered with minimum effort. Pacing is essential. If you move too fast, people tend to stop hearing the individual moments as complete in themselves and more as elements of a sort of cloud effect... I worked 10 to 12 hours a day for a week, just orchestrating these file cards. It was an intense process - one I don't want to go through again."
Zorn's "file-card" method of organizing sound blocks into an overall structure largely depended on the musicians he chose, the way they interpreted what was written on the file cards, and their relationship with Zorn. "I'm not going to sit in some ivory tower and pass my scores down to the players." said Zorn, "I have to be there with them, and that's why I started playing saxophone, so that I could meet musicians. I still feel that I have to earn a player's trust before they can play my music. At the end of the day, I want players to say: this was fun - it was a lot of fucking work, and it's one of the hardest things I've ever done, but it was worth the effort."
composers which highlighted his saxophone style. These included Voodoo
(1986) by The Sonny Clark
Memorial Quartet, with Wayne Horvitz
, Ray Drummond
and Bobby Previte
and Spy vs Spy
(1989) featuring hardcore punk
-informed interpretations of Ornette Coleman
's music performed by Zorn and Tim Berne
on saxophones, Mark Dresser
on bass and Joey Baron
and Michael Vatcher on drums. News for Lulu
(1988) and More News for Lulu
(1992) featured Zorn, Bill Frisell
and George Lewis
performing compositions by Kenny Dorham
, Sonny Clark
, Freddie Redd
, and Hank Mobley
. He performed on two recordings by organist Big John Patton
- Blue Planet Man
(1993) and Minor Swing (1995) and contributed to the Sax Legends series (later re-released as The Colossal Saxophone Sessions) in 1993 with a version of Wayne Shorter
's composition "Devil's Island" alongside Lee Konitz
, who Zorn has described as "one of my all-time heroes".
While Zorn is often considered a jazz musician his schema is considerably broader. He stated "The term 'jazz', per se, is meaningless to me in a certain way. Musicians don’t think in terms of boxes. I know what jazz music is. I studied it. I love it. But when I sit down and make music, a lot of things come together. And sometimes it falls a little bit toward the classical side, sometimes it falls a little bit towards the jazz, sometimes it falls toward rock, sometimes it doesn’t fall anywhere, it's just floating in limbo. But no matter which way it falls, it's always a little bit of a freak. It doesn’t really belong anywhere. It's something unique, it's something different, it's something out of my heart. It's not connected with those traditions." "But the music is not jazz music, it’s not classical music, it’s not rock music. It’s a new kind of music... So I feel like that created a deep misunderstanding in what this music is. People started judging this new music with the standards of jazz, with the definitions of what jazz is and isn’t, because stories about it appeared in jazz magazines. And now I’ll do a gig at the Marciac Jazz Festival and I’ll get offstage and Wynton Marsalis
will say, “That’s not jazz.” And I’ll say, “You’re right! But this is the only gig I’ve got, man. Give me another festival and I’ll play there.”"
, underground film
s, television advertisement
s and cartoons
which are documented in the Filmworks albums on the Tzadik
label. Some of these film score
s are jazz-influenced, others classical, and most feature ensembles consisting of rotating combinations of downtown music
ians. Zorn has often used his cinematic and television commissions to experiment with line-ups and forms that would become more established parts of his musical canon.
Zorn stated that "After my record The Big Gundown came out I was convinced that a lot of soundtrack work was going to be coming my way". While Hollywood acclaim was not forthcoming he attracted the attention of many independent film
makers. The first director to commission him was Rob Schwebber for the 1986 short White and Lazy followed by his work for Sheila McLaughlin's film, She Must Be Seeing Things (1986). In 1990, he composed the soundtrack for the Raul Ruiz film The Golden Boat. All these soundtracks appeared on Filmworks 1986-1990
along with a sixty-four second interpretation of the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
which featured future members of Naked City
.
Zorn's second Filmworks release documented his Music for an Untitled Film by
Walter Hill (1996) which was composed for the film Trespass (1992) but replaced by a score by Ry Cooder
.
Filmworks III: 1990-1995
(1997) featured the first recordings by the Masada
lineup for Joe Chappelle's Thieves Quartet (1993) along with early drafts for the Cynical Hysterie Hour
project, duets with Marc Ribot
which featured in Mei-Juin Chen's Hollywood Hotel (1994), and a series of commercial
soundtracks for the advertising firm Weiden and Kennedy, including one directed by Jean-Luc Godard
- a long-term Zorn inspiration. Filmworks IV: S&M + More
(1997) and Filmworks V: Tears of Ecstasy
(1996) both included music written for films dealing with BDSM
. Filmworks VI: 1996
contains the soundtracks to three underground films produced in 1996; Dina Waxman's Anton, Mailman, Henry Hills' Mechanics of the Brain, and Maria Beatty
's The Black Glove.
Filmworks VII: Cynical Hysterie Hour
re-released the themes that Zorn produced for a Japanese cartoon which had only been previously available in limited release in Japan. Zorn regained the rights to these recordings by trading a booking at The Knitting Factory to Sony
executives. Filmworks VIII: 1997
features music for the documentary Port Of Last Resort (1998), which detailed the experiences of Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai during the years preceding World War II
, and the soundtrack to the underground film Latin Boys Go to Hell (1997).
Zorn's next soundtrack work did not appear until 2000 with Filmworks IX:
Trembling Before G-d
featuring music for an award winning documentary about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews trying to reconcile their sexuality with their faith directed by Sandi Simcha DuBowski
. The following year Filmworks X:
In the Mirror of Maya Deren
(2001) featured music for a documentary on the life and work of underground film
aker Maya Deren
.
The year 2002 was a very productive one for Zorn's cinematic scores. Filmworks XI: Secret Lives
(2002) featured the Masada String Trio performing music for Aviva Slesin
's documentary film on Jewish children hidden from the Nazis. Filmworks XII
(2002) features music for three documentaries; Homecoming: Celebrating Twenty Years of Dance at PS 122
, Shaolin Ulysses, a film about Shaolin Monks in America, and variations on the theme for Family Found, a documentary on outsider artist Morton Bartlett
. Zorn released his third soundtrack collection of 2002 with Filmworks XIII: Invitation to a Suicide
, written for a black comedy
about a man selling tickets to his own suicide to save his father's life.
Zorns next two Filmworks releases featured in documentaries examining Jewish identity and antisemitism. Filmworks XIV:
Hiding and Seeking
(2003) provided the soundtrack a documentary about an Orthodox Jewish father attempting to alert his sons of the dangers of creating barriers between themselves and those outside their faith. Filmworks XV:
Protocols of Zion
(2005) featured music for a documentary about a resurgence of antisemitism in the United States in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
Filmworks XVI: Workingman's Death
(2005) presented themes for a documentary portraying hazardous employment undertaken in the Ukraine, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and China.
Filmworks XVII
(2006) featured music for Martina Kudlacek's documentary Notes on Marie Menken
intertwined with Zorn's percussive score for Beth Cataldo's portrait Ray Bandar
: A Life with Skulls. Filmworks XVIII: The Treatment
(2006) featured music for Oren Rudavsky
's romantic comedy
based on the tango music
of Astor Piazolla.
Filmworks XIX: The Rain Horse
(2008) was written for an animated children's short film by Russian director Dimitri Gellar. Also released in 2008 were Filmworks XX: Sholem Aleichem
containing music for a documentary on the Jewish writer Sholem Aleichem, Filmworks XXI: Belle de Nature/The New Rijksmuseum
featuring soundtracks for another of Maria Beatty's films and a documentary on the restoration of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, and Filmworks XXII: The Last Supper
.
in 1988 as a 'compositional workshop' to test the limitations of a rock band
format. Featuring Zorn on saxophone, Bill Frisell
(guitars), Fred Frith
(bass), Wayne Horvitz
(keyboards), Joey Baron
(drums), and occasional vocals from Yamatsuka Eye, Bob Dorough
, and later Mike Patton
, Naked City
incorporated Zorn's appreciation of hardcore bands like Agnostic Front
and grindcore bands like Napalm Death
with his other influences and experimented with compositional form and cover version
s.
Named after a 1945 book of graphic black and white photographs by Weegee
the band performed an aggressive mix of "soundtrack
themes, blues
y hard bop
, speedy hardcore
rock
, squealing free jazz
[and] metallic
funk
". Zorn has stated that "Naked City started with rhythm and blues/Spillane type things then went into this hard-core thing... because I was living in Japan and experiencing a lot of alienation and rejection... My interest in hard-core also spurred the urge to write shorter and shorter pieces."
Naked City followed the release of their self-titled album
with Torture Garden
a collection of 42 'hardcore miniatures'; intense brief compositions often lasting less than a minute, in 1989. Some of these tracks had featured on Naked City
and others would resurface on the bands next full-length release, Grand Guignol
(1992), which also included performances of works by Claude Debussy
, Alexander Scriabin
, Orlande de Lassus
, Charles Ives
, and Olivier Messiaen
. The band's third album, Heretic
(1992), featured more of these short improvisations produced for the soundtrack of an underground
S/M
film Jeux des Dames Cruelles. The band released a second EP
, Leng Tch'e
, in 1992 featuring a single composition which lasted just over half an hour. Radio
, released in 1993, was the first Naked City album composed solely by Zorn, and featured tracks drawing on a wide range of musical influences including Charles Mingus
, Little Feat
, Ruins, Booker T. and the M.G.'s, Colin Wilson
, Albert King
, Chuck Brown
, Orchestra Baobab, the Accüsed
, the Meters
, Tony Williams' Lifetime
, Anton Webern
, Sammy Cahn
, Frank Sinatra
, Morton Feldman
, Igor Stravinsky
, the Melvins
, Beatmasters
, Septic Death
, Abe Schwartz
, Ivo Papasov, Naftule Brandwein
, Repulsion
, Led Zeppelin
, Bernard Herrmann
, Santana
, Extreme Noise Terror
, Conway Twitty
, Siege
, Ornette Coleman
, Corrosion of Conformity
, Massacre, Quincy Jones
, Sam Fuller, Funkadelic
, Carcass
, Liberace
, Jan Hammer
, Eddie Blackwell
, Charlie Haden
, Mick Harris
, Carole King
, Red Garland
, Boredoms, Jerry Reed
, SPK
and Roger Williams
in addition to Zorn's previously identified touchstone
s. The final recording from the band Absinthe
(1993) featured a blend of ambient
noise styled compositions with tracks titled after the works of Paul Verlaine
, Charles Baudelaire
and other figures in the fin de siècle
Decadent movement
, and a dedication to Olivier Messiaen
. Zorn disbanded Naked City after this release but briefly reformed the band for a European tour in 2003.
Zorn also formed Painkiller
with Bill Laswell
on bass and Mick Harris
on drums in 1991. Painkiller's first two releases Guts of a Virgin
(1991) and Buried Secrets
(1992) also featured short grindcore
and free jazz
inspired compositions. They released their first live album, Rituals: Live in Japan
on the Japanese Toys Factory label in 1993 followed by the double CD Execution Ground
(1994) which featured longer dub
and ambient
styled pieces. A second live album Talisman: Live in Nagoya
was released in 2002 and the band was featured on Zorn's 50th Birthday Celebration Volume 12
(2005) with Hamid Drake
replacing Harris on drums and guest vocalist Mike Patton
.
Both bands attracted worldwide interest, particularly in Japan, where Zorn had relocated following a three-month residency in Tokyo. Zorn collaborated with, and produced, numerous Japanese 'noise' artists including Merzbow
, Otomo Yoshihide, Melt Banana and frequent collaborator Yamatsuka Eye. Many of these artists have now released albums on Tzadik and some regularly travel to New York to perform.
Releases from both bands were criticized for their graphic album covers. The cover of the eponymous album by Naked City
used the Weegee
photograph 'Corpse with Revolver C.A. 1940' which shows a gangland killing
as did their later live album
. Zorn left Electra Nonesuch
after the company's response to the artwork for Naked City's
Grand Guignol
, releasing the remaining Naked City
albums on a Japanese-based label, Avant
. The Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence protested against Zorn because they believed that the images used in the graphic design of Naked City's Torture Garden
and Leng Tch'e
portrayed degrading images of Asian people. To avoid problems, Zorn removed the original albums from retail sale and later replaced the artwork with new packaging titled Black Box
. Painkiller's Guts of a Virgin
EP was banned in the UK after customs seized and destroyed the first shipment for violating the Obscene Publications Act. Execution Ground
was also released with the original cover photograph of a lynching
removed. Zorn later re-released the Naked City and Painkiller albums as box sets with restored artwork after forming his own record label.
Zorn recorded Hemophiliac
in 2002 with Mike Patton
and Ikue Mori
which continued his interest in hardcore improvisations. The first release from this trio was a double CD set which was signed by the performers. Limited to 2,500 copies this album soon became a highly sought after collectors item. The trio also released a live recording as part of Zorn's 50th Birthday Celebration Series.
In 2006 Zorn formed the hardcore voice/bass/drums trio of Mike Patton
, Trevor Dunn
, and Joey Baron
which became known as the Moonchild Trio. That year two albums of Zorn's compositions performed by the trio were released: Moonchild: Songs Without Words
and Astronome
. A third album with the trio, but also featuring Zorn, Ikue Mori
, Jamie Saft
and chorus, Six Litanies for Heliogabalus
, was released in 2007. Their fourth release The Crucible
appeared in 2008.
ians and orchestras. As Zorn's interest in Naked City waned he "started hearing classical music in [his] head again." Zorn began composing the suites Elegy
(1992) (dedicated to Jean Genet
) and Kristallnacht
(1993) both of which drew on chamber music
arrangements of strings, percussion and electronic instruments.
Zorn was quoted in 1998 as saying "Sometimes I get the feeling that people just don't see me as a composer, but it's what I've always been since I was eight years old... I've always thought of myself as a composer, but the world has had a hard time looking at me as a composer because a lot of what I compose is controversial." The establishment of Tzadik allowed Zorn to release many compositions which he had written, over the previous two decades, for classical
ensembles. Zorn's earliest released 'classical' composition (for five flutes), 'Christabel' was written in 1972 and first appeared on Angelus Novus
in 1998. Redbird
(containing new compositions for bass drums and a harp/viola/cello/percussion quartet inspired by Agnes Martin
) and The Book of Heads (35 etude
s for solo guitar written in 1978 for Eugene Chadbourne
and realised by Marc Ribot
) were released in 1995 as part of Tzadik
's Composer Series. Zorn credits the composition of his 1988 piece for string quartet
"Cat O' Nine Tails", commissioned and originally released by the Kronos Quartet
, to awakening him to the possibilities of writing for classical music
ians. This composition was featured on The String Quartets
(1999) and Cartoon S/M
(2000) along with variations on "Kol Nidre", inspired by the Jewish prayer of atonement
which was written at the same time as (but not part of) the first Masada
book. Duras: Duchamp
(1997) consists of two 'tribute' compositions, the first dedicated to Marguerite Duras
has four movements lasting roughly thirty-four minutes influenced by the composition of Oliver Messiaen, the second "69 Paroxyms for Marcel Duchamp
" lasts just over thirteen minutes. Aporias: Requia for Piano and Orchestra
(1998) was Zorn's first full-scale orchestra
l release featuring pianist Stephen Drury
, the Hungarian Radio Children's Choir and the American Composers Orchestra
conducted by Dennis Russell Davies
.
Songs from the Hermetic Theatre
(2001) featured four experimental compositions; "American Magus", was Zorn's first piece of electronic music dedicated to Harry Smith
; "BeuysBlock", a meditation on the work of Joseph Beuys
; "In the Very Eye of Night", a tribute to Maya Deren
; and "The Nerve Key", Zorn's first piece of computer music. Madness, Love and Mysticism
(2001) featured "Le Mômo", inspired by Antonin Artaud
, performed by Stephen Drury
(piano) and Jennifer Choi
(violin); "Untitled", dedicated to Joseph Cornell
, a cello solo for Erik Friedlander
; and "Amour Fou" featuring the trio. Chimeras
(2001) was inspired by Arnold Schoenberg
's atonal composition "Pierrot Lunaire
".
Several of Zorn's later concert works drew inspiration from mysticism and the works of Aleister Crowley
in particular. Magick
(2004) featured the Crowley Quartet on "Necronomicon
: for string quartet" and "Sortilège" written for two bass clarinets. A 2009 performance of "Necronomicon" was described as "...frenetic vortexes of violent, abrasive motion, separated by eerily becalmed, suspenseful sections with moody, even prayerful melodies. The music is sensational and evocative, but never arbitrary; you always sense a guiding hand behind the mayhem". Mysterium
released in 2005 featured "Orphée" performed by a sextet of flute, viola, harp, harpsichord and electronics; "Frammenti Del Sappho" for female chorus; and "Wulpurgisnacht" for string trio. Rituals
(2005) featured Zorn's five movement opera for mezzo soprano and ten instruments composed for the Bayreuth Opera Festival
in 1998. From Silence to Sorcery
(2007) features three compositions; "Goetia" consists of eight variations for solo violin performed by Jennifer Choi
; "Gris-Gris" is composition for thirteen tuned drums performed by William Winant
; and "Shibboleth" is a tribute to Paul Celan
scored for clavichord, strings and percussion.
Zorn's concert works have been performed all over the world and he has received commissions from the New York Philharmonic
and Brooklyn Philharmonic
. When the piece for the Brooklyn Philharmonic was played at New Music America
festival, he wrote in the pamphlet with the music:
John Zorn recorded Kristallnacht
in November 1992, his premiere work of radical
Jewish culture
, featuring a suite
of seven compositions reflecting the infamous Night of Broken Glass in late 1938 where Jews were targets of violence and destruction in Germany and Austria. The experience prompted Zorn to further explore his Jewish heritage and composing using Jewish musical styles. Zorn then set himself the task of writing 100 compositions within a year incorporating klezmer
styles with his already broad musical palette. Within three years, the number of compositions had grown to 200 and became known as the first Masada
book. Zorn explained:
The initial releases featuring this compositional approach were ten albums by Masada
appearing on the Japanese DIW
label from 1994. Masada
(later referred to as 'acoustic' Masada) was an Ornette Coleman
-inspired quartet with Zorn (alto saxophone), Joey Baron
(drums), Dave Douglas
(trumpet), and Greg Cohen
(bass) that performed jazz-styled compositions based on Sephardic scales and rhythms. The original Masada
albums were titled after the first ten letters of the Hebrew Alphabet
– Alef
, Beit
, Gimel
, Dalet
, Hei
, Vav
, Zayin
, Het
, Tet
and Yod
– and contained compositions with Hebrew titles. Further releases by Masada
consisted of live performances of the band recorded in Jerusalem
, Taipei
, Middleheim
, Seville
and in New York at the Knitting Factory
and at Tonic
and as a DVD
, and a double CD of unreleased studio recordings, Sanhedrin 1994-1997
(2005).
The Masada quartet performed at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
in March 2007 for what were billed as their final concerts. Zorn reformed the band as a sextet with Uri Caine
and Cyro Baptista
in 2009 saying:
The Masada Book has been performed by many different ensembles and musicians. The Masada String Trio composed of Greg Cohen (bass), Mark Feldman
(violin), and Erik Friedlander
(cello) regularly performs and records Zorn's Masada pieces. This group, with the addition of Marc Ribot
(guitar), Cyro Baptista (percussion), and Joey Baron (drums) also perform as the Bar Kohkba Sextet
. Electric Masada, the most recent regular Masada ensemble usually features Zorn, Baptista, Baron, and Ribot, along with Trevor Dunn
(bass), Ikue Mori
(electronics), Jamie Saft
(keyboards) and Kenny Wollesen
(drums). A Tenth Anniversary Series of Masada recordings was released by Zorn beginning in 2003. The series featured five albums of Masada themes including Masada Guitars
by Marc Ribot
/Bill Frisell
/Tim Sparks
, Masada Recital
by Mark Feldman
& Sylvie Courvoisier
, Masada Rock
by Rashanim and two albums featuring various artists - Voices in the Wilderness
and The Unknown Masada
.
In 2004, Zorn began composing the second Masada Book, 'The Book of Angels', resulting in an additional 300 compositions. Zorn explained:
He has released several albums of Masada Book Two compositions performed by other artists. Recordings by the Jamie Saft Trio
, Masada String Trio
, Mark Feldman & Sylvie Courvoisier
, Koby Israelite
, The Cracow Klezmer Band
, Uri Caine
, Marc Ribot
, Erik Friedlander
, Secret Chiefs 3
, Bar Kokhba Sextet
, Medeski, Martin and Wood, and the Masada Quintet
have been released in this series. The titles of many Masada Book Two compositions are derived from demonology
and Judeo-Christian
mythology
.
albums. Several Naked City
recordings were released through the Avant label as well as many others on which Zorn featured downtown
musicians including Derek Bailey, Buckethead
, Eugene Chadbourne
, Dave Douglas
, Erik Friedlander
, Wayne Horvitz
, Ikue Mori
, Bobby Previte
, Zeena Parkins
and Marc Ribot
.
In 1995, in co-operation with jazz producer Kazunori Sugiyama, Zorn established the Tzadik
label to ensure availability of his catalogue and promote experimental music
ians. Zorn said that the label is a way to shield from the power of the music industry, with "giant corporations acting like slave masters, like the return of the pharaohs," merging together to get even more powerful like in the Polygram
-Universal
acquisition; and to shield from distribution companies like Tower
, HMV
, and Virgin Megastores, that are destroying "the small mom and pop stores—people that love the music and that’s why they have their store," and from the insidious pollution of the tastes of the masses, "with brainwashing and brain-control. These marketing guys who are at the head of all these companies, they’re really the ones that are spoon-feeding everybody shit."
Zorn is inspired by other artists and different musical styles, particularly those working in improvised music. He has a special attraction to underground artists and musical styles that are extremely loud, wild, or creative. Tzadik has established a diverse catalogue reflecting Zorn's range of musical influences and influence. The Tzadik website describes the label as "...dedicated to releasing the best in avant garde and experimental music, presenting a worldwide community of musician-composers who find it difficult or impossible to release their music through conventional channels".
The label's releases are divided into series:
Tzadik also releases special edition CDs, DVDs, books and T-shirts. Since 1998 the designs of Tzadik releases have been created by graphic artist Heung-Heung "Chippy" Chin.
in 1998. The album, identified as "Music Romance Volume One" portrayed the broad spectrum of Zorn's compositions. Music for Children opened with a polyrhythm
ic etude
for percussion and celeste
, featured three short Naked City
compositions, written at the time of Torture Garden
, performed by Zorn with the Boston-based band Prelapse
, a composition for wind machines and feedback dedicated to Edgard Varèse
, a classical chamber piece for violin, percussion and piano, and ended with a music box-styled lullaby
. The second "Music Romance" album, Taboo & Exile
, was released in 1999 and featured a similar spectrum of broad styles. One of Zorn's most popular albums was the third in the series, The Gift
(2001), which surprised many with its relaxed blend of surf, exotica and world music. Zorn released The Dreamers
in 2008 which is considered to be a sequel to The Gift although not identified as a volume of "Music Romance". 2009 also saw the release of the album O'o
, featuring the same style of music and set of players as the 2008 album.
. He conceptualized the month into several different aspects of his musical output. Zorn's bands performed on the weekends, classical ensembles were featured on Sundays, Zorn performed improvisations with other musicians on Mondays, featured his extended compositions on Tuesdays and a retrospective of game pieces on Wednesdays. Twelve live album
s were released on his 50th Birthday Celebration Series which featured performances by the Masada String Trio
, Milford Graves & John Zorn, Locus Solus
, Electric Masada
, Fred Frith & John Zorn
, Hemophiliac
, Masada
, Susie Ibrarra, Wadada Leo Smith & John Zorn
, John Zorn solo, Yamataka Eye & John Zorn
, Bar Kokhba Sextet
and Painkiller
.
which supports itself solely on donations and the sale of limited edition CDs, giving all door revenues directly to the performers. Zorn holds the title of artistic director and regularly performs 'Improvisation Nights'. On Friday April 13, 2007, Zorn played the final night at Tonic, the Lower East Side
venue where he played regularly for the previous decade, which closed due to financial pressures. On January 10, 2008, Zorn performed with Lou Reed
and Laurie Anderson
at a special benefit night at The Stone which was also released on The Stone: Issue Three
on CD.
On February 4, 2008, Zorn premiered his work for three cellists "777" performed by Fred Sherry
, Erik Friedlander
, and Michael Nicolas at the Guggenheim Museum
. Zorn premiered The Dreamers
with members of Electric Masada on February 29, 2008 at St Anne's Warehouse in Brooklyn. On March 27, 2008, Miller Theater
at Columbia University
in New York City, which has been the venue for several premieres of Zorn's concert works, hosted the first performance of a new composition by John Zorn, "The Prophetic Mysteries of Angels, Witches & Demons". Zorn curated the music for the Aleph-Bet Sound Project, a sound installation
featuring new music by Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Erik Friedlander, David Greenberger, Chris Brown, Z’EV, Terry Riley, Alvin Curran, Christina Kubisch, Marina Rosenfeld
, Raz Mesinai, and Jewlia, at the Contemporary Jewish Museum
from June 4, 2008 to January 8, 2009. Zorn's "Shir Ha-Shirim" premiered in February 2008. The piece is inspired by the Song of Songs
from the old testament
and is performed by an amplified quintet of female singers with female and male narrators performing the "Song of Solomon
". Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson read the texts in English for the February performances. The group returned to New York for performances at the Guggenheim on November 23 and 24, at which Ayelet Rose Gottlieb and Jeremy Fogel recited in Hebrew. These performances at the Guggenheim Museum
in November 2008 featured choreography for paired dancers from the Khmer Arts Ensemble by Sophiline Cheam Shapiro
. The ensemble includes Marc Ribot on guitar, Carol Emanuel on harp, Trevor Dunn bass and the five extraordinary female vocalists. The Daughters of Jerusalem, as they are known for this project are, Lisa Bielawa, Martha Cluver, Abby Fischer, Kathryn Mulvihill and Kirsten Sollek. Photos of February rehearsals. Shir Ha-Shirim was also performed in Milano, Italy on September 24, 2008 and in Paris, France for the Jazz à la Villette event, on Saturday September 5, 2009.
In 2009, American playwright
and avant-garde theatre
pioneer Richard Foreman
directed Astronome: A Night at The Opera based on Zorn's Astronome
(2006).
, Peter Garland
, David Mahler
, Bill Frisell
, Gerry Hemingway
, George Lewis
, Fred Frith
, Eyvind Kang
, Mike Patton
and Elliott Sharp
, on the compositional process. Zorn released the second volume of Arcana: Musicians on Music in the Summer of 2007. According to the preface by Zorn, "This second installment of what will be a continuing series of books presenting radical, cutting-edge ideas about music is made, like the initial volume, out of necessity." The second volume contains essays by more than 30 musicians including Annie Gosfield
, Trey Spruance
, Zeena Parkins
, Steve Coleman
, Marina Rosenfeld
, Carla Kihlstedt
, David Douglas, Bill Laswell
, Trevor Dunn
, and Jewlia Eisenberg
. In October 2008, a third volume of the Arcana series was released containing essays by Wadada Leo Smith
, Frank London
, Greg Cohen
, Sean Lennon
and Jamie Saft
. In Septermber 2009 Volume IV was released, and Volume V is scheduled to be released on July 2010 with subtitle Musicians on Music, Magic & Mysticism.
National Foundation for Jewish Culture
. In 2006 Zorn was named a MacArthur Fellow. In 2007, he was the recipient of Columbia University
's School of the Arts William Schuman
Award, an honor given "to recognize the lifetime achievement of an American composer whose works have been widely performed and generally acknowledged to be of lasting significance."Columbia News (2007) Composer John Zorn Garners William Schuman Award, March 2007 In 2011 Zorn was awarded the Magister Artium Gandensis, an honorary degree from the University of Ghent
.
Zorn has attracted mixed receptions by critics throughout his career stating that "The press has never done anything but ignore and ridicule and marginalize my music—downtown music, because they don't know what to call it." A 1999 NY Times article by Adam Shatz accused Zorn of "attempt[ing] to recast Jewishness as a defiantly marginalized identity -- to claim victim status -- [which] has an air of calculation about it that overpowers his music." Several letters to the Editor from critics and musicians appeared in the following weeks in support of Zorn's artistic merit. In the opinion of Howard Mandel, who has interviewed Zorn numerous times, Zorn has often expressed a reluctance to grant interviews and has requested that journalists not review his performances.
The character of Stephen Colbert
from the TV show The Colbert Report mocked the MacArthur Foundation
's award of the Genius Grant
to Zorn on the September 20, 2006 episode in his segment titled "Who's Not Honoring Me Now". Colbert used a 10-second dissonant excerpt from the 50th Birthday Celebration Series and compared it to his blowing into a saxophone, pleading, "Genius Grant please!" Zorn's comments on the Colbert segment were "It was a hilarious spot."
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, arranger
Orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
, record producer
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer. He's had experience with a variety of genres including jazz
Avant-garde jazz
Avant-garde jazz is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. Avant-jazz often sounds very similar to free jazz, but differs in that, despite its distinct departure from traditional harmony, it has a predetermined structure over which ...
, rock, hardcore punk, classical, extreme metal, klezmer, film, cartoon, popular, and improvised music. Zorn brings these styles to his work, which he refers to with the label avant-garde
Avant-garde music
Avant-garde music is a term used to characterize music which is thought to be ahead of its time, i.e. containing innovative elements or fusing different genres....
/experimental
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
.
Zorn has stated that, "All the various styles are organically connected to one another. I'm an additive person - the entire storehouse of my knowledge informs everything I do. People are so obsessed with the surface that they can't see the connections, but they are there."
Zorn has led the punk jazz
Punk jazz
Punk jazz describes the amalgamation of elements of the jazz tradition with the instrumentation or conceptual heritage of punk rock...
band Naked City
Naked City (band)
Naked City was an avant-garde music group led by saxophonist and composer John Zorn. Active primarily in New York City from 1988 to 1993, Naked City was initiated by Zorn as a "composition workshop" to test the limits of composition in a traditional rock band lineup...
, led the klezmer
Klezmer
Klezmer is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations...
-influenced quartet Masada
Masada (band)
Masada is a musical group with rotating personnel led by American saxophonist and composer John Zorn since the early 1990s.Masada is as much a "songbook" as a group, comprising more than 500 relatively brief compositions...
and composed 'Masada Songbooks' (written concert music for classical ensembles), and has produced music for film and documentary.
Zorn established himself within the New York City downtown music
Downtown music
Downtown music is a subdivision of American music, closely related to experimental music. The scene the term describes began in 1960, when Yoko Ono—one of the Fluxus artists, at that time still seven years away from meeting John Lennon—opened her loft at 112 Chambers Street to be used...
movement in the mid 1970s and has since composed and performed with a wide range of musicians working in diverse musical areas. By the early 1990s Zorn was working extensively in Japan, attracted by that culture's openness about borrowing and remixing ingredients from elsewhere, where he performed and recorded under the name Dekoboko Hajime, before returning to New York as a permanent base in the mid-1990s. Zorn has undertaken many tours of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, often performing at festivals with varying ensembles to display his diverse output.
After releasing albums on several independent
Independent record label
An independent record label is a record label operating without the funding of or outside the organizations of the major record labels. A great number of bands and musical acts begin on independent labels.-Overview:...
US and European labels, Zorn signed with Elektra Nonesuch
Nonesuch Records
Nonesuch Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed by Warner Bros. Records.-Company history:Nonesuch was founded in 1964 by Jac Holzman to produce "fine records at the same price as a trade paperback", which would be half the price of a normal LP...
and attracted wide acclaim in 1985 when he released The Big Gundown
The Big Gundown (album)
The Big Gundown is an album by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn. It comprises radically reworked covers of tracks by the Italian film composer Ennio Morricone....
, a cover of music composed by Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone, Grand Officer OMRI, , is an Italian composer and conductor, who wrote music to more than 500 motion pictures and television series, in a career lasting over 50 years. His scores have been included in over 20 award-winning films as well as several symphonic and choral pieces...
. He attracted further attention when worldwide by following this with the release of Spillane
Spillane (album)
Spillane is an album by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn, composed of three file-card pieces, as well as a work for voice, string quartet and turntables...
in 1987, and Naked City
Naked City (album)
Naked City is an album released on Nonesuch Records in 1990 by John Zorn, featuring the band of the same name. The album was also released as part of Naked City: The Complete Studio Recordings on Tzadik Records in 2005....
by Naked City
Naked City (band)
Naked City was an avant-garde music group led by saxophonist and composer John Zorn. Active primarily in New York City from 1988 to 1993, Naked City was initiated by Zorn as a "composition workshop" to test the limits of composition in a traditional rock band lineup...
in 1989. Zorn then recorded on the Japanese DIW
DIW Records
DIW Records is a Japanese record label. It is a subsidiary label of Disc Union and specializes in jazz and avant garde music. Kazunori Sugiyama was an executive producer for the label before starting Tzadik Records with John Zorn.-Discography:...
label and curated the Avant
Avant Records
Avant Records was a record label based in Japan specializing in avant-garde and experimental music. The label was started by composer and saxophonist John Zorn in 1992, as an offshoot of the DIW label...
subsidiary label before forming Tzadik
Tzadik Records
Tzadik Records is a record label based in New York City specialising in avant-garde and experimental music. The label was established by the eclectic composer and saxophonist John Zorn in 1995; Zorn is the executive producer of all Tzadik releases...
in 1995, where he was then prolific in issuing several new recordings each year as well as releasing the work of many other musicians.
Early life
John Zorn was born in New York City and learned pianoPiano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
, guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
and flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
as a child. He grew up in a household full of a broad spectrum of sound: his mother listened to classical
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
and world music
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
, his father to jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, French chansons, and country music
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
, and his older brother to doo-wop
Doo-wop
The name Doo-wop is given to a style of vocal-based rhythm and blues music that developed in African American communities in the 1940s and achieved mainstream popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s. It emerged from New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, Newark, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and...
, and 1950s rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
. Zorn recalled an episode of his life, after buying a record by Mauricio Kagel
Mauricio Kagel
Mauricio Kagel was a German-Argentine composer. He was notable for his interest in developing the theatrical side of musical performance .-Biography:...
in 1968 at the age of fifteen, that influenced his subsequent taste for experimental
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
and avant-garde music
Avant-garde music
Avant-garde music is a term used to characterize music which is thought to be ahead of its time, i.e. containing innovative elements or fusing different genres....
:
Here we are: Kagel, "Improvisation Ajoutée." I bought this when I was about 15. Still marked: got it at Sam Goody in September, for 98 cents. And it's a really crazy piece, with the guys screaming and hooting, something that attracted me. I was over at my friend's house, and he really liked the Rolling Stones. And I just got this record, and I put it on and he looked at me like... who the hell are you? Are you out of your mind? And his mother was there, and she was like [puts palm on cheek] my God, take this off... and right then and there, I decided: this was the music.
Zorn spent time in his teenage years listening to classical music, film music, and, "listening to the Doors and playing bass in a surf band
Surf music
Surf music is a genre of popular music associated with surf culture, particularly as found in Orange County and other areas of Southern California. It was particularly popular between 1961 and 1965, has subsequently been revived and was highly influential on subsequent rock music...
." He taught himself about orchestration
Orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
and counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
, by transcribing scores and using in his own compositions, a procedure of "plagiarizing, stealing, quoting, or whatever you can call it", of collage and transposition into his own world, that he has been using throughout his career. He also studied music under Leonardo Balada
Leonardo Balada
Leonardo Balada , is a Catalan American composer, now teaching and composing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.-Life:...
.
Zorn picked up the saxophone after discovering Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, pianist, and philosopher. Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s...
's album For Alto
For Alto
For Alto is a jazz double-LP by composer/multi-reedist Anthony Braxton. Delmark Records released the double-album in 1970. The tracks on this album are performed by Braxton on alto saxophone, with no additional instrumentation or musicians and no overdubbing.The Penguin Guide to Jazz gives For...
(1969) while studying composition at Webster College (now Webster University
Webster University
Webster University is an American non-profit private university with its main campus in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. Webster University is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission and is a member of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools...
) in St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
, where he attended classes taught by Oliver Lake
Oliver Lake
Oliver Lake is an American jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer and poet. He is known mainly on alto saxophone but also performs on soprano saxophone and flute....
. While still at Webster
Webster University
Webster University is an American non-profit private university with its main campus in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. Webster University is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission and is a member of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools...
, Zorn incorporated elements of free jazz
Free jazz
Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...
, avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
and experimental music
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
, film scores, performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
and the cartoon
Cartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
scores of Carl Stalling
Carl Stalling
Carl W. Stalling was an American composer and arranger for music in animated films. He is most closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts produced by Warner Bros., where he averaged one complete score each week, for 22 years.-Biography:Stalling was born to Ernest and...
into his first recordings which were later released as First Recordings 1973
First Recordings 1973
-Track listing:# "Mikhail Zoetrope" : Act I - 22:13# "Mikhail Zoetrope" : Act II - 13:30# "Mikhail Zoetrope" : Act III - 11:00# "Conquest of Mexico" : Part 1 Warning Signs - 7:45# "Conquest of Mexico : Part 2 Confession - 3:39...
(1995).
Zorn dropped out of college. Following a stint on the West Coast, Zorn moved to Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. There he gave concerts in his apartment and other small NY venues, playing saxophone and a variety of reeds, duck call
Duck call
A Duck call may refer to either the process by which a hunter lures waterfowl, or the actual tool that he uses to do so.-Process:Duck calling is the process in which a hunter uses a tool also known as a "duck call" to emulate the sound of a duck as a means to draw them closer.-Tool:As a tool, a...
s, tapes, and other instruments. He founded a performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
project called Theatre of Musical Optics, in 1975 and became a major participant in the fertile, avant-garde, downtown music scene as a composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, performer and producer
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
of music that challenged the confines of any single musical genre. Zorn later used the term 'Theatre of Musical Optics' for the publishing company of his compositions.
Early composition
Zorn's early major compositions included several "game pieces" or "game theories", which he's described as "complex systems harnessing improvisers in flexible compositional formats," and which "involved strict rules, role playing, prompters with flashcards, all in the name of melding structure and improvisation in a seamless fashion." Game pieces were often named after sports, and include Baseball (1976), LacrosseLacrosse (album)
Lacrosse is a double live album by John Zorn. It is made up of different takes his early game piece, "Lacrosse". The first disc is from WKCR in June 1978 where Mark Abbott, Polly Bradfield, Eugene Chadbourne, and LaDonna Smith and Zorn recorded 6 different takes. Takes 3, 4 and 6 were originally...
(1976), Dominoes (1977), Curling (1977), Golf (1977), Hockey
Hockey (album)
Hockey is an album by John Zorn featuring his early "game piece" composition of the same name. The album, first released on vinyl on Parachute Records in 1980, , and later re-released on CD on Tzadik Records with additional bonus tracks as part of the The Parachute Years Box Set in 1997 and as a...
(1978), Cricket (1978), Fencing (1978), Pool
Pool (album)
Pool is an album by John Zorn featuring his early "game piece" composition of the same name. The album, first released on vinyl on Parachute Records in 1980, and later released on CD on Tzadik Records with an additional bonus track featuring a test recording of Archery as part of the The Parachute...
(1979), and Archery
Archery (album)
Archery is an album by John Zorn featuring his early "game piece" composition of the same name. The album was first released on Parachute Records in 1982 and later released on Tzadik Records with additional rehearsal takes, , as a part of the The Parachute Years Box Set in 1997 and as a triple CD...
(1979) which was recorded at Martin Bisi
Martin bisi
Martin Bisi is an American producer and songwriter.He is known for recording important records by Sonic Youth, Swans, John Zorn, Material, Bill Laswell, Helmet, Unsane, Cop Shoot Cop, White Zombie, Boredoms, Angels of Light and Herbie Hancock's Grammy-winning song Rockit,In 1979, Martin Bisi...
's studio. His most enduring "game piece" is Cobra
Cobra (Zorn)
Cobra is an unpublished but recorded and frequently performed musical composition by John Zorn that was conceived as a system with very detailed rules but with no pre-conceived sequence of events, or game piece, for a group of musical improvisors and a prompter. Zorn completed Cobra on October 9,...
(1984) which he first released on album in 1987
Cobra (album)
Cobra is a double album featuring a live and studio performance of John Zorn's improvisational game piece, Cobra recorded in 1985 and 1986 and released on the Hathut label in 1987...
and in subsequent versions in 1992
John Zorn's Cobra: Live at the Knitting Factory
John Zorn's Cobra: Live at the Knitting Factory is a performance of John Zorn's improvisational game piece, Cobra, performed at The Knitting Factory in 1992. The album resembles the missing link between John Zorn's work with Masada and Naked City...
, 1994
John Zorn's Cobra: Tokyo Operations '94
John Zorn's Cobra: Tokyo Operations '94 is a live performance of John Zorn's improvisational game piece, Cobra recorded in Tokyo in 1994 featuring Japanese musicians and instruments...
and 2002
Cobra: John Zorn's Game Pieces Volume 2
- Track listing :# “Pendet” - 4:49# “Tabana” - 10:47# “Uluwati” - 7:27# “Tamangiri” - 7:50# “Paras” - 6:07# “Sangeh” - 11:26# “Penganggahan” - 10:44# “Raksasa” - 4:44# “Goa Gajah” - 6:50*Recorded at Avatar- Personnel :* Derek Bailey - guitar...
, and has revisited in performance many times. Zorn addresses both his own history and the musical philosophy behind his early works in the book Talking Music by William Duckworth.
In 1981, Zorn was "blowing duck calls in buckets of water at fringe venues," which included 8BC
8BC
8BC was a non-profit performance space and art gallery located in the East Village neighborhood of New York, New York, United States. Founded in 1983, the space was closed by 1985.-History:...
, Roulette, Chandelier, and Zorn's own clubhouse, the Saint. Zorn's first solo saxophone (and duck call) recordings were originally released in two volumes as The Classic Guide to Strategy
The Classic Guide to Strategy (album)
- Track listing :# "Part 1" aka "Senki " - 19:36# "Part 2 " aka "The Moon In The Cold Stream Like A Mirror" - 19:32# "Aoyanian Michi" - 11:15# "Enoken" - 3:21# "Katsumi Shigeru" - 6:34# "Kondo Toshinori" - 6:04# "Togawa Jun" - 8:54...
in 1983 and 1986 on the Lumina label. Zorn's early small group improvisations are documented on Locus Solus
Locus Solus (album)
Locus Solus is an album of improvisations by John Zorn and other musicians. Originally released as a double vinyl album on Rift records in 1983 it was re-released as a CD with additional tracks on Eva/Wave in 1990 and on Zorn's Tzadik Records label in 1997....
(1983) which featured Zorn with various combinations of other improvisers including Christian Marclay
Christian Marclay
Christian Marclay is a Swiss-American visual artist and composer.Marclay's work explores connections between sound, noise, photography, video, and film...
, Arto Lindsay
Arto Lindsay
Arthur Morgan Lindsay is an American guitarist, singer, record producer and experimental composer. He is a 1974 graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida....
, Wayne Horvitz
Wayne Horvitz
Wayne Horvitz is an American composer, keyboardist and record producer.-Biography:Horvitz, a "defiant cross-breeder of genres", has led the groups The President, Pigpen, Zony Mash, and the Four Plus One Ensemble...
, Ikue Mori
Ikue Mori
, also known as Ikue Ile, is a drummer, composer, and graphic designer.-Biography:Ikue Mori was born and raised in Japan. She says she had little interest in music before hearing punk rock...
, and Anton Fier
Anton Fier
Anton Fier, , is an American drummer, composer and bandleader. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio.Fier was an early member of The Lounge Lizards and The Feelies. He was in The Lodge , worked with Pere Ubu, was briefly in the Voidoids and founded The Golden Palominos...
. Ganryu Island
Ganryu Island (album)
Ganryu Island is an album by John Zorn featuring improvisations with Sato Michihiro. The album was first released on vinyl LP on Yukon Records in 1984 and later re-released on Tzadik Records as a CD with five additional tracks in 1998....
featured a series of duets by Zorn with Satoh Michihiro on shamisen
Shamisen
The , also called is a three-stringed, Japanese musical instrument played with a plectrum called a bachi. The Japanese pronunciation is usually "shamisen" but sometimes "jamisen" when used as a suffix . -Construction:The shamisen is a plucked stringed instrument...
, which received limited release on the Yukon label in 1984. Zorn has subsequently released these recordings as CDs on Tzadik making them more widely available than the original vinyl pressings.
Breakthrough recordings
Zorn's breakthrough recording was 1985's The Big GundownThe Big Gundown (album)
The Big Gundown is an album by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn. It comprises radically reworked covers of tracks by the Italian film composer Ennio Morricone....
: John Zorn Plays the Music of Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone, Grand Officer OMRI, , is an Italian composer and conductor, who wrote music to more than 500 motion pictures and television series, in a career lasting over 50 years. His scores have been included in over 20 award-winning films as well as several symphonic and choral pieces...
, where Zorn offered radical arrangement
Orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
s of the Roman composer's themes from movie
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
s including The Big Gundown
The Big Gundown
The Big Gundown is a 1966 spaghetti western directed by Sergio Sollima and starring Lee Van Cleef and Tomas Milian...
(1966), Once Upon a Time in the West
Once Upon a Time in the West
Once Upon a Time in the West is a 1968 Italian epic spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone for Paramount Pictures. It stars Henry Fonda cast against type as the villain, Charles Bronson as his nemesis, Jason Robards as a bandit, and Claudia Cardinale as a newly widowed homesteader with a...
(1968), A Fistful of Dynamite
A Fistful of Dynamite
Duck, You Sucker! , also known as A Fistful of Dynamite and Once Upon a Time… the Revolution, is a 1971 Zapata Western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Rod Steiger and James Coburn....
(1971), and Once Upon a Time in America
Once Upon a Time in America
Once Upon a Time in America is a 1984 Italian epic crime film co-written and directed by Sergio Leone and starring Robert De Niro and James Woods. The story chronicles the lives of Jewish ghetto youths who rise to prominence in New York City's world of organized crime...
(1984). The Big Gundown was endorsed by Morricone who is quoted as saying "This is a record that has fresh, good and intelligent ideas. It is realization on a high level, a work done by a maestro with great science-fantasy and creativity... Many people have done versions of my pieces, but no one has done them like this". Zorn's versions of Morricone's compositions incorporated elements of traditional Japanese music, soul jazz
Soul jazz
Soul jazz is a development of jazz incorporating strong influences from blues, soul, gospel and rhythm and blues in music for small groups, often an organ trio featuring a Hammond organ.- Overview :Soul jazz is often associated with hard bop. Mark C...
, and other diverse musical genres. Zorn's 15th Anniversary re-release of the album featured additional explorations of Morricone's work.
He first released the composition 'Godard', a tribute to French film-maker Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
whose jump-cut technique inspired Zorn's compositional approach, on the French tribute album
Tribute album
A tribute album is a recorded collection of cover versions of songs or instrumental compositions. Its concept may be either various artists making a tribute to a single artist, a single artist making a tribute to various artists, or a single artist making a tribute to another single artist.There...
The Godard Fans: Godard Ca Vous Chante? in 1986. Zorn followed this with his second major-label release Spillane
Spillane (album)
Spillane is an album by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn, composed of three file-card pieces, as well as a work for voice, string quartet and turntables...
in 1987 composed of three different tribute
Tribute
A tribute is wealth, often in kind, that one party gives to another as a sign of respect or, as was often the case in historical contexts, of submission or allegiance. Various ancient states, which could be called suzerains, exacted tribute from areas they had conquered or threatened to conquer...
compositions. The title track featured text by Arto Lindsay set to an array of sonic film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
references, 'Two-Lane Highway' a blues-based form to highlight the guitar of Albert Collins
Albert Collins
Albert Collins was an American electric blues guitarist and singer whose recording career began in the 1960s in Houston and whose fame eventually took him to stages across the US, Europe, Japan and Australia...
and 'Forbidden Fruit', Zorn's tribute to a Japanese film star, performed by the Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...
. Further exploration of film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
themes were recorded for radio plays and released by Zorn as The Bribe
The Bribe (album)
The Bribe: variations and extensions on Spillane is an album by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn, consisting of music created for three half-hour radio plays produced by Mabou Mines theater company in 1986...
: variations and extensions on Spillane (1998). 'Godard' and 'Spillane' were re-released as a single CD, Godard/Spillane
Godard/Spillane
Godard/Spillane is a compilation album by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn consisting of music created through Zorn's file-card compositional process...
, on Tzadik
Tzadik Records
Tzadik Records is a record label based in New York City specialising in avant-garde and experimental music. The label was established by the eclectic composer and saxophonist John Zorn in 1995; Zorn is the executive producer of all Tzadik releases...
in 1999.
These pieces are described by Zorn as "file-card compositions", a method of combining composition and improvisation in which Zorn would write down a description of what he wanted on file-cards and arrange them to form the piece. Zorn described the process in 2003. "I write in moments, in disparate sound blocks, so I find it convenient to store these events on filing cards so they can be sorted and ordered with minimum effort. Pacing is essential. If you move too fast, people tend to stop hearing the individual moments as complete in themselves and more as elements of a sort of cloud effect... I worked 10 to 12 hours a day for a week, just orchestrating these file cards. It was an intense process - one I don't want to go through again."
Zorn's "file-card" method of organizing sound blocks into an overall structure largely depended on the musicians he chose, the way they interpreted what was written on the file cards, and their relationship with Zorn. "I'm not going to sit in some ivory tower and pass my scores down to the players." said Zorn, "I have to be there with them, and that's why I started playing saxophone, so that I could meet musicians. I still feel that I have to earn a player's trust before they can play my music. At the end of the day, I want players to say: this was fun - it was a lot of fucking work, and it's one of the hardest things I've ever done, but it was worth the effort."
Jazz interpreter
Beginning in 1986 Zorn participated in several projects focused on modern jazzJazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
composers which highlighted his saxophone style. These included Voodoo
Voodoo (Sonny Clark Memorial Quartet)
-Track listing:# "Cool Struttin'" - 5:27# "Minor Meeting" - 4:36# "Nicely" - 5:34# "Something Special" - 4:45# "Voodoo" - 10:57# "Sonia" - 4:02# "Sonny's Crib" - 7:40*Recorded at Classic Sound, New York on November 25 and 26, 1985-Personnel:...
(1986) by The Sonny Clark
Sonny Clark
Conrad Yeatis "Sonny" Clark was an American jazz pianist who mainly worked in the hard bop idiom.-Biography:...
Memorial Quartet, with Wayne Horvitz
Wayne Horvitz
Wayne Horvitz is an American composer, keyboardist and record producer.-Biography:Horvitz, a "defiant cross-breeder of genres", has led the groups The President, Pigpen, Zony Mash, and the Four Plus One Ensemble...
, Ray Drummond
Ray Drummond
Ray Drummond is a jazz bassist and teacher. He also has an MBA from Stanford University, hence his linkage to the Stanford Jazz Workshop...
and Bobby Previte
Bobby Previte
Robert "Bobby" Previte is a drummer, composer and bandleader. Previte earned a B.A. in Economics at the University at Buffalo, where he also studied percussion. He moved to New York City in 1979, and became active in the city's thriving jazz and experimental music scenes...
and Spy vs Spy
Spy vs Spy (album)
Spy vs Spy: The Music of Ornette Coleman is a 1989 album by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn, featuring the compositions of Ornette Coleman performed in the brief intense style of Zorn's hardcore miniatures....
(1989) featuring hardcore punk
Hardcore punk
Hardcore punk is an underground music genre that originated in the late 1970s, following the mainstream success of punk rock. Hardcore is generally faster, thicker, and heavier than earlier punk rock. The origin of the term "hardcore punk" is uncertain. The Vancouver-based band D.O.A...
-informed interpretations of Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....
's music performed by Zorn and Tim Berne
Tim Berne
Tim Berne is an American jazz saxophone player and composer.Described by critic Thom Jurek as commanding "considerable power as a composer and ... frighteningly deft ability as a soloist," Berne has composed and performed prolifically since the 1980s...
on saxophones, Mark Dresser
Mark Dresser
Mark Dresser is an American double bass player and composer.-Biography:He has performed and recorded with many of the luminaries of "new" jazz composition and improvisation. For ten years he performed with the Anthony Braxton Quartet, as well as diverse groups led by Ray Anderson, Tim Berne,...
on bass and Joey Baron
Joey Baron
Joey Baron is an American avant-garde jazz drummer probably best known for his work with Bill Frisell, Stan Getz, Steve Kuhn, and John Zorn...
and Michael Vatcher on drums. News for Lulu
News for Lulu (album)
News for Lulu is an album of hard bop compositions performed by John Zorn, George Lewis and Bill Frisell. The album features tunes by Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Freddie Redd and Sonny Clark recorded in the studio and live at the Willislau Jazz Festival. The original cover photograph features the...
(1988) and More News for Lulu
More News for Lulu (album)
More News for Lulu is the second album of hard bop compositions performed by John Zorn, George Lewis and Bill Frisell. Like the previous News for Lulu it features tunes by Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Freddie Redd and Sonny Clark but also contains with one tune each by Misha Mengelberg and Big John...
(1992) featured Zorn, Bill Frisell
Bill Frisell
William Richard "Bill" Frisell is an American guitarist and composer.One of the leading guitarists in jazz since the late 1980s, Frisell's eclectic music touches on progressive folk, classical music, country music, noise and more...
and George Lewis
George Lewis (trombonist)
George E. Lewis is a trombone player, composer, and scholar in the fields of jazz and experimental music. He has been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians since 1971, and is a pioneer of computer music.- Biography :Lewis graduated from Yale University with a...
performing compositions by Kenny Dorham
Kenny Dorham
McKinley Howard Dorham was an American jazz trumpeter, singer, and composer born in Fairfield, Texas. Dorham's talent is frequently lauded by critics and other musicians, but he never received the kind of attention from the jazz establishment that many of his peers did...
, Sonny Clark
Sonny Clark
Conrad Yeatis "Sonny" Clark was an American jazz pianist who mainly worked in the hard bop idiom.-Biography:...
, Freddie Redd
Freddie Redd
Freddie Redd is an American hard bop pianist and composer.His greatest success came in the late 1950s in the play and movie The Connection, in which he both played and acted in New York City, London, and Paris. He also played on the soundtrack album...
, and Hank Mobley
Hank Mobley
Henry Mobley was an American hard bop and soul jazz tenor saxophonist and composer. Mobley was described by Leonard Feather as the "middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone", a metaphor used to describe his tone that was neither as aggressive as John Coltrane nor as mellow as Stan Getz...
. He performed on two recordings by organist Big John Patton
John Patton (musician)
John Patton , sometimes nicknamed Big John Patton, was a hard bop and soul jazz organist....
- Blue Planet Man
Blue Planet Man
Blue Planet Man is a 1993 album by organist Big John Patton which features John Zorn. It was originally released on King Records/Paddle Wheel Records in Japan in 1993 and subsequently released in the USA on Evidence Records in 1997.-Reception:...
(1993) and Minor Swing (1995) and contributed to the Sax Legends series (later re-released as The Colossal Saxophone Sessions) in 1993 with a version of Wayne Shorter
Wayne Shorter
Wayne Shorter is an American jazz saxophonist and composer.He is generally acknowledged to be jazz's greatest living composer, and many of his compositions have become standards...
's composition "Devil's Island" alongside Lee Konitz
Lee Konitz
Lee Konitz is an American jazz composer and alto saxophonist born in Chicago, Illinois.Generally considered one of the driving forces of Cool Jazz, Konitz has also performed successfully in bebop and avant-garde settings...
, who Zorn has described as "one of my all-time heroes".
While Zorn is often considered a jazz musician his schema is considerably broader. He stated "The term 'jazz', per se, is meaningless to me in a certain way. Musicians don’t think in terms of boxes. I know what jazz music is. I studied it. I love it. But when I sit down and make music, a lot of things come together. And sometimes it falls a little bit toward the classical side, sometimes it falls a little bit towards the jazz, sometimes it falls toward rock, sometimes it doesn’t fall anywhere, it's just floating in limbo. But no matter which way it falls, it's always a little bit of a freak. It doesn’t really belong anywhere. It's something unique, it's something different, it's something out of my heart. It's not connected with those traditions." "But the music is not jazz music, it’s not classical music, it’s not rock music. It’s a new kind of music... So I feel like that created a deep misunderstanding in what this music is. People started judging this new music with the standards of jazz, with the definitions of what jazz is and isn’t, because stories about it appeared in jazz magazines. And now I’ll do a gig at the Marciac Jazz Festival and I’ll get offstage and Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Learson Marsalis is a trumpeter, composer, bandleader, music educator, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of classical and jazz music often to young audiences...
will say, “That’s not jazz.” And I’ll say, “You’re right! But this is the only gig I’ve got, man. Give me another festival and I’ll play there.”"
Film music
Zorn has written music for documentariesDocumentary
A documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...
, underground film
Underground film
An underground film is a film that is out of the mainstream either in its style, genre, or financing.-Definition and history:The first use of the term "underground film" occurs in a 1957 essay by American film critic Manny Farber, "Underground Films." Farber uses it to refer to the work of...
s, television advertisement
Television advertisement
A television advertisement or television commercial, often just commercial, advert, ad, or ad-film – is a span of television programming produced and paid for by an organization that conveys a message, typically one intended to market a product...
s and cartoons
Animated cartoon
An animated cartoon is a short, hand-drawn film for the cinema, television or computer screen, featuring some kind of story or plot...
which are documented in the Filmworks albums on the Tzadik
Tzadik Records
Tzadik Records is a record label based in New York City specialising in avant-garde and experimental music. The label was established by the eclectic composer and saxophonist John Zorn in 1995; Zorn is the executive producer of all Tzadik releases...
label. Some of these film score
Film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
s are jazz-influenced, others classical, and most feature ensembles consisting of rotating combinations of downtown music
Downtown music
Downtown music is a subdivision of American music, closely related to experimental music. The scene the term describes began in 1960, when Yoko Ono—one of the Fluxus artists, at that time still seven years away from meeting John Lennon—opened her loft at 112 Chambers Street to be used...
ians. Zorn has often used his cinematic and television commissions to experiment with line-ups and forms that would become more established parts of his musical canon.
Zorn stated that "After my record The Big Gundown came out I was convinced that a lot of soundtrack work was going to be coming my way". While Hollywood acclaim was not forthcoming he attracted the attention of many independent film
Independent film
An independent film, or indie film, is a professional film production resulting in a feature film that is produced mostly or completely outside of the major film studio system. In addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies, independent films are also produced...
makers. The first director to commission him was Rob Schwebber for the 1986 short White and Lazy followed by his work for Sheila McLaughlin's film, She Must Be Seeing Things (1986). In 1990, he composed the soundtrack for the Raul Ruiz film The Golden Boat. All these soundtracks appeared on Filmworks 1986-1990
Filmworks 1986-1990
Filmworks 1986–1990 features the first released film scores of John Zorn. The album was originally released on the Japanese Wave label in 1991, on the Nonesuch Records label in 1992, and subsequently re-released on Zorn's own label, Tzadik Records, in 1997 after being out of print for several...
along with a sixty-four second interpretation of the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a 1966 Italian epic spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone, starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach in the title roles. The screenplay was written by Age & Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni and Leone, based on a story by Vincenzoni and Leone...
which featured future members of Naked City
Naked City (band)
Naked City was an avant-garde music group led by saxophonist and composer John Zorn. Active primarily in New York City from 1988 to 1993, Naked City was initiated by Zorn as a "composition workshop" to test the limits of composition in a traditional rock band lineup...
.
Zorn's second Filmworks release documented his Music for an Untitled Film by
Filmworks II: Music for an Untitled Film by Walter Hill
-Track listing:# "Intro" - 3:07# "I Stole From Jesus Christ" - 0:49# "Gold" - 0:48# "Main Title" - 1:55# "The Building" - 0:56# "Meatlocker" - 0:55# "Pigeons" - 0:52# "Scuffle" - 0:19# "Exploring" - 0:58# "Rattlesnakes " - 1:43...
Walter Hill (1996) which was composed for the film Trespass (1992) but replaced by a score by Ry Cooder
Ry Cooder
Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder is an American guitarist, singer and composer. He is known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and, more recently, his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.His solo work has been eclectic, encompassing...
.
Filmworks III: 1990-1995
Filmworks III: 1990-1995
-Track listing:Thieves Quartet , directed by Joe Chappelle01/ Main Title - 1:0002/ The Caper - 0:57...
(1997) featured the first recordings by the Masada
Masada (band)
Masada is a musical group with rotating personnel led by American saxophonist and composer John Zorn since the early 1990s.Masada is as much a "songbook" as a group, comprising more than 500 relatively brief compositions...
lineup for Joe Chappelle's Thieves Quartet (1993) along with early drafts for the Cynical Hysterie Hour
Filmworks VII: Cynical Hysterie Hour
Filmworks VII: Cynical Hysterie Hour is a 1989 album by John Zorn featuring music written for a series of Japanese animated shorts that were created by Kiriko Kubo. It features Zorn's first music for cartoons and was originally released on the Japanese Sony label in limited numbers...
project, duets with Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot born May 21, 1954) is an American guitarist and composer.His own work has touched on many styles, including no wave, free jazz, and Cuban music. Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notably Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and composer John Zorn.-Biography:Ribot was...
which featured in Mei-Juin Chen's Hollywood Hotel (1994), and a series of commercial
Television advertisement
A television advertisement or television commercial, often just commercial, advert, ad, or ad-film – is a span of television programming produced and paid for by an organization that conveys a message, typically one intended to market a product...
soundtracks for the advertising firm Weiden and Kennedy, including one directed by Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
- a long-term Zorn inspiration. Filmworks IV: S&M + More
Filmworks IV: S&M + More
-Track listing:# "Pueblo" - 9:04# "Elegant Spanking" - 14:22# "Credits Included" a.Politics, b.Asylum - 9:38# "Maogai" - 6:19# "A Lot of Fun for the Evil One" - 17:48...
(1997) and Filmworks V: Tears of Ecstasy
Filmworks V: Tears of Ecstasy
Filmworks V: Tears of Ecstasy is a film score by John Zorn. The album was released on Zorn's own label, Tzadik Records, in 1997. It features the music that Zorn wrote and recorded for the movie "Tears Of Ecstasy" by director Oki Hiroyuki.-Reception:...
(1996) both included music written for films dealing with BDSM
BDSM
BDSM is an erotic preference and a form of sexual expression involving the consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation, and fantasy power role-play. The compound acronym BDSM is derived from the terms bondage and discipline , dominance and submission , and sadism and masochism...
. Filmworks VI: 1996
Filmworks VI: 1996
-Track listing:Anton, Mailman :1/ Opening Credits/Hawaiian Postcard - 2:572/ Work-A-Day World - 3:31...
contains the soundtracks to three underground films produced in 1996; Dina Waxman's Anton, Mailman, Henry Hills' Mechanics of the Brain, and Maria Beatty
Maria Beatty
Maria Beatty is a New York filmmaker who directs, acts, and produces. Her films are often made in black and white and cover various aspects of female sexuality including BDSM and fetishism...
's The Black Glove.
Filmworks VII: Cynical Hysterie Hour
Filmworks VII: Cynical Hysterie Hour
Filmworks VII: Cynical Hysterie Hour is a 1989 album by John Zorn featuring music written for a series of Japanese animated shorts that were created by Kiriko Kubo. It features Zorn's first music for cartoons and was originally released on the Japanese Sony label in limited numbers...
re-released the themes that Zorn produced for a Japanese cartoon which had only been previously available in limited release in Japan. Zorn regained the rights to these recordings by trading a booking at The Knitting Factory to Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
executives. Filmworks VIII: 1997
Filmworks VIII: 1997
-Track listing:*The Port Of Last Resort directed by Joan Grossman and Paul Rosdy.1/ "Teqiah" - 3:072/ "Shanghai" - 2:353/ "Emunim" - 3:324/ "Ruan " - 4:375/ "Ebionim" - 3:006/ "Ahavah" - 3:427/ "Ruan " - 3:37...
features music for the documentary Port Of Last Resort (1998), which detailed the experiences of Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai during the years preceding World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, and the soundtrack to the underground film Latin Boys Go to Hell (1997).
Zorn's next soundtrack work did not appear until 2000 with Filmworks IX:
Filmworks IX: Trembling Before G-d
-Track listing:# "Trembling Before G-D 1" - 2:25# "Mahshav" - 5:01# "Tashlikh 1" - 4:26...
Trembling Before G-d
Trembling Before G-d
Trembling Before G-d is an 2001 American documentary film about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews trying to reconcile their sexuality with their faith. It was directed by Sandi Simcha DuBowski, an American who wanted to compare orthodox attitudes to homosexuality with his own upbringing as a gay...
featuring music for an award winning documentary about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews trying to reconcile their sexuality with their faith directed by Sandi Simcha DuBowski
Sandi Simcha DuBowski
Sandi Simcha DuBowski is an American director and producer. Best known for his work on homosexuality and religion, DuBowski directed the 2001 documentary Trembling Before G-d and is the producer of Parvez Sharma's documentary A Jihad for Love .-Personal life:DuBowski was born in Brooklyn in 1970...
. The following year Filmworks X:
Filmworks X: In the Mirror of Maya Deren
-Track listing:# "Drifting 1" - 2:13 # "Dancing" - 5:12 # "Kiev 1" - 3:57 # "Teiji's Time" - 2:16 # "Nostalgia 1" - 3:41 # "Filming" - 5:51 # "Mirror Worlds" - 1:50 # "Nightscape" - 2:27 # "Nostalgia 2" - 4:21...
In the Mirror of Maya Deren
In the Mirror of Maya Deren
The documentary In the Mirror of Maya Deren is a film about avant garde filmmaker Maya Deren by Austrian film maker Martina Kudlacek. It is based on the biography The Legend of Maya Deren....
(2001) featured music for a documentary on the life and work of underground film
Underground film
An underground film is a film that is out of the mainstream either in its style, genre, or financing.-Definition and history:The first use of the term "underground film" occurs in a 1957 essay by American film critic Manny Farber, "Underground Films." Farber uses it to refer to the work of...
aker Maya Deren
Maya Deren
Maya Deren , born Eleanora Derenkowsky, was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s...
.
The year 2002 was a very productive one for Zorn's cinematic scores. Filmworks XI: Secret Lives
Filmworks XI: Secret Lives
-Track listing:# "Yesoma" - 3:07# "Shabbes Noir" - 3:37# "Tension" - 0:56# "Hatzalah" - 4:44# "Brachas" - 3:16# "Chazal" - 1:03# "Ba'adinot" - 1:22# "Drama" - 3:02# "Yesoma" - 3:26# "Darkly" - 1:40# "Kavana" - 4:01...
(2002) featured the Masada String Trio performing music for Aviva Slesin
Aviva Slesin
Aviva Slesin is a documentary film-maker.Slesin was awarded the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary for her film The Ten Year Lunch: The Wit and Legend of the Algonquin Round Table in 1987. She is member of the Directors Guild of America and The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
's documentary film on Jewish children hidden from the Nazis. Filmworks XII
Filmworks XII: Three Documentaries
-Track listing:# "Vocal Phase" - 3:49# "The Lips At Sway" - 5:07# "The Well Tuned Harmonica" - 1:35# "Dance Piece" - 2:10# "Midnight Flight" - 2:12# "Chippy Charm" - 1:35# "Shaolin Spirit" - 3:01...
(2002) features music for three documentaries; Homecoming: Celebrating Twenty Years of Dance at PS 122
Performance Space 122
Performance Space 122, generally known as P.S. 122, is a not-for-profit arts organization and one of the longest standing venues dedicated to contemporary performance art in New York City. Founded in 1979 in the abandoned Public School 122 building at 150 First Avenue at East 9th Street in the East...
, Shaolin Ulysses, a film about Shaolin Monks in America, and variations on the theme for Family Found, a documentary on outsider artist Morton Bartlett
Morton Bartlett
Morton Bartlett was an American photographer.-Life:Bartlett was an orphan, he never married, and he lived alone for all his life. After attending Harvard University for two years he struggled to earn a living...
. Zorn released his third soundtrack collection of 2002 with Filmworks XIII: Invitation to a Suicide
Filmworks XIII: Invitation to a Suicide
-Track listing:# "Invitation To A Suicide" - 4:38# "Musette Waltz" - 4:21# "Shifting Sands" - 4:12...
, written for a black comedy
Black comedy
A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...
about a man selling tickets to his own suicide to save his father's life.
Zorns next two Filmworks releases featured in documentaries examining Jewish identity and antisemitism. Filmworks XIV:
Filmworks XIV: Hiding and Seeking
Filmworks XIV: Hiding and Seeking features a score for film by John Zorn. The album was released on Zorn's own label, Tzadik Records, in 2003 and contains music that Zorn wrote and recorded for, Hiding and Seeking , a documentary directed by Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky.-Reception:The Allmusic...
Hiding and Seeking
Hiding and Seeking
Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust is 2004 documentary film about Menachem Daum, an Orthodox Jew and son of German Nazi Holocaust survivors who has spent his life interviewing survivors about the impact of the Holocaust on their lives...
(2003) provided the soundtrack a documentary about an Orthodox Jewish father attempting to alert his sons of the dangers of creating barriers between themselves and those outside their faith. Filmworks XV:
Filmworks XV: Protocols of Zion
Filmworks XV: Protocols of Zion features a score by John Zorn for a documentary film by Marc Levin. The album was released on Zorn's own label, Tzadik Records, in 2005 and contains music that Zorn wrote and recorded for, Protocols of Zion , a documentary detailing the rise of anti-semitism...
Protocols of Zion
Protocols of Zion (film)
The Protocols of Zion is a 2005 documentary film by Jewish filmmaker Marc Levin about a resurgence of antisemitism in the United States in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks...
(2005) featured music for a documentary about a resurgence of antisemitism in the United States in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
Filmworks XVI: Workingman's Death
Filmworks XVI: Workingman's Death
Filmworks XVI: Workingman's Death features a score by John Zorn for a documentary film by Michael Glawogger. The album was released on Zorn's own label, Tzadik Records, in 2005 and contains music that Zorn wrote and recorded for, Workingman's Death , a documentary detailing hazardous employment...
(2005) presented themes for a documentary portraying hazardous employment undertaken in the Ukraine, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and China.
Filmworks XVII
Filmworks XVII: Notes on Marie Menken/Ray Bandar: A Life with Skulls
-Track listing:# "Menken" - 5:26# "Skull I" - 4:04# "Glimpses" - 6:37# "Mood Mondrian" - 4:31# "Skull II" - 3:31# "Gogogo" - 8:14# "Moonplay" - 4:42# "Skull III" - 3:02# "Tango Exotique" -5:04# "Zenscapes" - 1:09# "Skull IV" - 1:41# "Arabesque" - 5:10...
(2006) featured music for Martina Kudlacek's documentary Notes on Marie Menken
Marie Menken
Marie Menkevicius was an American experimental filmmaker and socialite.-Early life:The daughter of Catholic-Lithuanian immigrants, she grew up in Brooklyn.-Personal life:...
intertwined with Zorn's percussive score for Beth Cataldo's portrait Ray Bandar
Ray Bandar
Ray Bandar is a scientist, researcher, teacher, naturalist, and artist living in the San Francisco, California area. He has collected more than 7,000 bone specimens, primarily skulls, from animals across the world...
: A Life with Skulls. Filmworks XVIII: The Treatment
Filmworks XVIII: The Treatment
-Track listing:# "The Treatment" - 3:34# "Romance" - 5:10# "Why Me?" - 3:56# "Family" - 2:15# "Marking Time" - 4:53# "Anxieties" - 5:00# "Freud's Rondo" - 4:26# "Totem and Taboo" - 6:55# "Rush Hour" - 3:47# "Bad Dreams" - 1:20# "Uncertainty" - 6:24...
(2006) featured music for Oren Rudavsky
Oren Rudavsky
Oren Rudavsky is an award-winning documentary filmmaker specializing in work on religion outside the mainstream. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1979.- As director :* At the Crossroads: Jewish Life in Eastern Europe Today...
's romantic comedy
Romantic Comedy
Romantic Comedy can refer to* Romantic Comedy , a 1979 play written by Bernard Slade* Romantic Comedy , a 1983 film adapted from the play and starring Dudley Moore and Mary Steenburgen...
based on the tango music
Tango music
Tango is a style of ballroom dance music in 2/4 or 4/4 time that originated among European immigrant populations of Argentina and Uruguay . It is traditionally played by a sextet, known as the orquesta típica, which includes two violins, piano, double bass, and two bandoneons...
of Astor Piazolla.
Filmworks XIX: The Rain Horse
Filmworks XIX: The Rain Horse
-Track listing:# "Tears of Morning" - 4:32# "The Stallion" - 2:42# "Tree of Life" - 3:01# "Wedding of Wild Horses" - 4:21# "Forests in the Mist" - 6:09# "Dance Exotique" - 2:59# "Bird in the Mist" - 4:01# "Parable of Job" - 4:17# "Encounter" - 2:10...
(2008) was written for an animated children's short film by Russian director Dimitri Gellar. Also released in 2008 were Filmworks XX: Sholem Aleichem
Filmworks XX: Sholem Aleichem
-Track listing:# "Shalom, Sholem!" - 2:11# "Luminous Visions" - 4:12# "Mamme Loshen" - 3:18# "Beyond the Pale" - 2:25# "Mekubolim" - 4:36# "Portable Homeland" - 4:06# "Wandering Star" - 3:19# "Jewish Revolutionaries" - 4:59# "Shtetls" - 3:02...
containing music for a documentary on the Jewish writer Sholem Aleichem, Filmworks XXI: Belle de Nature/The New Rijksmuseum
Filmworks XXI: Belle de Nature/The New Rijksmuseum
-Track listing:# "Masque en Sole" - 5:09# "Un Rose" - 2:05# "L 'Air et les Songes" - 2:39# "Fouet d'Épines" - 5:08# "Elle Vient" - 3:52# "Orties Cuisantes" - 4:31# "Belle de Nature" - 4:52# "Storage" - 2:08# "Conservation" - 3:57# "Rendering" - 4:20...
featuring soundtracks for another of Maria Beatty's films and a documentary on the restoration of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, and Filmworks XXII: The Last Supper
Filmworks XXII: The Last Supper
Filmworks XXII: The Last Supper is a score by John Zorn for Arno Bouchard's 2009 short science fiction/art film The Last Supper.-Track listing:# "Somnambulisme" - 2:12# "Opening Invocation" - 2:13# "Virgin Sacrifice" - 3:25# "Vespers" - 3:37...
.
Hardcore
Zorn established Naked CityNaked City (band)
Naked City was an avant-garde music group led by saxophonist and composer John Zorn. Active primarily in New York City from 1988 to 1993, Naked City was initiated by Zorn as a "composition workshop" to test the limits of composition in a traditional rock band lineup...
in 1988 as a 'compositional workshop' to test the limitations of a rock band
Rock Band
Rock Band is a music video game developed by Harmonix Music Systems, published by MTV Games and Electronic Arts. It is the first title in the Rock Band series. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions were released in the United States on November 20, 2007, while the PlayStation 2 version was...
format. Featuring Zorn on saxophone, Bill Frisell
Bill Frisell
William Richard "Bill" Frisell is an American guitarist and composer.One of the leading guitarists in jazz since the late 1980s, Frisell's eclectic music touches on progressive folk, classical music, country music, noise and more...
(guitars), Fred Frith
Fred Frith
Fred Frith is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer and improvisor.Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. Frith was also a member of Art Bears, Massacre and Skeleton Crew...
(bass), Wayne Horvitz
Wayne Horvitz
Wayne Horvitz is an American composer, keyboardist and record producer.-Biography:Horvitz, a "defiant cross-breeder of genres", has led the groups The President, Pigpen, Zony Mash, and the Four Plus One Ensemble...
(keyboards), Joey Baron
Joey Baron
Joey Baron is an American avant-garde jazz drummer probably best known for his work with Bill Frisell, Stan Getz, Steve Kuhn, and John Zorn...
(drums), and occasional vocals from Yamatsuka Eye, Bob Dorough
Bob Dorough
Bob Dorough is an American bebop and cool jazz pianist, composer and vocalese singer.He worked with Miles Davis and Allen Ginsberg, and his adventurous style was an influence on Mose Allison, among other singers...
, and later Mike Patton
Mike Patton
Michael Allan "Mike" Patton is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and actor, best known as the lead singer of the metal/experimental rock band Faith No More. He has also sung for Mr...
, Naked City
Naked City (band)
Naked City was an avant-garde music group led by saxophonist and composer John Zorn. Active primarily in New York City from 1988 to 1993, Naked City was initiated by Zorn as a "composition workshop" to test the limits of composition in a traditional rock band lineup...
incorporated Zorn's appreciation of hardcore bands like Agnostic Front
Agnostic Front
Agnostic Front is an American hardcore band. The band began playing hardcore similar to their contemporaries, and were thrust to the forefront of the burgeoning New York hardcore scene in the mid-1980s with their widely regarded 1984 classic Victim in Pain before evolving to incorporate thrash...
and grindcore bands like Napalm Death
Napalm Death
Napalm Death are a death metal band formed in Birmingham, England in 1981. While none of its original members remain in the group, the lineup of vocalist Mark "Barney" Greenway, bassist Shane Embury, guitarist Mitch Harris and drummer Danny Herrera has remained consistent for most of the band's ...
with his other influences and experimented with compositional form and cover version
Cover version
In popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...
s.
Named after a 1945 book of graphic black and white photographs by Weegee
Weegee
Weegee was the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig , a photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography....
the band performed an aggressive mix of "soundtrack
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
themes, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
y hard bop
Hard bop
Hard bop is a style of jazz that is an extension of bebop music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz which incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano...
, speedy hardcore
Hardcore punk
Hardcore punk is an underground music genre that originated in the late 1970s, following the mainstream success of punk rock. Hardcore is generally faster, thicker, and heavier than earlier punk rock. The origin of the term "hardcore punk" is uncertain. The Vancouver-based band D.O.A...
rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, squealing free jazz
Free jazz
Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...
[and] metallic
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
". Zorn has stated that "Naked City started with rhythm and blues/Spillane type things then went into this hard-core thing... because I was living in Japan and experiencing a lot of alienation and rejection... My interest in hard-core also spurred the urge to write shorter and shorter pieces."
Naked City followed the release of their self-titled album
Naked City (album)
Naked City is an album released on Nonesuch Records in 1990 by John Zorn, featuring the band of the same name. The album was also released as part of Naked City: The Complete Studio Recordings on Tzadik Records in 2005....
with Torture Garden
Torture Garden (album)
Torture Garden is an album by John Zorn's band Naked City featuring Yamatsuka Eye on vocals. The album is a compilation of the "hardcore miniatures" that were also released on Naked City and Grand Guignol. Unlike other Naked City albums, there are no breaks between the screaming, the seemingly...
a collection of 42 'hardcore miniatures'; intense brief compositions often lasting less than a minute, in 1989. Some of these tracks had featured on Naked City
Naked City (album)
Naked City is an album released on Nonesuch Records in 1990 by John Zorn, featuring the band of the same name. The album was also released as part of Naked City: The Complete Studio Recordings on Tzadik Records in 2005....
and others would resurface on the bands next full-length release, Grand Guignol
Grand Guignol (album)
Grand Guignol is the second full-length studio album released by John Zorn's band Naked City in 1992 on the Japanese Avant label. The album followed Torture Garden, which was a compilation of "hardcore miniatures" from Naked City and Grand Guignol...
(1992), which also included performances of works by Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin. Quite independent of the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed an increasingly atonal musical system,...
, Orlande de Lassus
Orlande de Lassus
Orlande de Lassus was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance...
, Charles Ives
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
, and Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
. The band's third album, Heretic
Heretic (Naked City album)
Heretic is the third studio album by the band Naked City, used as a soundtrack for the underground S/M film Jeux des Dames Cruelles. The album utilises different combinations of band members in duos and trios with the entire band performing together on only one track "Fire and Ice".According to...
(1992), featured more of these short improvisations produced for the soundtrack of an underground
Underground film
An underground film is a film that is out of the mainstream either in its style, genre, or financing.-Definition and history:The first use of the term "underground film" occurs in a 1957 essay by American film critic Manny Farber, "Underground Films." Farber uses it to refer to the work of...
S/M
Sadism and masochism
Sadomasochism broadly refers to the receiving of pleasure—often sexual—from acts involving the infliction or reception of pain or humiliation. The name originates from two authors on the subject, Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch...
film Jeux des Dames Cruelles. The band released a second EP
Extended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
, Leng Tch'e
Leng Tch'e (album)
Leng Tch'e is the fourth release from John Zorn's band Naked City. It consists of a single track, running at just over half an hour. It was first released on the Japanese Toys Factory label in 1992...
, in 1992 featuring a single composition which lasted just over half an hour. Radio
Radio (Naked City album)
Radio is the fourth studio album by the band Naked City, and their first to be composed entirely by bandleader John Zorn. The album was also released as part of Naked City: The Complete Studio Recordings on Tzadik Records in 2005....
, released in 1993, was the first Naked City album composed solely by Zorn, and featured tracks drawing on a wide range of musical influences including Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
, Little Feat
Little Feat
Little Feat is an American rock band formed by singer-songwriter, lead vocalist and guitarist Lowell George and keyboardist Bill Payne in 1969 in Los Angeles....
, Ruins, Booker T. and the M.G.'s, Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
Colin Henry Wilson is a prolific English writer who first came to prominence as a philosopher and novelist. Wilson has since written widely on true crime, mysticism and other topics. He prefers calling his philosophy new existentialism or phenomenological existentialism.- Early biography:Born and...
, Albert King
Albert King
Albert King was an American blues guitarist and singer, and a major influence in the world of blues guitar playing.-Career:...
, Chuck Brown
Chuck Brown
Chuck Brown is a guitarist and singer who is affectionately called "The Godfather of Go-go". Go-go is a subgenre of funk music developed in and around Washington, D.C. in the mid- and late 1970s...
, Orchestra Baobab, the Accüsed
The Accüsed
The Accüsed is a crossover thrash band from Seattle, WA, founded in 1981. They are considered to be an important progenitor of the crossover style that bridged the gap between thrashcore and thrash metal, later influencing grindcore and some crust punk bands; as well as an influential band in the...
, the Meters
The Meters
The Meters are an American funk band based in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Meters performed and recorded their own music from the late 1960s until 1977...
, Tony Williams' Lifetime
The Tony Williams Lifetime
The Tony Williams Lifetime was a jazz-rock fusion group led by jazz drummer Tony Williams.-Original line-up:The Tony Williams Lifetime was founded in 1969 as a power trio with John McLaughlin on electric guitar, and Larry Young on organ. The band was possibly named for Williams' debut album as a...
, Anton Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
, Sammy Cahn
Sammy Cahn
Sammy Cahn was an American lyricist, songwriter and musician. He is best known for his romantic lyrics to films and Broadway songs, as well as stand-alone songs premiered by recording companies in the Greater Los Angeles Area...
, Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman was an American composer, born in New York City.A major figure in 20th century music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown...
, Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, the Melvins
The Melvins
The Melvins are an American band that formed in 1983. They usually perform as a trio, but in recent years have performed as a four piece with two drummers. Since 1984, singer and guitarist Buzz Osborne and drummer Dale Crover have been the band's constant members...
, Beatmasters
Beatmasters
The Beatmasters are a team of dance music songwriters, musicians and producers who were successful as artists in their own right in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s and then went on to produce and remix records for many other groups...
, Septic Death
Septic Death
Septic Death was a hardcore punk band fronted by artist Brian "Pushead" Schroeder on vocals. Septic Death's music became a major influence on bands like Integrity, Citizens Arrest, Infest, and many other bands tied to the hardcore punk, thrashcore, crust punk etc. scenes...
, Abe Schwartz
Abe Schwartz
Abe Schwartz was a well-known klezmer musician of the 1920s.Abe was born outside of Bucharest, Romania, and moved to the United States in 1899...
, Ivo Papasov, Naftule Brandwein
Naftule Brandwein
Naftule Brandwein, or Naftuli Brandwine, was a Jewish clarinetist and influential klezmer musician.- Early life :Brandwein was born in Przemyslany, Poland-Galicia , into a family of klezmer musicians, part of the Stretiner Hasidic dynasty founded by Rabbi Yehuda Hirsch Brandwein of Stratin...
, Repulsion
Repulsion (band)
Repulsion is an early grindcore / death metal band from Flint, Michigan. They have been called the "most influential grindcore band of all time".-History:...
, Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...
, Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann was an American composer noted for his work in motion pictures.An Academy Award-winner , Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo...
, Santana
Santana (band)
Santana is a rock band based around guitarist Carlos Santana and founded in the late 1960s. It first came to public attention after their performing the song "Soul Sacrifice" at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, when their Latin rock provided a contrast to other acts on the bill...
, Extreme Noise Terror
Extreme Noise Terror
Extreme Noise Terror are a British crust punk / grindcore band originally formed in Ipswich, England in 1985. The band are widely considered one of the earliest and most influential European grindcore bands, and particularly the forefathers of the crustgrind subgenre.Notable for one of the...
, Conway Twitty
Conway Twitty
Conway Twitty , born Harold Lloyd Jenkins, was an American country music artist. He also had success in early rock and roll, R&B, and pop music. He held the record for the most number one singles of any act with 55 No. 1 Billboard country hits until George Strait broke the record in 2006...
, Siege
Siege (band)
Siege was an American punk/Thrashcore band from Weymouth, Massachusetts. They were active in the 1980s Boston hardcore scene from 1983 to 1985, and reunited briefly in the early 1990s....
, Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....
, Corrosion of Conformity
Corrosion of Conformity
Corrosion of Conformity is an American heavy metal band from Raleigh, North Carolina formed in 1982. For almost the majority of its existence, the band has consisted of guitarist Woody Weatherman, bassist Mike Dean , drummer Reed Mullin and vocalist and rhythm...
, Massacre, Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones
Quincy Delightt Jones, Jr. is an American record producer and musician. A conductor, musical arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend...
, Sam Fuller, Funkadelic
Funkadelic
Funkadelic was an American band most prominent during the 1970s. The band and its sister act Parliament, both led by George Clinton, began the funk music culture of that decade.-History:...
, Carcass
Carcass (band)
Carcass are an extreme metal band from England, who formed in 1985 and disbanded in 1995. A reunion was enacted in 2008 without one of its original members, drummer Ken Owen, due to health reasons....
, Liberace
Liberace
Wladziu Valentino Liberace , best known simply as Liberace, was a famous American pianist and vocalist.In a career that spanned four decades of concerts, recordings, motion pictures, television and endorsements, Liberace became world-renowned...
, Jan Hammer
Jan Hammer
Jan Hammer is a composer, pianist and keyboardist. He first gained his most visible audience while playing keyboards with the Mahavishnu Orchestra in the early 1970s, as well as his film scores for television and film including "Miami Vice Theme" and "Crockett's Theme", from the popular 1980s...
, Eddie Blackwell
Ed Blackwell
Ed Blackwell was an American jazz drummer born in New Orleans, Louisiana, known for his extensive work with Ornette Coleman....
, Charlie Haden
Charlie Haden
Charles Edward Haden is an American jazz musician. He is a double bassist, probably best known for his long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman...
, Mick Harris
Mick Harris
Mick Harris commonly known and credited both as Mick Harris or occasionally M.J. Harris, is an English musician....
, Carole King
Carole King
Carole King is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. King and her former husband Gerry Goffin wrote more than two dozen chart hits for numerous artists during the 1960s, many of which have become standards. As a singer, King had an album, Tapestry, top the U.S...
, Red Garland
Red Garland
William "Red" Garland was an American hard bop jazz pianist whose block chord style, in part originated by Milt Buckner, influenced many forthcoming pianists in the jazz idiom.-Beginnings:...
, Boredoms, Jerry Reed
Jerry Reed
Jerry Reed Hubbard , known professionally as Jerry Reed, was an American country music singer, innovative guitarist, songwriter, and actor who appeared in more than a dozen films...
, SPK
SPK (band)
SPK, formed in 1978 in Sydney, Australia, was a 1980s and early 1990s industrial music and noise music group. One member, Graeme Revell, would later go on to become a successful Hollywood movie composer.-History:...
and Roger Williams
Roger Williams (pianist)
Roger Williams was an American popular music pianist. As of 2004, he had released 116 albums.-Biography:...
in addition to Zorn's previously identified touchstone
Touchstone
A touchstone is a small tablet of dark stone such as fieldstone, slate, or lydite, used for assaying precious metal alloys. It has a finely grained surface on which soft metals leave a visible trace.-History:The touchstone was used in ancient Greece...
s. The final recording from the band Absinthe
Absinthe (album)
Absinthe is the final recording from the band Naked City. Unlike the band's other genre-mixing releases, the music on Absinthe is consistently in an ambient and noise style....
(1993) featured a blend of ambient
Ambient music
Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...
noise styled compositions with tracks titled after the works of Paul Verlaine
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...
, Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
and other figures in the fin de siècle
Fin de siècle
Fin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...
Decadent movement
Decadent movement
The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.-Overview:...
, and a dedication to Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
. Zorn disbanded Naked City after this release but briefly reformed the band for a European tour in 2003.
Zorn also formed Painkiller
Painkiller (band)
Painkiller is a band originally formed in 1991. Their style can be described as a mix of avant-garde jazz and grindcore; later albums also incorporated elements of ambient and dub....
with Bill Laswell
Bill Laswell
Bill Laswell is an American bassist, producer and record label owner....
on bass and Mick Harris
Mick Harris
Mick Harris commonly known and credited both as Mick Harris or occasionally M.J. Harris, is an English musician....
on drums in 1991. Painkiller's first two releases Guts of a Virgin
Guts of a Virgin
Guts of a Virgin is the first EP by Painkiller, a band featuring John Zorn, Bill Laswell and Mick Harris. It contains twelve tracks and was released on the Toy's Factory label in Japan and the Earache label in England in 1991...
(1991) and Buried Secrets
Buried Secrets
Buried Secrets is the second EP by Painkiller released by Toy's Factory in Japan and Earache in the UK, featuring guest appearances from Justin Broadrick and G.C. Green from Godflesh.-Reception:...
(1992) also featured short grindcore
Grindcore
Grindcore is an extreme genre of music that started in the early- to mid-1980s. It draws inspiration from some of the most abrasive music genres – including death metal, industrial music, noise and the more extreme varieties of hardcore punk....
and free jazz
Free jazz
Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...
inspired compositions. They released their first live album, Rituals: Live in Japan
Rituals: Live in Japan
Rituals: Live in Japan is a live CD by Painkiller, a band featuring John Zorn, Bill Laswell, and Mick Harris, performing live in Tokyo in 1991 with guest guitar and vocals from Haino Keiji. The album was released on the Japanese label, Toys Factory, in 1993....
on the Japanese Toys Factory label in 1993 followed by the double CD Execution Ground
Execution Ground
Execution Ground is a double CD by Painkiller, a band featuring John Zorn, Bill Laswell, and Mick Harris. The second disc contains ambient dub versions of two tracks...
(1994) which featured longer dub
Dub music
Dub is a genre of music which grew out of reggae music in the 1960s, and is commonly considered a subgenre, though it has developed to extend beyond the scope of reggae...
and ambient
Ambient music
Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...
styled pieces. A second live album Talisman: Live in Nagoya
Talisman: Live in Nagoya
Talisman: Live in Nagoya is a live album by Painkiller, a band featuring John Zorn, Bill Laswell, and Mick Harris, performing live in Nagoya, Japan.-Reception:...
was released in 2002 and the band was featured on Zorn's 50th Birthday Celebration Volume 12
50th Birthday Celebration Volume 12
-Personnel:*John Zorn – alto saxophone*Bill Laswell – bass*Hamid Drake – drums*Mike Patton – voice...
(2005) with Hamid Drake
Hamid Drake
Hamid Drake is an American jazz drummer and percussionist. He lives in Chicago, IL but spends much of his time traveling around the world for concerts and studio dates....
replacing Harris on drums and guest vocalist Mike Patton
Mike Patton
Michael Allan "Mike" Patton is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and actor, best known as the lead singer of the metal/experimental rock band Faith No More. He has also sung for Mr...
.
Both bands attracted worldwide interest, particularly in Japan, where Zorn had relocated following a three-month residency in Tokyo. Zorn collaborated with, and produced, numerous Japanese 'noise' artists including Merzbow
Merzbow
is the main recording name of the Japanese noise musician , born in 1956. Since 1979 he has released in excess of 350 recordings.The name "Merzbow" comes from German artist Kurt Schwitters' artwork, "Merzbau”. This was chosen to reflect Akita's dada influence and junk art aesthetic...
, Otomo Yoshihide, Melt Banana and frequent collaborator Yamatsuka Eye. Many of these artists have now released albums on Tzadik and some regularly travel to New York to perform.
Releases from both bands were criticized for their graphic album covers. The cover of the eponymous album by Naked City
Naked City (band)
Naked City was an avant-garde music group led by saxophonist and composer John Zorn. Active primarily in New York City from 1988 to 1993, Naked City was initiated by Zorn as a "composition workshop" to test the limits of composition in a traditional rock band lineup...
used the Weegee
Weegee
Weegee was the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig , a photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography....
photograph 'Corpse with Revolver C.A. 1940' which shows a gangland killing
Gangland killing
A gangland killing is a murder carried out by organized criminals. According to FBI Uniform Crime Reports, there were 425 gangland killings from 2000 to 2004, 0.6% of all murders committed in the United States during that time...
as did their later live album
Naked City Live, Vol. 1: The Knitting Factory 1989
Naked City Live is the only live album released by Naked City. All of these songs, with the exception of "Erotico", "the Way I Feel" and "Skate Key", were later recorded in the studio for the band's debut album.-Track listing:#"Batman" – 2:07...
. Zorn left Electra Nonesuch
Nonesuch Records
Nonesuch Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed by Warner Bros. Records.-Company history:Nonesuch was founded in 1964 by Jac Holzman to produce "fine records at the same price as a trade paperback", which would be half the price of a normal LP...
after the company's response to the artwork for Naked City's
Naked City (band)
Naked City was an avant-garde music group led by saxophonist and composer John Zorn. Active primarily in New York City from 1988 to 1993, Naked City was initiated by Zorn as a "composition workshop" to test the limits of composition in a traditional rock band lineup...
Grand Guignol
Grand Guignol (album)
Grand Guignol is the second full-length studio album released by John Zorn's band Naked City in 1992 on the Japanese Avant label. The album followed Torture Garden, which was a compilation of "hardcore miniatures" from Naked City and Grand Guignol...
, releasing the remaining Naked City
Naked City (band)
Naked City was an avant-garde music group led by saxophonist and composer John Zorn. Active primarily in New York City from 1988 to 1993, Naked City was initiated by Zorn as a "composition workshop" to test the limits of composition in a traditional rock band lineup...
albums on a Japanese-based label, Avant
Avant Records
Avant Records was a record label based in Japan specializing in avant-garde and experimental music. The label was started by composer and saxophonist John Zorn in 1992, as an offshoot of the DIW label...
. The Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence protested against Zorn because they believed that the images used in the graphic design of Naked City's Torture Garden
Torture Garden (album)
Torture Garden is an album by John Zorn's band Naked City featuring Yamatsuka Eye on vocals. The album is a compilation of the "hardcore miniatures" that were also released on Naked City and Grand Guignol. Unlike other Naked City albums, there are no breaks between the screaming, the seemingly...
and Leng Tch'e
Leng Tch'e (album)
Leng Tch'e is the fourth release from John Zorn's band Naked City. It consists of a single track, running at just over half an hour. It was first released on the Japanese Toys Factory label in 1992...
portrayed degrading images of Asian people. To avoid problems, Zorn removed the original albums from retail sale and later replaced the artwork with new packaging titled Black Box
Black Box (album)
Black Box is a compilation album by John Zorn's band Naked City featuring Yamatsuka Eye on vocals. The album is a collection of the "hardcore miniatures" from Naked City and Grand Guignol that were originally released on Torture Garden in 1990 and the extended piece Leng Tch'e which was only...
. Painkiller's Guts of a Virgin
Guts of a Virgin
Guts of a Virgin is the first EP by Painkiller, a band featuring John Zorn, Bill Laswell and Mick Harris. It contains twelve tracks and was released on the Toy's Factory label in Japan and the Earache label in England in 1991...
EP was banned in the UK after customs seized and destroyed the first shipment for violating the Obscene Publications Act. Execution Ground
Execution Ground
Execution Ground is a double CD by Painkiller, a band featuring John Zorn, Bill Laswell, and Mick Harris. The second disc contains ambient dub versions of two tracks...
was also released with the original cover photograph of a lynching
Lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
removed. Zorn later re-released the Naked City and Painkiller albums as box sets with restored artwork after forming his own record label.
Zorn recorded Hemophiliac
Hemophiliac (album)
Hemophiliac is a limited edition album of improvised experimental music by John Zorn, Ikue Mori and Mike Patton. The album was released as a limited edition 2 CD set of 2,500 copies, personally autographed by Zorn, Patton and Mori, on Zorn's own label Tzadik Records.-Reception:The Allmusic review...
in 2002 with Mike Patton
Mike Patton
Michael Allan "Mike" Patton is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and actor, best known as the lead singer of the metal/experimental rock band Faith No More. He has also sung for Mr...
and Ikue Mori
Ikue Mori
, also known as Ikue Ile, is a drummer, composer, and graphic designer.-Biography:Ikue Mori was born and raised in Japan. She says she had little interest in music before hearing punk rock...
which continued his interest in hardcore improvisations. The first release from this trio was a double CD set which was signed by the performers. Limited to 2,500 copies this album soon became a highly sought after collectors item. The trio also released a live recording as part of Zorn's 50th Birthday Celebration Series.
In 2006 Zorn formed the hardcore voice/bass/drums trio of Mike Patton
Mike Patton
Michael Allan "Mike" Patton is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and actor, best known as the lead singer of the metal/experimental rock band Faith No More. He has also sung for Mr...
, Trevor Dunn
Trevor Dunn
Trevor Roy Dunn is an American composer, bass guitarist and double bassist.Dunn came to prominence in the 1990s with the experimental band Mr. Bungle. He has since worked in an array of musical styles, notably with singer and Mr...
, and Joey Baron
Joey Baron
Joey Baron is an American avant-garde jazz drummer probably best known for his work with Bill Frisell, Stan Getz, Steve Kuhn, and John Zorn...
which became known as the Moonchild Trio. That year two albums of Zorn's compositions performed by the trio were released: Moonchild: Songs Without Words
Moonchild: Songs Without Words
Moonchild: Songs Without Words is an 2006 album by John Zorn featuring performances by Joey Baron, Mike Patton, and Trevor Dunn . It was inspired in part by Aleister Crowley, Antonin Artaud and Edgard Varèse...
and Astronome
Astronome
Astronome is an album by John Zorn featuring the "Moonchild Trio" of Joey Baron, Mike Patton and Trevor Dunn. It is the second album by the trio following Moonchild: Songs Without Words....
. A third album with the trio, but also featuring Zorn, Ikue Mori
Ikue Mori
, also known as Ikue Ile, is a drummer, composer, and graphic designer.-Biography:Ikue Mori was born and raised in Japan. She says she had little interest in music before hearing punk rock...
, Jamie Saft
Jamie Saft
Jamie Saft is a keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist, composer, sound engineer and producer living in upstate NY. Saft was born in Flushing Queens, New York in 1971 and is a graduate of both Tufts University and the New England Conservatory of Music. He has performed and recorded with John Zorn,...
and chorus, Six Litanies for Heliogabalus
Six Litanies for Heliogabalus
Six Litanies for Heliogabalus is an album by John Zorn. It is the third album to feature the "Moonchild Trio" of Mike Patton, Joey Baron and Trevor Dunn, following Moonchild: Songs Without Words and Astronome and the first to feature additional performers...
, was released in 2007. Their fourth release The Crucible
The Crucible (John Zorn album)
The Crucible is an album by John Zorn. It is the fourth album to feature the "Moonchild Trio" of Mike Patton, Joey Baron and Trevor Dunn, following Moonchild: Songs Without Words , Astronome and Six Litanies for Heliogabalus...
appeared in 2008.
Concert music
John Zorn has established a diverse repertoire of music written for chamber musicChamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
ians and orchestras. As Zorn's interest in Naked City waned he "started hearing classical music in [his] head again." Zorn began composing the suites Elegy
Elegy (John Zorn album)
Elegy is an album by John Zorn. It is a contemporary classical chamber music piece dedicated to Jean Genet consisting of four movements titled after colors.-Reception:...
(1992) (dedicated to Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
) and Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht (album)
Kristallnacht is an album by John Zorn that is based on the events before, during, and following the infamous Night of Broken Glass. Zorn first released the album in 1993 on the Japanese Eva label and subsequently in 1995 on his own Tzadik Records label....
(1993) both of which drew on chamber music
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
arrangements of strings, percussion and electronic instruments.
Zorn was quoted in 1998 as saying "Sometimes I get the feeling that people just don't see me as a composer, but it's what I've always been since I was eight years old... I've always thought of myself as a composer, but the world has had a hard time looking at me as a composer because a lot of what I compose is controversial." The establishment of Tzadik allowed Zorn to release many compositions which he had written, over the previous two decades, for classical
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
ensembles. Zorn's earliest released 'classical' composition (for five flutes), 'Christabel' was written in 1972 and first appeared on Angelus Novus
Angelus Novus (album)
Angelus Novus is an album of contemporary classical music by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn including compositions written in 1972 , and 1983 .-Reception:...
in 1998. Redbird
Redbird (John Zorn album)
-Personnel:*Jim Pugliese – bass drums, percussion*Carol Emanuel – harp *Erik Friedlander – cello *Jill Jaffe – viola *John Zorn – conductor...
(containing new compositions for bass drums and a harp/viola/cello/percussion quartet inspired by Agnes Martin
Agnes Martin
Agnes Bernice Martin was an American abstract painter, often referred to as a minimalist; Martin considered herself an abstract expressionist.She won a National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1998....
) and The Book of Heads (35 etude
Étude
An étude , is an instrumental musical composition, most commonly of considerable difficulty, usually designed to provide practice material for perfecting a particular technical skill. The tradition of writing études emerged in the early 19th century with the rapidly growing popularity of the piano...
s for solo guitar written in 1978 for Eugene Chadbourne
Eugene Chadbourne
Eugene Chadbourne is an American improvisor, guitarist and banjoist. Highly eclectic and unconventional, Chadbourne's most formative influence is free jazz. He has also been a reviewer for Allmusic and a contributor to Maximum RocknRoll.Chadbourne started out playing rock and roll guitar, but...
and realised by Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot born May 21, 1954) is an American guitarist and composer.His own work has touched on many styles, including no wave, free jazz, and Cuban music. Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notably Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and composer John Zorn.-Biography:Ribot was...
) were released in 1995 as part of Tzadik
Tzadik Records
Tzadik Records is a record label based in New York City specialising in avant-garde and experimental music. The label was established by the eclectic composer and saxophonist John Zorn in 1995; Zorn is the executive producer of all Tzadik releases...
's Composer Series. Zorn credits the composition of his 1988 piece for string quartet
String quartet
A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
"Cat O' Nine Tails", commissioned and originally released by the Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...
, to awakening him to the possibilities of writing for classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
ians. This composition was featured on The String Quartets
The String Quartets (John Zorn album)
-Track listing:# "Cat O'Nine Tails" – 13:44# "The Dead Man" – 12: 27# "Memento Mori" – 28:57# "Kol Nidre" – 8:32*Recorded at Avatar in New York City in December 1998, January, April and May, 1999-Personnel:*Mark Feldman – violin*Erik Friedlander – cello...
(1999) and Cartoon S/M
Cartoon S/M
- Track listing :* Disc One:# "Cat O’Nine Tails" - 15:35# "Carny" - 12:35# "For Your Eyes Only" - 15:02# "Kol Nidre" - 7:55* Disc Two:# "The Dead Man" - 12:44# "Music for Children" - 14:29# "Memento Mori" - 26:28...
(2000) along with variations on "Kol Nidre", inspired by the Jewish prayer of atonement
Kol Nidre
Kol Nidre is an Aramaic declaration recited in the synagogue before the beginning of the evening service on every Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement...
which was written at the same time as (but not part of) the first Masada
Masada (band)
Masada is a musical group with rotating personnel led by American saxophonist and composer John Zorn since the early 1990s.Masada is as much a "songbook" as a group, comprising more than 500 relatively brief compositions...
book. Duras: Duchamp
Duras: Duchamp
-Track listing:# "Duras: Premiere Livre" - 14:41# "Duras: Deuxième Livre" - 0:51# "Duras: Troisième Livre" - 16:46# "Duras: Epilogue" - 1:46# "Étant Donnés: 69 Paroxyms for Marcel Duchamp" - 13:17...
(1997) consists of two 'tribute' compositions, the first dedicated to Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras was a French writer and film director.-Background:...
has four movements lasting roughly thirty-four minutes influenced by the composition of Oliver Messiaen, the second "69 Paroxyms for Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
" lasts just over thirteen minutes. Aporias: Requia for Piano and Orchestra
Aporias: Requia for Piano and Orchestra
Aporias: Requia for Piano and Orchestra is an album of contemporary classical music by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn performed by Stephen Drury, the Hungarian Radio Childrens Choir and the American Composers Orchestra....
(1998) was Zorn's first full-scale orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
l release featuring pianist Stephen Drury
Stephen Drury
Stephen Drury is an American pianist, conductor and electronic musician.Drury has performed and recorded a range of compositions by classical and contemporary composers including Igor Stravinsky, Charles Ives, John Cage, Frederic Rzewski, and John Zorn...
, the Hungarian Radio Children's Choir and the American Composers Orchestra
American Composers Orchestra
The American Composers Orchestra is an American orchestra based in New York City. It is the only orchestra in the world dedicated solely to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers...
conducted by Dennis Russell Davies
Dennis Russell Davies
Dennis Russell Davies is an American conductor and pianist. He studied piano and conducting at the Juilliard School where he received his doctorate...
.
Songs from the Hermetic Theatre
Songs from the Hermetic Theatre
-Track listing:# "American Magus" - 14:10# "In the Very Eye of Night" - 11:21# "The Nerve Key" - 9:36# "BeuysBlock" - 16:14*Recorded in March 2001-Personnel:*Jennifer Choi - violins...
(2001) featured four experimental compositions; "American Magus", was Zorn's first piece of electronic music dedicated to Harry Smith
Harry Everett Smith
Harry Everett Smith was an American archivist, ethnomusicologist, student of anthropology, record collector, experimental filmmaker, artist, bohemian and mystic...
; "BeuysBlock", a meditation on the work of Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys was a German performance artist, sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art.His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his "extended definition of art" and the idea of social...
; "In the Very Eye of Night", a tribute to Maya Deren
Maya Deren
Maya Deren , born Eleanora Derenkowsky, was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s...
; and "The Nerve Key", Zorn's first piece of computer music. Madness, Love and Mysticism
Madness, Love and Mysticism
Madness, Love and Mysticism is an album of contemporary classical music by American composer John Zorn released in 2001 on Zorn's Tzadik label.-Reception:...
(2001) featured "Le Mômo", inspired by Antonin Artaud
Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...
, performed by Stephen Drury
Stephen Drury
Stephen Drury is an American pianist, conductor and electronic musician.Drury has performed and recorded a range of compositions by classical and contemporary composers including Igor Stravinsky, Charles Ives, John Cage, Frederic Rzewski, and John Zorn...
(piano) and Jennifer Choi
Jennifer Choi
Jennifer Choi is an American violinist based in New York City. Choi graduated from the Juilliard School and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music....
(violin); "Untitled", dedicated to Joseph Cornell
Joseph Cornell
Joseph Cornell was an American artist and sculptor, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage...
, a cello solo for Erik Friedlander
Erik Friedlander
Erik Friedlander is an American cellist and composer based in New York City.A veteran of NYC's experimental downtown scene, Friedlander has worked in many contexts, but is perhaps best known for his frequent collaborations with saxophonist/composer John Zorn...
; and "Amour Fou" featuring the trio. Chimeras
Chimeras (album)
Chimeras is an album of contemporary classical music by American composer John Zorn featuring a 12 part piece inspired by Arnold Schoenberg's atonal composition "Pierrot Lunaire"...
(2001) was inspired by Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
's atonal composition "Pierrot Lunaire
Pierrot Lunaire
Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds 'Pierrot lunaire' , commonly known simply as Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 , is a melodrama by Arnold Schoenberg...
".
Several of Zorn's later concert works drew inspiration from mysticism and the works of Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
in particular. Magick
Magick (album)
Magick is an album of contemporary classical music by American avant-garde composer John Zorn.-Reception:The Allmusic review awarded the album 3½ stars.- Track listing :# "Necronomicon: Conjurations" - 2:45# "Necronomicon: The Magus" - 6:24...
(2004) featured the Crowley Quartet on "Necronomicon
Necronomicon
The Necronomicon is a fictional grimoire appearing in the stories by horror writer H. P. Lovecraft and his followers. It was first mentioned in Lovecraft's 1924 short story "The Hound", written in 1922, though its purported author, the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, had been quoted a year earlier in...
: for string quartet" and "Sortilège" written for two bass clarinets. A 2009 performance of "Necronomicon" was described as "...frenetic vortexes of violent, abrasive motion, separated by eerily becalmed, suspenseful sections with moody, even prayerful melodies. The music is sensational and evocative, but never arbitrary; you always sense a guiding hand behind the mayhem". Mysterium
Mysterium (album)
- Track listing :# "Orphée" - 9:14# "Frammenti del Sappho" - 13:37# "Walpurgisnacht: Part 1" - 2:52# "Walpurgisnacht: Part 2" - 5:11# "Walpurgisnacht: Part 3" - 1:53- Personnel :* Tara O'Connor – flute* Lois Martin – viola* June Han – harp...
released in 2005 featured "Orphée" performed by a sextet of flute, viola, harp, harpsichord and electronics; "Frammenti Del Sappho" for female chorus; and "Wulpurgisnacht" for string trio. Rituals
Rituals (album)
-Track listing:# "I" - 4:48# "II" - 7:45# "III" - 4:21# "IV" - 5:21# "V" - 4:19-Personnel:*Jennifer Choi – violin*Stephen Drury – piano, harpsichord, celeste, organ*Brad Lubman – conductor*Tara O'Connor – flute, alto flute, piccolo...
(2005) featured Zorn's five movement opera for mezzo soprano and ten instruments composed for the Bayreuth Opera Festival
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented...
in 1998. From Silence to Sorcery
From Silence to Sorcery
From Silence to Sorcery is an album of contemporary classical music by John Zorn which features three instrumental works touching upon themes of magic and mysticism. "Goetia" is a set of variations for solo violin written in 2002...
(2007) features three compositions; "Goetia" consists of eight variations for solo violin performed by Jennifer Choi
Jennifer Choi
Jennifer Choi is an American violinist based in New York City. Choi graduated from the Juilliard School and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music....
; "Gris-Gris" is composition for thirteen tuned drums performed by William Winant
William Winant
William Winant is an American percussionist.In addition to his work in contemporary classical music -- notably performing Lou Harrison's compositions—Winant has worked in a variety of genres, including noise rock, free improvisation and jazz. Notable collaborators include Glenn Spearman, Thurston...
; and "Shibboleth" is a tribute to Paul Celan
Paul Celan
Paul Celan was a poet and translator...
scored for clavichord, strings and percussion.
Zorn's concert works have been performed all over the world and he has received commissions from the New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...
and Brooklyn Philharmonic
Brooklyn Philharmonic
The Brooklyn Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, commonly known as the Brooklyn Philharmonic, is an American orchestra based in the borough of Brooklyn, in New York City...
. When the piece for the Brooklyn Philharmonic was played at New Music America
New Music America
New Music America was an American festival of experimental or Downtown new music.The festival began at The Kitchen in New York City in 1979. In this first year, the festival was actually called New Music New York....
festival, he wrote in the pamphlet with the music:
Less than an actual music festival, New Music America is a one-sided overview that's more about politics, marketing, and sales than about the music it pretends to support... it's no more than a convention for the people in the music business who try to "out-hip" each other in the manipulation of artists. This postmodern yuppie tendency of business people dictating creative policy to artists is a very real danger that I intend to avoid at all costs.
Masada Books
Kristallnacht (album)
Kristallnacht is an album by John Zorn that is based on the events before, during, and following the infamous Night of Broken Glass. Zorn first released the album in 1993 on the Japanese Eva label and subsequently in 1995 on his own Tzadik Records label....
in November 1992, his premiere work of radical
Radicalization
Radicalization is the process in which an individual changes from passiveness or activism to become more revolutionary, militant or extremist. Radicalization is often associated with youth, adversity, alienation, social exclusion, poverty, or the perception of injustice to self or others.-...
Jewish culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
, featuring a suite
Suite
In music, a suite is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert setting rather than as accompaniment; they may be extracts from an opera, ballet , or incidental music to a play or film , or they may be entirely original movements .In the...
of seven compositions reflecting the infamous Night of Broken Glass in late 1938 where Jews were targets of violence and destruction in Germany and Austria. The experience prompted Zorn to further explore his Jewish heritage and composing using Jewish musical styles. Zorn then set himself the task of writing 100 compositions within a year incorporating klezmer
Klezmer
Klezmer is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations...
styles with his already broad musical palette. Within three years, the number of compositions had grown to 200 and became known as the first Masada
Masada (band)
Masada is a musical group with rotating personnel led by American saxophonist and composer John Zorn since the early 1990s.Masada is as much a "songbook" as a group, comprising more than 500 relatively brief compositions...
book. Zorn explained:
The initial releases featuring this compositional approach were ten albums by Masada
Masada (band)
Masada is a musical group with rotating personnel led by American saxophonist and composer John Zorn since the early 1990s.Masada is as much a "songbook" as a group, comprising more than 500 relatively brief compositions...
appearing on the Japanese DIW
DIW Records
DIW Records is a Japanese record label. It is a subsidiary label of Disc Union and specializes in jazz and avant garde music. Kazunori Sugiyama was an executive producer for the label before starting Tzadik Records with John Zorn.-Discography:...
label from 1994. Masada
Masada (band)
Masada is a musical group with rotating personnel led by American saxophonist and composer John Zorn since the early 1990s.Masada is as much a "songbook" as a group, comprising more than 500 relatively brief compositions...
(later referred to as 'acoustic' Masada) was an Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....
-inspired quartet with Zorn (alto saxophone), Joey Baron
Joey Baron
Joey Baron is an American avant-garde jazz drummer probably best known for his work with Bill Frisell, Stan Getz, Steve Kuhn, and John Zorn...
(drums), Dave Douglas
Dave Douglas (trumpeter)
Dave Douglas is an American jazz trumpeter and composer whose music derives from many non-jazz musical styles, including classical music, folk music from European countries and Klezmer. He has been a member of the experimental big band Orange Then Blue...
(trumpet), and Greg Cohen
Greg Cohen
A native of Los Angeles, bassist Greg Cohen has been playing in various acclaimed music groups since the '60s. He is perhaps best known for his work with John Zorn's Masada quartet; more recently he has been touring with Ornette Coleman, and performed on Coleman's much-praised Sound Grammar...
(bass) that performed jazz-styled compositions based on Sephardic scales and rhythms. The original Masada
Masada (band)
Masada is a musical group with rotating personnel led by American saxophonist and composer John Zorn since the early 1990s.Masada is as much a "songbook" as a group, comprising more than 500 relatively brief compositions...
albums were titled after the first ten letters of the Hebrew Alphabet
Hebrew alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Assyrian script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic. There have been two...
– Alef
Masada: Alef
Masada: Alef, also known as Masada 1, is a 1994 album by American jazz composer and saxophonist John Zorn featuring the Masada Quartet performing compositions inspired by Zorn's examination of Jewish culture...
, Beit
Masada: Beit
Masada: Beit, also known as Masada 2, is a 1995 album by American jazz composer and saxophonist John Zorn. It is the second album of Masada recordings.-Reception:...
, Gimel
Masada: Gimel
Masada: Gimel, also known as Masada 3, is a 1995 album by American composer and saxophonist John Zorn released on the Japanese DIW label....
, Dalet
Masada: Dalet
Masada: Dalet, also known as Masada 4, is a 1995 album by American composer and saxophonist John Zorn. It is the fourth album of Masada recordings. The original pressing of this album was never available for retail sale as it was given away by DIW in exchange of the proof of buying the first three...
, Hei
Masada: Hei
Masada: Hei, also known as Masada 5, is a 1995 album by American composer and saxophonist John Zorn. It is the fifth album of Masada recordings.-Reception:...
, Vav
Masada: Vav
-Track listing:#"Debir" – 8:02#"Shebuah" – 8:09#"Mikreh" – 3:57#"Tiferet" – 4:05#"Nevalah" – 2:10#"Miktav" – 9:40#"Nashon" – 8:37#"Avelut" – 7:31#"Beer Sheba" – 8:50...
, Zayin
Masada: Zayin
-Track listing:# "Shevet" – 7:58# "Hath-Arob" – 3:24# "Mahshav" – 6:16# "Shamor" – 5:09# "Bacharach" – 1:24# "Otoit" – 3:27# "Nevuah" – 8:22# "Kedem" – 9:55# "Zemer" – 2:14# "Evel" – 5:35# "Tekufah" – 6:59...
, Het
Masada: Het
Masada: Het, also known as Masaday 8, is a 1997 album by American composer and saxophonist John Zorn released on the Japanese DIW label...
, Tet
Masada: Tet
- Track listing :# "Chayah" – 9:33# "Karet" – 1:56# "Moshav" – 6:50# "Leshem" – 4:36# "Kochot" – 5:15# "Meholalot" – 8:50# "Kedushah" – 6:18# "Ner Tamid" – 4:07# "Acharei Mot" – 9:04# "Jachin" – 5:37* Recorded at Avatar, New York City on April 21, 1997...
and Yod
Masada: Yod
Masada: Yod, also known as Masada 10, is a 1998 album by American composer and saxophonist John Zorn released on the Japanese DIW label. It is the tenth album of Masada recordings.-Reception:...
– and contained compositions with Hebrew titles. Further releases by Masada
Masada (band)
Masada is a musical group with rotating personnel led by American saxophonist and composer John Zorn since the early 1990s.Masada is as much a "songbook" as a group, comprising more than 500 relatively brief compositions...
consisted of live performances of the band recorded in Jerusalem
Live in Jerusalem 1994
- Track listing :* Disc one# "Piram" - 9:52# "Bith Aneth" - 11:57# "Lachish" - 3:35# "Peliyot" - 7:11# "Hadasha" - 10:53# "Ravayah" - 3:35# "Zebdi" - 1:53# "Tirzah" - 8:07# "Hekhal" - 3:31* Disc two# "Kanah" - 6:12# "Shilhim" - 2:39...
, Taipei
Live in Taipei 1995
Live in Taipei is a double live album by John Zorn's Masada recorded at the Crown Theatre in Taiwan's capital city Taipei.-Reception:The Allmusic review by Joclyn Layne awarded the album 3½ stars stating "With so many exceptional recordings available of the Masada quartet, this one may be...
, Middleheim
Live in Middleheim 1999
-Track listing:# "Nevuah" – 9:48# "Sippur" – 3:20# "Hath-Arob" – 5:20# "Kedushah" – 6:53# "Ne’eman" – 13:05# "Karet" – 2:03# "Kochot" – 4:57# "Piram" – 12:13# "Paran" – 6:00# "Ashnah" – 7:19# "Tahah" – 7:26*Recorded live in Antwerp on August 15, 1999...
, Seville
Live in Sevilla 2000
-Track listing:# "Ne’eman" – 13:00# "Katzatz" – 5:09# "Hadasha" – 11:11# "Beeroth" – 7:30# "Yoreh" – 10:09# "Hazor" – 6:47# "Nashon" – 10:11# "Lakom" – 5:24# "Bith Aneth" – 9:35*Recorded live in Seville, Spain on July 25, 2000-Personnel:...
and in New York at the Knitting Factory
First Live 1993
First Live 1993 is a live album by John Zorn's Masada documenting their premier live appearance at the Knitting Factory in September, 1993.-Reception:...
and at Tonic
Live at Tonic 2001
- Track listing :* Disc one# "Intro" - 1:23# "Karaim" - 17:50# "Ner Tamid" - 5:07# "Acharei Mot" - 11:07# "Kisofim" - 7:12# "Jachin" - 6:30# "Malkhut" - 4:52# "Nashim" - 6:38* Disc two# "Intro" - 0:30# "Lilin" - 14:43# "Khebar" - 5:59...
and as a DVD
Masada Live at Tonic 1999
Masada Live at Tonic is a DVD of a live performance by John Zorn's Masada filmed at Tonic in the summer of 1999.-Track listing:# "Hath-Arob"# "Sippur"# "Jair"# "Ne'eman"# "Kedushah"# "Beeroth"# "Kochot"# "Shechem"# "Paran"-Personnel:...
, and a double CD of unreleased studio recordings, Sanhedrin 1994-1997
Sanhedrin 1994-1997
-Track listing:*Disc One# "Piram" – 6:22# "Lebaoth" – 6:08# "Idalah Abal" – 7:38# "Midbar" – 5:06# "Zelah" – 4:27# "Katzatz" – 2:20# "Abidan" – 6:53# "Hekhal" – 3:07# "Tannaim" – 8:34# "Nefesh" – 5:40# "Neshamah" – 7:15# "Lakom" – 3:46...
(2005).
The Masada quartet performed at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of New York City's Upper West Side. Reynold Levy has been its president since 2002.-History and facilities:...
in March 2007 for what were billed as their final concerts. Zorn reformed the band as a sextet with Uri Caine
Uri Caine
Uri Caine is an American classical and jazz pianist and composer.-Early years:The son of Burton Caine, a professor at Temple Law School, Caine began playing piano at seven and studied with French jazz pianist Bernard Peiffer at 12. He later studied at the University of Pennsylvania where he came...
and Cyro Baptista
Cyro Baptista
Cyro Baptista is a Brazilian musician, teacher, and recording artist specializing in percussion in the genres of jazz and world music....
in 2009 saying:
The Masada Book has been performed by many different ensembles and musicians. The Masada String Trio composed of Greg Cohen (bass), Mark Feldman
Mark Feldman
Mark Feldman is an American jazz violinist.Feldman worked in Chicago from 1973 to 1980, and in Nashville, Tennessee from 1980 to 1986. He worked in New York City and Western Europe from 1986. Feldman often works with John Zorn, Sylvie Courvoisier, John Abercrombie, The Masada String Trio, Dave...
(violin), and Erik Friedlander
Erik Friedlander
Erik Friedlander is an American cellist and composer based in New York City.A veteran of NYC's experimental downtown scene, Friedlander has worked in many contexts, but is perhaps best known for his frequent collaborations with saxophonist/composer John Zorn...
(cello) regularly performs and records Zorn's Masada pieces. This group, with the addition of Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot born May 21, 1954) is an American guitarist and composer.His own work has touched on many styles, including no wave, free jazz, and Cuban music. Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notably Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and composer John Zorn.-Biography:Ribot was...
(guitar), Cyro Baptista (percussion), and Joey Baron (drums) also perform as the Bar Kohkba Sextet
Masada (band)
Masada is a musical group with rotating personnel led by American saxophonist and composer John Zorn since the early 1990s.Masada is as much a "songbook" as a group, comprising more than 500 relatively brief compositions...
. Electric Masada, the most recent regular Masada ensemble usually features Zorn, Baptista, Baron, and Ribot, along with Trevor Dunn
Trevor Dunn
Trevor Roy Dunn is an American composer, bass guitarist and double bassist.Dunn came to prominence in the 1990s with the experimental band Mr. Bungle. He has since worked in an array of musical styles, notably with singer and Mr...
(bass), Ikue Mori
Ikue Mori
, also known as Ikue Ile, is a drummer, composer, and graphic designer.-Biography:Ikue Mori was born and raised in Japan. She says she had little interest in music before hearing punk rock...
(electronics), Jamie Saft
Jamie Saft
Jamie Saft is a keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist, composer, sound engineer and producer living in upstate NY. Saft was born in Flushing Queens, New York in 1971 and is a graduate of both Tufts University and the New England Conservatory of Music. He has performed and recorded with John Zorn,...
(keyboards) and Kenny Wollesen
Kenny Wollesen
Kenny Wollesen is an American drummer and percussionist.Wollesen lives in New York City. He has recorded and toured with many musicians including Tom Waits, Sean Lennon, Ron Sexsmith, Bill Frisell, Norah Jones, Steven Bernstein and John Zorn. He is a founding member of the New Klezmer Trio and a...
(drums). A Tenth Anniversary Series of Masada recordings was released by Zorn beginning in 2003. The series featured five albums of Masada themes including Masada Guitars
Masada Guitars
Masada Anniversary Edition Vol. 1: Masada Guitars is the first album in a series of five releases celebrating the 10th anniversary of John Zorn's Masada songbook project.-History:...
by Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot born May 21, 1954) is an American guitarist and composer.His own work has touched on many styles, including no wave, free jazz, and Cuban music. Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notably Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and composer John Zorn.-Biography:Ribot was...
/Bill Frisell
Bill Frisell
William Richard "Bill" Frisell is an American guitarist and composer.One of the leading guitarists in jazz since the late 1980s, Frisell's eclectic music touches on progressive folk, classical music, country music, noise and more...
/Tim Sparks
Tim Sparks
Tim Sparks is an American acoustic guitar player, singer, arranger and composer.- Biography:Raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, he was given his first guitar when a bout of encephalitis kept him out of school for a year...
, Masada Recital
Masada Recital
Masada Anniversary Edition Vol. 4: Masada Recital is the fourth album in a series of five releases celebrating the 10th anniversary of John Zorn's Masada songbook project. It features 12 Masada songs performed by Sylvie Courvoisier on piano and Mark Feldman on violin...
by Mark Feldman
Mark Feldman
Mark Feldman is an American jazz violinist.Feldman worked in Chicago from 1973 to 1980, and in Nashville, Tennessee from 1980 to 1986. He worked in New York City and Western Europe from 1986. Feldman often works with John Zorn, Sylvie Courvoisier, John Abercrombie, The Masada String Trio, Dave...
& Sylvie Courvoisier
Sylvie Courvoisier
Sylvie Courvoisier is a Swiss composer and pianist.Courvoisier was born and raised in Switzerland. In 1998, she moved to Brooklyn, New York, where she currently resides. She co-leads the Sylvie Courvoisier/Mark Feldman Quartet and leads her own quintet, Lonelyville, and the Trio Abaton...
, Masada Rock
Masada Rock
Masada Anniversary Edition Vol. 5: Masada Rock is the fifth and final album in a series of five releases celebrating the 10th anniversary of John Zorn's Masada songbook project...
by Rashanim and two albums featuring various artists - Voices in the Wilderness
Voices in the Wilderness
Masada Anniversary Edition Volume 2: Voices in the Wilderness is the second album in a series of five releases celebrating the 10th anniversary of John Zorn's Masada songbook project....
and The Unknown Masada
The Unknown Masada
-Track listing:# "Kinyan" - 4:50# "Olamim" - 3:48# "Vehuel" - 5:32# "Shofetim" - 3:02# "Partzuf" - 4:22# "Zarach" - 6:57...
.
In 2004, Zorn began composing the second Masada Book, 'The Book of Angels', resulting in an additional 300 compositions. Zorn explained:
He has released several albums of Masada Book Two compositions performed by other artists. Recordings by the Jamie Saft Trio
Astaroth: Book of Angels Volume 1
Astaroth: Book of Angels Volume 1 is an album by the Jamie Saft Trio performing compositions from John Zorn's second Masada book, "The Book of Angels".- Track listing :# "Shalmiel" - 5:25# "Ygal" - 3:10# "Astaroth" - 6:11# "Ezeqeel" - 4:22...
, Masada String Trio
Azazel: Book of Angels Volume 2
Azazel: Book of Angels Volume 2 is an album by the Masada String Trio performing compositions from John Zorn's second Masada book, "The Book of Angels".-Reception:The Allmusic review awarded the album 3½ stars.- Track listing :# "Tufiel" - 6:22...
, Mark Feldman & Sylvie Courvoisier
Malphas: Book of Angels Volume 3
Malphas: Book of Angels Volume 3 is an album by Sylvie Courvoisier and Mark Feldman performing compositions from John Zorn's second Masada book, "The Book of Angels".-Reception:...
, Koby Israelite
Orobas: Book of Angels Volume 4
-Track listing:# "Rampel" - 6:31# "Zafiel" - 4:40# "Ezgadi" - 5:16# "Nisroc" - 4:56# "Negef" - 5:54# "Khabiel" - 6:28# "Chayo" - 6:27# "Rachmiel" - 8:08*Recorded in London, UK in November-December 2005-Personnel:...
, The Cracow Klezmer Band
Balan: Book of Angels Volume 5
- Track listing :# "Zuriel" - 4:18# "Suria" - 7:56# "Lirael" - 6:07# "Kadosh" - 2:43# "Haniel" - 5:02# "Jehoel" - 5:17# "Asbeel" - 5:05# "Aniel" - 3:48*Recorded at Studio 2002 in Krakow on February 13 and March 1, 2006- Personnel :* Jaroslaw Bester – bayan...
, Uri Caine
Moloch: Book of Angels Volume 6
- Track listing :# Rimmon - 4:45# Lomiel - 3:56# Kebriel - 4:32# Savliel - 2:25# Tufrial - 4:04# Jerazol - 3:41# Harshiel - 3:34# Lumah - 3:14# Harviel - 5:01# Segef - 1:59# Sabriel - 4:59# Shokad - 2:56# Zophiel - 5:01# Hayyoth - 2:31# Nuriel - 5:51...
, Marc Ribot
Asmodeus: Book of Angels Volume 7
Asmodeus: Book of Angels Volume 7 is an album by Marc Ribot performing compositions from John Zorn's second Masada book, The Book of Angels.-Track listing:All compositions are by John Zorn.# "Kalmiya" – 4:41# "Yezriel" – 7:26# "Kezef" – 2:32...
, Erik Friedlander
Volac: Book of Angels Volume 8
Volac: Book of Angels Volume 8 is an album by Erik Friedlander performing compositions from John Zorn's second Masada book, "The Book of Angels".-Track listing:# Harhazial - 4:36# Rachsiel - 2:39# Zumiel - 1:40...
, Secret Chiefs 3
Xaphan: Book of Angels Volume 9
-External links:*[ Xaphan: Book of Angels Volume 9] at Allmusic...
, Bar Kokhba Sextet
Lucifer: Book of Angels Volume 10
-Track listing:# Sother - 5:58# Dalquiel - 6:07# Zazel - 3:22# Gediel - 6:12# Rahal - 3:49# Zechriel - 7:54# Azbugah - 3:02# Mehalalel - 9:53# Quelamia - 4:59# Abdiel - 3:24-Personnel:*Cyro Baptista – percussion*Joey Baron – drums*Greg Cohen – bass...
, Medeski, Martin and Wood, and the Masada Quintet
Stolas: Book of Angels Volume 12
Stolas: Book of Angels Volume 12 is an album by the Masada Quintet featuring Joe Lovano performing compositions from John Zorn's Masada Book Two...
have been released in this series. The titles of many Masada Book Two compositions are derived from demonology
Demonology
Demonology is the systematic study of demons or beliefs about demons. It is the branch of theology relating to superhuman beings who are not gods. It deals both with benevolent beings that have no circle of worshippers or so limited a circle as to be below the rank of gods, and with malevolent...
and Judeo-Christian
Judeo-Christian
Judeo-Christian is a term used in the United States since the 1940s to refer to standards of ethics said to be held in common by Judaism and Christianity, for example the Ten Commandments...
mythology
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
.
Tzadik record label
In 1992 John Zorn collaborated with the Japanese Disc Union label to curate the Avant imprint, a subsidiary of the DIW jazz label which released the first MasadaMasada (band)
Masada is a musical group with rotating personnel led by American saxophonist and composer John Zorn since the early 1990s.Masada is as much a "songbook" as a group, comprising more than 500 relatively brief compositions...
albums. Several Naked City
Naked City (band)
Naked City was an avant-garde music group led by saxophonist and composer John Zorn. Active primarily in New York City from 1988 to 1993, Naked City was initiated by Zorn as a "composition workshop" to test the limits of composition in a traditional rock band lineup...
recordings were released through the Avant label as well as many others on which Zorn featured downtown
Downtown music
Downtown music is a subdivision of American music, closely related to experimental music. The scene the term describes began in 1960, when Yoko Ono—one of the Fluxus artists, at that time still seven years away from meeting John Lennon—opened her loft at 112 Chambers Street to be used...
musicians including Derek Bailey, Buckethead
Buckethead
Brian Carroll , better known by his stage name Buckethead, is a guitarist and multi instrumentalist who has worked within several genres of music. He has released 34 studio albums, four special releases and one EP. He has performed on over 50 more albums by other artists...
, Eugene Chadbourne
Eugene Chadbourne
Eugene Chadbourne is an American improvisor, guitarist and banjoist. Highly eclectic and unconventional, Chadbourne's most formative influence is free jazz. He has also been a reviewer for Allmusic and a contributor to Maximum RocknRoll.Chadbourne started out playing rock and roll guitar, but...
, Dave Douglas
Dave Douglas (trumpeter)
Dave Douglas is an American jazz trumpeter and composer whose music derives from many non-jazz musical styles, including classical music, folk music from European countries and Klezmer. He has been a member of the experimental big band Orange Then Blue...
, Erik Friedlander
Erik Friedlander
Erik Friedlander is an American cellist and composer based in New York City.A veteran of NYC's experimental downtown scene, Friedlander has worked in many contexts, but is perhaps best known for his frequent collaborations with saxophonist/composer John Zorn...
, Wayne Horvitz
Wayne Horvitz
Wayne Horvitz is an American composer, keyboardist and record producer.-Biography:Horvitz, a "defiant cross-breeder of genres", has led the groups The President, Pigpen, Zony Mash, and the Four Plus One Ensemble...
, Ikue Mori
Ikue Mori
, also known as Ikue Ile, is a drummer, composer, and graphic designer.-Biography:Ikue Mori was born and raised in Japan. She says she had little interest in music before hearing punk rock...
, Bobby Previte
Bobby Previte
Robert "Bobby" Previte is a drummer, composer and bandleader. Previte earned a B.A. in Economics at the University at Buffalo, where he also studied percussion. He moved to New York City in 1979, and became active in the city's thriving jazz and experimental music scenes...
, Zeena Parkins
Zeena Parkins
Zeena Parkins is a harpist active in rock music, free improvisation and jazz. Parkins plays standard harps, as well as several custom-made one-of-a kind electric harps; she also plays piano and accordion...
and Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot born May 21, 1954) is an American guitarist and composer.His own work has touched on many styles, including no wave, free jazz, and Cuban music. Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notably Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and composer John Zorn.-Biography:Ribot was...
.
In 1995, in co-operation with jazz producer Kazunori Sugiyama, Zorn established the Tzadik
Tzadik Records
Tzadik Records is a record label based in New York City specialising in avant-garde and experimental music. The label was established by the eclectic composer and saxophonist John Zorn in 1995; Zorn is the executive producer of all Tzadik releases...
label to ensure availability of his catalogue and promote experimental music
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
ians. Zorn said that the label is a way to shield from the power of the music industry, with "giant corporations acting like slave masters, like the return of the pharaohs," merging together to get even more powerful like in the Polygram
PolyGram
PolyGram was the name of the major label recording company started by Philips from as a holding company for its music interests in 1945. In 1999 it was sold to Seagram and merged into Universal Music Group.-Hollandsche Decca Distributie , 1929-1950:...
-Universal
Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group is an American music group, the largest of the "big four" record companies by its commanding market share and its multitude of global operations...
acquisition; and to shield from distribution companies like Tower
Tower Records
Tower Records was a retail music chain that was based in Sacramento, California. It currently exists as an international franchise and an online music store....
, HMV
HMV Group
HMV is a British global entertainment retail chain and is the largest of its kind in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The company also operates in Hong Kong and Singapore. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE Fledgling Index...
, and Virgin Megastores, that are destroying "the small mom and pop stores—people that love the music and that’s why they have their store," and from the insidious pollution of the tastes of the masses, "with brainwashing and brain-control. These marketing guys who are at the head of all these companies, they’re really the ones that are spoon-feeding everybody shit."
Zorn is inspired by other artists and different musical styles, particularly those working in improvised music. He has a special attraction to underground artists and musical styles that are extremely loud, wild, or creative. Tzadik has established a diverse catalogue reflecting Zorn's range of musical influences and influence. The Tzadik website describes the label as "...dedicated to releasing the best in avant garde and experimental music, presenting a worldwide community of musician-composers who find it difficult or impossible to release their music through conventional channels".
The label's releases are divided into series:
- The Archival Series features Zorn's recordings exclusively, including re-releases of several albums that appeared on other labels, Zorn's film work, and recordings from 1973 onwards;
- The 50th Birthday Celebration Series is 11 live albums recorded in September 2003 at Tonic as part of the month-long concert retrospective of Zorn's work;
- The Composer Series features Zorn's music for 'classical' ensembles along with work by many other contemporary composers;
- The Radical Jewish Culture Series features contemporary Jewish musicians;
- The New Japan Series covers Japanese underground music;
- The Film Music Series features soundtracks by other musicians (Zorn's Filmworks recordings are feartured in the Archival Series);
- The Oracle Series promotes women in experimental music;
- The Key Series presents notable avant-garde musicians and projects;
- The Lunatic Fringe Series releases music and musicians operating outside of the broad categories offered by other series; and
- The Spotlight Series promotes new bands and musical projects of young musicians.
Tzadik also releases special edition CDs, DVDs, books and T-shirts. Since 1998 the designs of Tzadik releases have been created by graphic artist Heung-Heung "Chippy" Chin.
Music romance
Zorn released Music for ChildrenMusic for Children
Music for Children is the first release in John Zorn's Music Romance Series and features three Naked City compositions performed by Zorn with the band Prelapse; a 20-minute composition for wind machines and controlled feedback systems dedicated to Edgar Varese, and a classical chamber music piece...
in 1998. The album, identified as "Music Romance Volume One" portrayed the broad spectrum of Zorn's compositions. Music for Children opened with a polyrhythm
Polyrhythm
Polyrhythm is the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms.Polyrhythm in general is a nonspecific term for the simultaneous occurrence of two or more conflicting rhythms, of which cross-rhythm is a specific and definable subset.—Novotney Polyrhythms can be distinguished from...
ic etude
Étude
An étude , is an instrumental musical composition, most commonly of considerable difficulty, usually designed to provide practice material for perfecting a particular technical skill. The tradition of writing études emerged in the early 19th century with the rapidly growing popularity of the piano...
for percussion and celeste
Celesta
The celesta or celeste is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. Its appearance is similar to that of an upright piano or of a large wooden music box . The keys are connected to hammers which strike a graduated set of metal plates suspended over wooden resonators...
, featured three short Naked City
Naked City (band)
Naked City was an avant-garde music group led by saxophonist and composer John Zorn. Active primarily in New York City from 1988 to 1993, Naked City was initiated by Zorn as a "composition workshop" to test the limits of composition in a traditional rock band lineup...
compositions, written at the time of Torture Garden
Torture Garden (album)
Torture Garden is an album by John Zorn's band Naked City featuring Yamatsuka Eye on vocals. The album is a compilation of the "hardcore miniatures" that were also released on Naked City and Grand Guignol. Unlike other Naked City albums, there are no breaks between the screaming, the seemingly...
, performed by Zorn with the Boston-based band Prelapse
Prelapse
Prelapse is an album by the Boston-based band of the same name featuring John Zorn. The album was released on the Japanese Avant label in 1999 and features 10 tracks originally written by Zorn for the band Naked City...
, a composition for wind machines and feedback dedicated to Edgard Varèse
Edgard Varèse
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, , whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States....
, a classical chamber piece for violin, percussion and piano, and ended with a music box-styled lullaby
Lullaby
A lullaby is a soothing song, usually sung to young children before they go to sleep, with the intention of speeding that process. As a result they are often simple and repetitive. Lullabies can be found in every culture and since the ancient period....
. The second "Music Romance" album, Taboo & Exile
Taboo & Exile
Taboo & Exile is an album by John Zorn which synthetizes exotica, hardcore punk, classical, jazz, surf and world narration into a new prodigious genre...
, was released in 1999 and featured a similar spectrum of broad styles. One of Zorn's most popular albums was the third in the series, The Gift
The Gift (John Zorn album)
The Gift is an album by John Zorn released in 2001. It is the third volume of his Music Romance Series and described as an album "for lovers only".-Reception:...
(2001), which surprised many with its relaxed blend of surf, exotica and world music. Zorn released The Dreamers
The Dreamers (album)
-Track listing:# "Mow Mow" - 3:03# "Uluwati" - 3:37# "A Ride on Cottonfair" - 4:22# "Anulikwutsayl" - 9:02# "Toys" - 2:46# "Of Wonder and Certainty " - 4:30# "Mystic Circles" - 6:08# "Nekashim" - 3:56# "Exodus" - 7:02# "Forbidden Tears" - 3:07...
in 2008 which is considered to be a sequel to The Gift although not identified as a volume of "Music Romance". 2009 also saw the release of the album O'o
O'o
O'o is an album by John Zorn released in 2009. It is viewed as a sequel to his 2007 album The Dreamers and is the fifth album in his Music Romance series.-Track listing:# "Miller's Crake"# "Akialoa# "Po'o'uli"# "Little Bittern"...
, featuring the same style of music and set of players as the 2008 album.
50th birthday celebration
In September 2003 Zorn celebrated his 50th birthday with a month-long series of performances at Tonic in New York, repeating an event he had begun a decade earlier at the Knitting FactoryKnitting Factory
The Knitting Factory is a music venue and concert house with locations in Brooklyn, Boise, Reno, and Spokane. The club originally specialized in jazz and experimental music and has expanded to showcasing all genres of music, performing arts and comedy....
. He conceptualized the month into several different aspects of his musical output. Zorn's bands performed on the weekends, classical ensembles were featured on Sundays, Zorn performed improvisations with other musicians on Mondays, featured his extended compositions on Tuesdays and a retrospective of game pieces on Wednesdays. Twelve live album
Live album
A live album is a recording consisting of material recorded during stage performances using remote recording techniques, commonly contrasted with a studio album...
s were released on his 50th Birthday Celebration Series which featured performances by the Masada String Trio
50th Birthday Celebration Volume 1
- Personnel :*Greg Cohen – bass*Mark Feldman – violin*Erik Friedlander – cello*John Zorn – conductor...
, Milford Graves & John Zorn, Locus Solus
50th Birthday Celebration Volume 3
50th Birthday Celebration Volume 3: Locus Solus is a live album of improvised music by Anton Fier, Arto Lindsay and John Zorn documenting their performance at Tonic in September, 2003 as part of John Zorn's month-long 50th Birthday Celebration concert series.-Track listing:-Personnel:*John...
, Electric Masada
50th Birthday Celebration Volume 4
50th Birthday Celebration Volume 4 is a live album by Electric Masada documenting their performance at Tonic in September, 2003 as part of John Zorn's month-long 50th Birthday Celebration.-Track listing:-Personnel:*Cyro Baptista– percussion...
, Fred Frith & John Zorn
50th Birthday Celebration Volume 5
-Track listing:*Recorded live at Tonic in New York City on September 15, 2003...
, Hemophiliac
50th Birthday Celebration Volume 6
50th Birthday Celebration Volume 6: Hemophiliac is a live album of improvised music by Mike Patton, Ikue Mori and John Zorn documenting their performance at Tonic in September, 2003 as part of John Zorn's month-long 50th Birthday Celebration concert series....
, Masada
50th Birthday Celebration Volume 7
- Track listing :*Recorded at Tonic in New York City in September 2003- Personnel :* John Zorn– saxophone* Dave Douglas– trumpet* Greg Cohen– bass* Joey Baron– drums...
, Susie Ibrarra, Wadada Leo Smith & John Zorn
50th Birthday Celebration Volume 8
-Personnel:*John Zorn – alto saxophone*Susie Ibarra – drums *Wadada Leo Smith – trumpet...
, John Zorn solo, Yamataka Eye & John Zorn
50th Birthday Celebration Volume 10
50th Birthday Celebration Volume 10 is a live album of improvised music by Yamataka Eye and John Zorn documenting their performance at Tonic in September, 2003 as part of John Zorn's month-long 50th Birthday Celebration concert series.-Track listing:...
, Bar Kokhba Sextet
50th Birthday Celebration Volume 11
-Personnel:*Cyro Baptista – percussion*Joey Baron – drums*Greg Cohen – bass*Erik Friedlander – cello*Marc Ribot – guitar*Mark Feldman – violin*John Zorn – conductor...
and Painkiller
50th Birthday Celebration Volume 12
-Personnel:*John Zorn – alto saxophone*Bill Laswell – bass*Hamid Drake – drums*Mike Patton – voice...
.
Recent projects
Zorn was the principal force in establishing The Stone in 2005, an avant-garde performance space in New York's Alphabet CityAlphabet City, Manhattan
Alphabet City is a neighborhood located within the Lower East Side and East Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is also known as Loisaida, a Spanglish adaptation of 'Lower East Side'. Its name comes from Avenues A, B, C, and D, the only avenues in Manhattan to have single-letter...
which supports itself solely on donations and the sale of limited edition CDs, giving all door revenues directly to the performers. Zorn holds the title of artistic director and regularly performs 'Improvisation Nights'. On Friday April 13, 2007, Zorn played the final night at Tonic, the Lower East Side
Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....
venue where he played regularly for the previous decade, which closed due to financial pressures. On January 10, 2008, Zorn performed with Lou Reed
Lou Reed
Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed is an American rock musician, songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, and for his successful solo career, which has spanned several decades...
and Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson
Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...
at a special benefit night at The Stone which was also released on The Stone: Issue Three
The Stone: Issue Three
The Stone: Issue Three is a limited edition live album of improvised experimental music by John Zorn, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson recorded at The Stone on January 10, 2008. All proceeds from the sale of this album support The Stone.-Personnel:...
on CD.
On February 4, 2008, Zorn premiered his work for three cellists "777" performed by Fred Sherry
Fred Sherry
Fred Sherry is an American cello virtuoso who is particularly admired for his work as a chamber musician and concert soloist. He studied with Leonard Rose at the Juilliard School before winning the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1968. In 1971 he co-founded the Speculum Musicae...
, Erik Friedlander
Erik Friedlander
Erik Friedlander is an American cellist and composer based in New York City.A veteran of NYC's experimental downtown scene, Friedlander has worked in many contexts, but is perhaps best known for his frequent collaborations with saxophonist/composer John Zorn...
, and Michael Nicolas at the Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
. Zorn premiered The Dreamers
The Dreamers (album)
-Track listing:# "Mow Mow" - 3:03# "Uluwati" - 3:37# "A Ride on Cottonfair" - 4:22# "Anulikwutsayl" - 9:02# "Toys" - 2:46# "Of Wonder and Certainty " - 4:30# "Mystic Circles" - 6:08# "Nekashim" - 3:56# "Exodus" - 7:02# "Forbidden Tears" - 3:07...
with members of Electric Masada on February 29, 2008 at St Anne's Warehouse in Brooklyn. On March 27, 2008, Miller Theater
Miller Theater
The Miller Theater is a former movie theater located in Augusta, Georgia. The Miller was built by architect Roy A. Benjamin utilizing the Arte Moderne style of architecture and was owned by Frank Miller. Due to an economic downturn in the 1980s in downtown Augusta, the theater was forced to close...
at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in New York City, which has been the venue for several premieres of Zorn's concert works, hosted the first performance of a new composition by John Zorn, "The Prophetic Mysteries of Angels, Witches & Demons". Zorn curated the music for the Aleph-Bet Sound Project, a sound installation
Sound installation
Sound installation is an intermedia and time based art form. It is an expansion of an art installation in the sense that it includes the sound element and therefore the time element...
featuring new music by Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Erik Friedlander, David Greenberger, Chris Brown, Z’EV, Terry Riley, Alvin Curran, Christina Kubisch, Marina Rosenfeld
Marina Rosenfeld
Marina Rosenfeld is an American composer, sound artist and visual artist based in New York.- External links :*http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/art/26736/marina-rosenfeld*http://whitney.org/www/2008biennial/www/?section=artists&page=artist_rosenfeld...
, Raz Mesinai, and Jewlia, at the Contemporary Jewish Museum
Contemporary Jewish Museum
The Contemporary Jewish Museum was founded in 1984 in San Francisco, California, with the goal of offering contemporary perspectives on Jewish culture, history, art, and ideas...
from June 4, 2008 to January 8, 2009. Zorn's "Shir Ha-Shirim" premiered in February 2008. The piece is inspired by the Song of Songs
Song of songs
Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon, is a book of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. It may also refer to:In music:* Song of songs , the debut album by David and the Giants* A generic term for medleysPlays...
from the old testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
and is performed by an amplified quintet of female singers with female and male narrators performing the "Song of Solomon
Song of Solomon
The Song of Songs of Solomon, commonly referred to as Song of Songs or Song of Solomon, is a book of the Hebrew Bible—one of the megillot —found in the last section of the Tanakh, known as the Ketuvim...
". Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson read the texts in English for the February performances. The group returned to New York for performances at the Guggenheim on November 23 and 24, at which Ayelet Rose Gottlieb and Jeremy Fogel recited in Hebrew. These performances at the Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
in November 2008 featured choreography for paired dancers from the Khmer Arts Ensemble by Sophiline Cheam Shapiro
Sophiline Cheam Shapiro
Sophiline Cheam Shapiro is a Cambodian dancer and choreographer.-Early life:At the age of eight she was forced to live in the countryside of Cambodia after her family was evacuated from the city by the Khmer Rouge...
. The ensemble includes Marc Ribot on guitar, Carol Emanuel on harp, Trevor Dunn bass and the five extraordinary female vocalists. The Daughters of Jerusalem, as they are known for this project are, Lisa Bielawa, Martha Cluver, Abby Fischer, Kathryn Mulvihill and Kirsten Sollek. Photos of February rehearsals. Shir Ha-Shirim was also performed in Milano, Italy on September 24, 2008 and in Paris, France for the Jazz à la Villette event, on Saturday September 5, 2009.
In 2009, American playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
and avant-garde theatre
Experimental theatre
Experimental theatre is a general term for various movements in Western theatre that began in the late 19th century as a retraction against the dominant vent governing the writing and production of dramatical menstrophy, and age in particular. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream...
pioneer Richard Foreman
Richard Foreman
Richard Foreman is an American playwright and avant-garde theater pioneer. He is the founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater.-Life :...
directed Astronome: A Night at The Opera based on Zorn's Astronome
Astronome
Astronome is an album by John Zorn featuring the "Moonchild Trio" of Joey Baron, Mike Patton and Trevor Dunn. It is the second album by the trio following Moonchild: Songs Without Words....
(2006).
Publications
In 2000 Zorn edited the book Arcana: Musicians on Music featuring interviews, essays, and commentaries by musicians including Anthony ColemanAnthony Coleman
Anthony Coleman is an American musician. Coleman is a piano and keys player, trombonist and vocalist mainly working within the free improvised and avant-garde jazz scenes in downtown New York during the late 1970s through to the present day.His greatest impact was during the 80s and 90s when he...
, Peter Garland
Peter Garland
Peter Garland is a composer best known for publishing Soundings Press, one of the few sources of new music scores and articles while in print...
, David Mahler
David Mahler
David Mahler is a hammered dulcimer player from Texas, United States.Mahler won first place in the 2004 Walnut Valley National Hammered Dulcimer Championship held in Winfield, Kansas. -External links:...
, Bill Frisell
Bill Frisell
William Richard "Bill" Frisell is an American guitarist and composer.One of the leading guitarists in jazz since the late 1980s, Frisell's eclectic music touches on progressive folk, classical music, country music, noise and more...
, Gerry Hemingway
Gerry Hemingway
Gerry Hemingway is an American jazz composer and percussionist.He has performed with Ernst Reijseger, Anthony Davis, Earl Howard, Leo Smith, George Lewis, Anthony Braxton, Ray Anderson, Mark Helias, Reggie Workman, Michael Moore, Oliver Lake, Marilyn Crispell, Christy Doran, John Wolf Brennan, Don...
, George Lewis
George Lewis (trombonist)
George E. Lewis is a trombone player, composer, and scholar in the fields of jazz and experimental music. He has been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians since 1971, and is a pioneer of computer music.- Biography :Lewis graduated from Yale University with a...
, Fred Frith
Fred Frith
Fred Frith is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer and improvisor.Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. Frith was also a member of Art Bears, Massacre and Skeleton Crew...
, Eyvind Kang
Eyvind Kang
Eyvindur Kang , only child of Charles Shin-Chul Kang and Kristjana Gunnars, is an American composer, violinist, tuba, and erhu player...
, Mike Patton
Mike Patton
Michael Allan "Mike" Patton is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and actor, best known as the lead singer of the metal/experimental rock band Faith No More. He has also sung for Mr...
and Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer.A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City since the late 1970s, Sharp has released over eighty-five recordings ranging from blues, jazz, and orchestral music to noise, no wave rock,...
, on the compositional process. Zorn released the second volume of Arcana: Musicians on Music in the Summer of 2007. According to the preface by Zorn, "This second installment of what will be a continuing series of books presenting radical, cutting-edge ideas about music is made, like the initial volume, out of necessity." The second volume contains essays by more than 30 musicians including Annie Gosfield
Annie Gosfield
Annie Gosfield is a New York composer who specializes in using detuned or out of tune samples and industrial noises. Her work often contains improvisation and frequently uses extended techniques and/or altered musical instruments...
, Trey Spruance
Trey Spruance
Preston Lea Spruance III or "Trey Spruance" is an American composer, producer, and musician, perhaps best known as the leader of the multi-genre outfit Secret Chiefs 3 and for his work as guitarist and keyboardist with Mr. Bungle...
, Zeena Parkins
Zeena Parkins
Zeena Parkins is a harpist active in rock music, free improvisation and jazz. Parkins plays standard harps, as well as several custom-made one-of-a kind electric harps; she also plays piano and accordion...
, Steve Coleman
Steve Coleman
Steve Coleman, born , is an African American saxophone player, spontaneous composer, composer and band leader. His music and concepts have been a heavy influence on contemporary jazz.-Chicago:...
, Marina Rosenfeld
Marina Rosenfeld
Marina Rosenfeld is an American composer, sound artist and visual artist based in New York.- External links :*http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/art/26736/marina-rosenfeld*http://whitney.org/www/2008biennial/www/?section=artists&page=artist_rosenfeld...
, Carla Kihlstedt
Carla Kihlstedt
Carla Kihlstedt is an American violinist, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist from Lancaster, Pennsylvania currently living in Oakland, California....
, David Douglas, Bill Laswell
Bill Laswell
Bill Laswell is an American bassist, producer and record label owner....
, Trevor Dunn
Trevor Dunn
Trevor Roy Dunn is an American composer, bass guitarist and double bassist.Dunn came to prominence in the 1990s with the experimental band Mr. Bungle. He has since worked in an array of musical styles, notably with singer and Mr...
, and Jewlia Eisenberg
Jewlia Eisenberg
Jewlia Eisenberg is an American composer. As founder and bandleader of Charming Hostess she coined the term "Nerdy-Sexy-Commie-Girly" to describe her genre of music which spans an eclectic range of styles....
. In October 2008, a third volume of the Arcana series was released containing essays by Wadada Leo Smith
Wadada Leo Smith
Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith is a trumpeter and composer working primarily in the fields of avant-garde jazz and free improvisation.-Biography:...
, Frank London
Frank London
Frank London is a New York City-based trumpeter, bandleader, and composer active in klezmer and world music. He also plays various other wind instruments and keyboards, and occasionally sings backup vocals. With The Klezmatics, he won a Grammy award in Contemporary World Music for "Wonder Wheel...
, Greg Cohen
Greg Cohen
A native of Los Angeles, bassist Greg Cohen has been playing in various acclaimed music groups since the '60s. He is perhaps best known for his work with John Zorn's Masada quartet; more recently he has been touring with Ornette Coleman, and performed on Coleman's much-praised Sound Grammar...
, Sean Lennon
Sean Lennon
is an American singer, songwriter, musician, guitarist and actor. He is the only child of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. His godfather is Sir Elton John.-Early life and education:...
and Jamie Saft
Jamie Saft
Jamie Saft is a keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist, composer, sound engineer and producer living in upstate NY. Saft was born in Flushing Queens, New York in 1971 and is a graduate of both Tufts University and the New England Conservatory of Music. He has performed and recorded with John Zorn,...
. In Septermber 2009 Volume IV was released, and Volume V is scheduled to be released on July 2010 with subtitle Musicians on Music, Magic & Mysticism.
Awards and critical reception
In 2001 John Zorn received the Jewish Cultural Award in Performing Arts from theNational Foundation for Jewish Culture
National Foundation for Jewish Culture
The Foundation for Jewish Culture is the leading advocate for Jewish cultural life and creativity in the United States....
. In 2006 Zorn was named a MacArthur Fellow. In 2007, he was the recipient of Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
's School of the Arts William Schuman
William Schuman
William Howard Schuman was an American composer and music administrator.-Life:Born in Manhattan in New York City to Samuel and Rachel Schuman, Schuman was named after the twenty-seventh U.S. president, William Howard Taft, although his family preferred to call him Bill...
Award, an honor given "to recognize the lifetime achievement of an American composer whose works have been widely performed and generally acknowledged to be of lasting significance."Columbia News (2007) Composer John Zorn Garners William Schuman Award, March 2007 In 2011 Zorn was awarded the Magister Artium Gandensis, an honorary degree from the University of Ghent
Ghent University
Ghent University is a Dutch-speaking public university located in Ghent, Belgium. It is one of the larger Flemish universities, consisting of 32,000 students and 7,100 staff members. The current rector is Paul Van Cauwenberge.It was established in 1817 by King William I of the Netherlands...
.
Zorn has attracted mixed receptions by critics throughout his career stating that "The press has never done anything but ignore and ridicule and marginalize my music—downtown music, because they don't know what to call it." A 1999 NY Times article by Adam Shatz accused Zorn of "attempt[ing] to recast Jewishness as a defiantly marginalized identity -- to claim victim status -- [which] has an air of calculation about it that overpowers his music." Several letters to the Editor from critics and musicians appeared in the following weeks in support of Zorn's artistic merit. In the opinion of Howard Mandel, who has interviewed Zorn numerous times, Zorn has often expressed a reluctance to grant interviews and has requested that journalists not review his performances.
The character of Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Tyrone Colbert is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.Colbert originally studied to be an...
from the TV show The Colbert Report mocked the MacArthur Foundation
MacArthur Foundation
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is one of the largest private foundations in the United States. Based in Chicago but supporting non-profit organizations that work in 60 countries, MacArthur has awarded more than US$4 billion since its inception in 1978...
's award of the Genius Grant
MacArthur Fellows Program
The MacArthur Fellows Program or MacArthur Fellowship is an award given by the John D. and Catherine T...
to Zorn on the September 20, 2006 episode in his segment titled "Who's Not Honoring Me Now". Colbert used a 10-second dissonant excerpt from the 50th Birthday Celebration Series and compared it to his blowing into a saxophone, pleading, "Genius Grant please!" Zorn's comments on the Colbert segment were "It was a hilarious spot."
Filmography
- Put More Blood Into the Music (New York avant garde music), episode 292 of The South Bank ShowThe South Bank ShowThe South Bank Show was a television arts magazine show, originally made by London Weekend Television , presented by Melvyn Bragg, broadcast on ITV and seen in over 60 countries worldwide — including Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United States...
, aired Sunday March 12, 1989 - Step Across the BorderStep Across the BorderStep Across the Border is a 1990 avant-garde documentary film on English guitarist, composer and improviser Fred Frith. It was written and directed by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel and released in Germany and Switzerland...
(1990) - A Bookshelf on Top of the Sky: 12 Stories About John ZornA Bookshelf on Top of the Sky: 12 Stories About John ZornA Bookshelf on Top of the Sky: 12 Stories About John Zorn is a documentary film on avant garde composer and musician John Zorn directed by Claudia Heuermann. It features performances of a range of Zorn's music and includes appearances by Joey Baron, Greg Cohen, Dave Douglas, Fred Frith, Ikue Mori,...
(2004) - Masada Live at Tonic 1999Masada Live at Tonic 1999Masada Live at Tonic is a DVD of a live performance by John Zorn's Masada filmed at Tonic in the summer of 1999.-Track listing:# "Hath-Arob"# "Sippur"# "Jair"# "Ne'eman"# "Kedushah"# "Beeroth"# "Kochot"# "Shechem"# "Paran"-Personnel:...
(2004) - Celestial Subway Lines / Salvaging Noise (2005)
- Sabbath in ParadiseSabbath in ParadiseSabbath in Paradise is a documentary film by Claudia Heuermann examining contemporary Jewish musical culture in New York's avant garde Jazz scene in the 1990s. It features concert footage and interviews with Anthony Coleman, Marc Ribot, Andy Statman, David Krakauer, Frank London, John Zorn and...
(2007) - Astronome: A Night At The Opera (2010)
External links
- Tzadik.com
- The Stone website
- Hips Road Edition: Concert music of John Zorn, including score and mp3 samples
- Art of the States: John Zorn
- The John Zorn Web Site fansite
- Discography of John Zorn by Patrice Roussel (to June 2008)
- John Zorn Primer The Wire Issue 156 Feb 1997
- John Zorn's biography and discography by Scott Maykrantz
- John Zorn interview (Hungarian)
- Brackett, John. John Zorn: Tradition and Transgression. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-253-22025-7.
- John Zorn Q&A Session