John Zorn Overview

According to Gene Santoro, John Zorn's "idiosyncratic mixtures of musical genres reflect the way popular music is currently transmitted from one culture to another...eclectic is far too weak a word to describe his intensely demanding yet playful sonic assaults." John Zorn's... [more]

According to Gene Santoro, John Zorn's "idiosyncratic mixtures of musical genres reflect the way popular music is currently transmitted from one culture to another...eclectic is far too weak a word to describe his intensely demanding yet playful sonic assaults." John Zorn's work doesn't simply titillate or shock. It raises provocative questions and rearranges expectations about what music is and how it is put together. Honing his skills in the experimental jazz scene with what David Yaffe calls "the Ornette-meets-Zionism quartet Masada and the klezmer chamber ensemble Bar Kokhba," Zorn has consistently pushed the envelope of musical form. On his album "Hei," the tracks range from the lively "Halisah" and other Middle Eastern melodies -- buttressed by a perky bass ostinato and Zorn's unique solos -- to the sad, ruminative "Yoreh." The album is full of thematic unison lines and ostinato rhythm beds, which are occasionally broken up by rubato and, of course, by the weeping and wailing of Zorn's alto sax. Across the 27 tracks of "Euclid's Nightmare" (recorded with Bobby Previte), Zorn's improvisations indulge a number of his passions, including the music of Ornette Coleman, crime-jazz, klezmer, bird calls, hardcore, the jungle exotica of Les Baxter, and his signature alto shrieks and squeals. Virtually all Zorn pieces share two common attributes. The first is a collaborative, almost family-like nature. The second is velocity. Zorn has mastered the art of the quick change through juxtapositions of apparently incongruous sounds. For instance, he might arrange "a circus motif or a strangled human cry or computer-generated bleeps, a rumba pattern alongside a bit of shakuhachi or a Brazilian batucada ensemble or diced-up fragments of Beethoven's 'Fur Elise.'" This musical velocity might be best compared to the the jump cuts so prevalent in modern action flicks and music videos. [show less]