John Zorn (born September 2, 1953) is an American composer, conductor, producer, arranger and saxophonist who "deliberately resists category". Zorn's avant-garde compositions and experimental improvisations meld jazz, rock, hardcore, classical, contemporary, surf, metal, soundtrack, ambient, Jewish and world music performed by "often unexpected groups of players.. getting startling, unrepeatable results".Alkyer, F. First Take: Happy Birthday Mr Zorn, DownBeat, October, 2013, pg. 10. Rolling Stone noted that Zorn has operated almost entirely outside the mainstream, he's gradually asserted himself as one of the most influential musicians of our time".
Zorn re-arranged and radically orchestrated Ennio Morricone's spaghetti Western, gangster and war movie themes for The Big Gundown, released on Nonesuch Records in 1986 to critical acclaim. His following albums, Spillane (1987) and Naked City (1990) continued to merge styles and challenge formats. His alternative hardcore influenced bands, Naked City and Painkiller gained him wider exposure in the early 1990s. From 1994 until 2018, Zorn composed and recorded over three hundred Masada project compositions performed by many different ensembles.
Zorn's extensive recordings have been released through his independent Tzadik Records since 1995.Gordon, T., (2008), John Zorn: Autonomy and the Avant-Garde ; accessed November 15, 2013. Zorn has composed concert music for classical ensembles and orchestras, for opera, sound installations, film and documentary. His live performances are often highlighted at festivals featuring different ensembles interpreting his diverse repertoire.'This is not entertainment': John Zorn, all over Big Ears Jazz Night in America, January 26, 2023.
Early life and career Early studies John Zorn was raised in Utopia, Queens, and studied piano, guitar and flute at the United Nations International School.At 60, 'Challenges Are Opportunities' For John Zorn, NPR.org, September 3, 2013.Helland, D Downbeat.com John Zorn Biography Zorn's mother, Vera (née Studenski; 1918–1999), listened to classical and world music; his father, Henry Zorn (1913–1992), was interested in jazz, French chansons, and country music; and his older brother collected doo-wop and 1950s rock and roll records.Bourgin, S. M. (ed.),(1996) Contemporary Musicians, Vol. 15: Zorn, John accessed May 26, 2008 Zorn spent his teenage years "listening to The Doors and playing bass in a surf band" while also exploring the experimental and avant-garde music of György Ligeti, Mauricio Kagel and Karlheinz Stockhausen and listening to cartoon soundtracks and film scores.Put More Blood Into the Music (1989)
Zorn taught himself orchestration and counterpoint by transcribing scores and studied composition under Leonardo Balada before enrolling at Webster College where he attended lectures by Oliver Lake.Milkowski, B. (1998) John Zorn interview in Rockers, Jazzbos & Visionaries New York: Watson-Guptill PublicationsWendell, E. Encyclopedia of Jazz Musicians: John Zorn ; accessed October 9, 2013 While at Webster he 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 and discovered Anthony Braxton's groundbreaking solo album For Alto which inspired him to take up the instrument.Zorn, J (1995) liner notes to John Zorn: First Recordings 1973 New York: Tzadik. "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."
Leaving Webster after three semesters, Zorn lived on the West Coast before returning to Manhattan where he gave concerts in his apartment and other small New York venues, playing saxophone and a variety of reeds, duck calls, tapes, and other instruments. Zorn immersed himself in the underground art scene, assisting filmmaker Jack Smith with his performances and attending plays by Richard Foreman.Blumenfield, L. Iconic New York composer John Zorn celebrates his 60th in Australia , The Saturday Paper, March 8, 2014.
Early compositions and recordings In the mid-1970s Zorn was performing experimental downtown music in New York, collaborating with other artists to develop improvisational and compositional strategies he commenced recording by the end of the decade.Milkowski, B., "John Zorn: One Future, Two Views" (interview) in Jazz Times, March 2000, pp. 28–35,118–121; accessed July 24, 2010. The 1980s saw him touring internationally and led to further independent releases in Europe and Japan before Zorn established the Tzadik record label in 1995.Burma, M., John Zorn Interview, Browbeat, Issue 1, 1993
Zorn's early major compositions included many game pieces described as "complex systems harnessing improvisers in flexible compositional formats".Zorn, J. The Game Pieces in Cox, C. & Warner, D., Eds. (2004) Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music, Continuum Press: New York ()Duckworth, W. (1999) Talking Music, Da Capo Press () pp. 444–476 These compositions "involved strict rules, role playing, prompters with flashcards, all in the name of melding structure and improvisation in a seamless fashion". Zorn's early game pieces had sporting titles like Lacrosse (1976), Hockey (1978), Pool (1979), and Archery (1979), which he recorded and first released on Eugene Chadbourne's Parachute label.Poop, C. E. Pukekos Website, January 28, 2011Roussel, P. (2013) John Zorn Discography , accessed November 1, 2013 His most enduring game piece is Cobra, composed in 1984 and first recorded in 1987 and in subsequent versions in 1992, 1994 and 2002, and revisited in performance many times.
In the early 1980s, Zorn was heavily engaged in improvisation as both a solo performer and with other like-minded artists. Zorn's first solo saxophone recordings were originally released in two volumes as The Classic Guide to Strategy in 1983 and 1986 on the Lumina label.Proefrock, S. Allmusic Review: The Classic Guide to Strategy, accessed November 1, 2013 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.Layne, J. Allmusic Review: Locus Solus, accessed November 1, 2013 Ganryu Island featured a series of duets by Zorn with Michihiro Sato on shamisen, which received limited release on the Yukon label in 1984.Layne, J. Allmusic Review: Ganryu Island, accessed November 1, 2013 Zorn has subsequently reissued these early recordings.
Breakthrough recordings Zorn's breakthrough came in 1986 with the acclaimed The Big Gundown released on Nonesuch Records.Yanow, S. Allmusic Review: The Big Gundown; accessed November 1, 2013 The album was endorsed by composer Ennio Morricone, who said: "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".Morricone, E. in liner notes to The Big Gundown – 15th Anniversary Edition Tzadik: New York.
Zorn followed with Spillane in 1987, his second major-label release, featuring performances by Albert Collins, the Kronos Quartet, and the sprawling title track, an early "file-card" composition. This method of combining composition and improvisation involved Zorn writing descriptions or ideas on file-cards and arranging them to form the piece.Cook, R. & Morton, B. (1992), The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, LP and Cassette, Penguin Books. 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.
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 who stated "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."
Three further releases on Nonesuch followed; Spy vs Spy in 1989, Naked City in 1990, and Filmworks 1986–1990 (1992) before Zorn broke with the label.
Music
Jazz Zorn's most direct explorations of jazz included a 'memorial' to hard bop composer Sonny Clark, Voodoo in 1986,Yanow, S. Allmusic Review: Voodoo, accessed November 1, 2013. and the News for Lulu trio featuring Zorn, Bill Frisell and George E. Lewis performing compositions by Clark, Kenny Dorham, Freddie Redd, and Hank Mobley.Yanow, S. Allmusic Review: "News for Lulu"; accessed November 1, 2013.Yanow, S. Allmusic Review: "More News for Lulu"; accessed November 1, 2013. He recorded Spy vs Spy featuring hardcore punk versions of Ornette Coleman's compositions in 1989.Yanow, S. Allmusic Review: Spy vs Spy; accessed November 1, 2013. According to Cook, "Zorn's admirers often consider him a masterful bebop alto player, but when he does perform in something approaching that style his playing has little of the tension and none of the relaxation of the great beboppers, often sounding more strangulated than anything".
Film music 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".Zorn, J. (1992) liner notes to Filmworks 1986–1990 Tzadik: New York While interest from Hollywood was not forthcoming, eventually independent filmmakers like Sheila McLaughlin and Raúl Ruiz sought his talents.Layne, J. Allmusic Review: Filmworks 1986–1990, accessed November 6, 2013. Filmmaker Walter Hill rejected his music for a film to be called Looters. Although Zorn's score did not make the final cut he used the money he received to establish the record label, Tzadik, on which he released Filmworks II: Music for an Untitled Film by Walter Hill in 1995.Layne, J. Allmusic Review: Filmworks II: Music for an Untitled Film by Walter Hill. Accessed November 5, 2013. Zorn also produced a series of commercial soundtracks for the advertising firm Wieden+Kennedy, including one directed by Jean-Luc Godard, a long-term Zorn inspiration.Zorn, J. (1997), liner notes to Filmworks III: 1990–1995 Tzadik: New York. Zorn used his film commissions to record new ensembles like Masada and the Masada String Trio. From the mid-1990s, Zorn composed film music for independent films dealing with BDSM and LGBT culture, documentaries exploring the Jewish experience, and films about outsider artists. In 2013, after releasing 25 volumes in his Filmworks Series, Zorn announced that he would no longer be releasing music for film.
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