{"id":5418,"date":"2015-09-15T15:21:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-15T15:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=5418"},"modified":"2015-09-15T15:21:00","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T15:21:00","slug":"another-tidal-wave-of-john-zorns-music-hits-new-york-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2015\/09\/15\/another-tidal-wave-of-john-zorns-music-hits-new-york-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Tidal Wave of John Zorn's Music Hits New York City"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"image%20of%20John%20Zorn\"<\/a>
I like this photo of John Zorn, by Heung-Heung Chin, because it looks like he’s wearing rose-tinted glasses. At 62, the composer and alto saxophonist has become of the most positive presences on the New York music scene\u2014doing good things, and relentlessly.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n 
\nWhen John Zorn<\/strong> turned 60, in 2013, the musical celebrations honoring the composer and alto saxophonist spanned New York, with venues ranging from the Met Museum of Art and Lincoln Center Festival to the Stone, the East Village club Zorn founded in 2005.
\nZorn’s music\u00a0continues to saturate the city. Between now and Nov. 8, when Zorn concludes a six-night engagement leading five bands at the Village Vanguard jazz club, New Yorkers can choose from 30 different performances of his music. They include a \u201cJohn Zorn Festival\u201d within the inaugural programming at Brooklyn\u2019s National Sawdust venue (Oct. 9 and 10; Oct. 30 and 31), and a solo recital by Mr. Zorn on the massive pipe organ at Manhattan\u2019s St. Bartholomew\u2019s Church (Oct. 30).
\nThe first of these,\u00a0four separate ensembles performing the premiere of new compositions for Zorn\u2019s \u201cMasada Book III, The Book Beriah\u201d at Brooklyn\u2019s Roulette, was the most stylistically varied, spiritually unified and lovingly presented night of music I’ve heard in quite some time.
\nAt 62, Zorn never seems to stop composing. He’s composed 613 Masada pieces to date. As for the ongoing Sunday series at The Stone,\u00a0\u201cJohn Zorn\u2019s Bagatelles”\u2014it\u00a0sprang from Zorn\u2019s impulse to invite improvisation within a framework of brief atonal compositions.\u00a0So far, he\u2019s written 300 such pieces.
\nHere’s one exchange from my brief interview with Zorn<\/a> in\u00a0The Wall Street Journal:<\/p>\n

WSJ: How have two decades of Masada music affected you?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

JZ: I\u2019ve learned to trust my ear and to trust myself. Before I started writing Masada material, the traditional concept of melody was not a large part of my creative language. I thought I was trying to change the world one concept at a time. So this was a scary step and a powerful step. That first book was hard. By the second book, all I had to do was channel this lyrical gift. A young musician once said to me: \u2018You own the moon, but you\u2019re afraid to show it.\u2019 I thought a lot about what that might mean. This was there all along, but I was afraid to just be myself.
\nAnd here’s one that ended up cut for space, but that I like:<\/p>\n

WSJ: Is there any unifying idea about your approach to all of them?<\/em>
\nJZ: Composing is more than just imagining music; it\u2019s knowing how to communicate it to musicians. You don\u2019t give an improviser music that\u2019s completely written out, or ask a classical musician to improvise. I\u2019m interested in speaking to musicians in their own languages, on their own terms, and in challenging and exciting them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  When John Zorn turned 60, in 2013, the musical celebrations honoring the composer and alto saxophonist spanned New York, with venues ranging from the Met Museum of Art and Lincoln Center Festival to the Stone, the East Village club Zorn founded in 2005. Zorn’s music\u00a0continues to saturate the city. Between now and Nov. 8, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Another Tidal Wave of John Zorn's Music Hits New York City”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5418"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}