Fred Frith & John Zorn: New York (February 1989)
Description
Venues: The Kitchen, Town Hall, and Roulette
Key Groups: Naked City, Keep the Dog, Hu Die
- The Kitchen Residency (Feb 9–12): Curated by Frith, this four-day series featured the debut of his “review band” Keep the Dog, a sextet dedicated to performing Frith’s complex back-catalog. The residency also featured nightly improvised duos, most notably between Frith and cellist Tom Cora.
- Town Hall Premiere (Feb 25): John Zorn organized a landmark concert at Town Hall. The program featured:
- Hu Die: A chamber piece for two guitars—performed by Frith and Bill Frisell—and narration.
- Naked City: One of the earliest major appearances of Zorn’s “jump-cut” quintet, featuring Frith on bass guitar. This performance helped establish the group’s signature blend of hardcore punk and bebop.
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Fred Frith
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Frith at the Moers Festival, June 1998
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| Background information | |
| Born |
Jeremy Webster Frith
17 February 1949 Heathfield, Sussex, England[1]
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| Genres | |
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| Works | |
| Years active | 1968–present |
| Labels | |
| Website | fredfrith |
Jeremy Webster “Fred” Frith (born 17 February 1949)[1][2][3] is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser. Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as a founding member of the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. He was also a member of the groups Art Bears, Massacre, and Skeleton Crew. He has collaborated with numerous musicians, including Robert Wyatt, Derek Bailey, the Residents, Lol Coxhill, John Zorn, Brian Eno, Mike Patton, Lars Hollmer, Bill Laswell, Iva Bittová, Jad Fair, Kramer, the ARTE Quartett, and Bob Ostertag. He has also composed several long works, including Traffic Continues (1996, performed 1998 by Frith and Ensemble Modern) and Freedom in Fragments (1993, performed 1999 by Rova Saxophone Quartet). Frith produces most of his own music, and has also produced many albums by other musicians, including Curlew, the Muffins, Etron Fou Leloublan, and Orthotonics.
He is the subject of Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel’s 1990 documentary Step Across the Border. Frith also appears in the Canadian documentary Act of God, which is about the metaphysical effects of being struck by lightning. He has contributed to a number of music publications, including New Musical Express and Trouser Press, and has conducted improvising workshops across the world. His career spans over four decades and he appears on over 400 albums, and he still performs actively throughout the world.[4]
Frith was awarded the 2008 Demetrio Stratos Prize for his career achievements in experimental music. The prize was established in 2005 in honour of experimental vocalist Demetrio Stratos, of the Italian group Area, who died in 1979.[5][6][7] In 2010 Frith received an honorary doctorate from the University of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, England, in recognition of his contribution to music.[8] Frith was Professor of Composition in the Music Department at Mills College in Oakland, California, until his retirement in 2018. He is the brother of Simon Frith, a music critic and sociologist, and Chris Frith, a psychologist at University College London.
Musical career
Frith was born in Heathfield in East Sussex, England[1] into a family where music was considered an essential part of life. He was given the nickname “Fred” at school after the motorcycle road racer Freddie Frith.[2] Frith started violin lessons at the age of five and became a member of his school orchestra, but at 13 switched to guitar after watching a group imitating a popular instrumental band at the time, the Shadows. He decided to learn how to play guitar and get into a band. Frith taught himself guitar from a book of guitar chords and soon found himself in a school group called the Chaperones, playing Shadows and Beatles covers. However, when he started hearing blues music from the likes of Snooks Eaglin and Alexis Korner it changed his whole approach to the guitar, and by the time he was 15, the Chaperones had become a blues band. Frith’s first public performances were in 1967 in folk clubs in northern England, where he sang and played traditional and blues songs.
Besides the blues, Frith started listening to any music that had guitar in it, including folk, classical, ragtime, and flamenco. He also listened to Indian, Japanese, and Balinese music and was particularly drawn to East European music after a Yugoslav schoolfriend taught him folk tunes from his home. Frith went to Cambridge University in 1967, where his musical horizons were expanded further by the philosophies of John Cage and Frank Zappa‘s manipulation of rock music. Frith graduated from Christ’s College, Cambridge, with a BA (English literature) in 1970 (and by Cambridge custom received a pro forma MA in 1974),[9] but the real significance of Cambridge for him was that the seminal avant-rock group Henry Cow formed there.
Henry Cow
Frith met Tim Hodgkinson, a fellow student, in a blues club at Cambridge University in 1968. “We’d never met before, and he had an alto sax, and I had my violin, and we just improvised this ghastly screaming noise for about half an hour.”[10] Something clicked and, recognizing their mutual open-minded approach to music, Frith and Hodgkinson formed a band there and then. They called it Henry Cow and they remained with the band until its demise in 1978. In the early 1970s Fred’s grey Morris Minor sported the band’s heraldic logo, much to the amusement of boys at the grammar school in York where his father was headmaster.
Frith composed a number of the band’s notable pieces, including “Nirvana for Mice” and “Ruins“. While guitar was his principal instrument, he also played violin (drawing on his classical training), bass guitar, piano, and xylophone.
In November 1973, Frith (and other members of Henry Cow) participated in a live-in-the-studio performance of Mike Oldfield‘s Tubular Bells for the BBC. It is available on Oldfield’s Elements DVD.
Guitar Solos
After Henry Cow’s first album, Frith released Guitar Solos in 1974, his first solo album and a glimpse at what he had been doing with his guitar. The album comprised eight tracks of unaccompanied and improvised music played on prepared guitars. It was recorded in four days, at the Kaleidophon Studios in London’s Camden Town, without any overdubbing.
When it was released, Guitar Solos was considered a landmark album[11] because of its innovative and experimental approach to guitar playing. The January 1983 edition of DownBeat magazine remarked that Guitar Solos “… must have stunned listeners of the day. Even today that album stands up as uniquely innovative and undeniably daring.”[12] It also attracted the attention of some musicians, including Brian Eno, resulting in Frith playing guitar on two of Eno’s albums, Before and After Science (1977) and Music for Films (1978).
Between October and December 1974, Frith contributed a series of ten articles to the British weekly music newspaper New Musical Express entitled “Great Rock Solos of Our Time”. In them he analysed prominent rock guitarists of the day and their contribution to the development of the rock guitar, including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Frank Zappa.[13]
Post-Henry Cow
While recording Henry Cow’s last album, differences emerged between the group members over the album’s content. Frith and Chris Cutler favoured song-oriented material, while Hodgkinson and Lindsay Cooper wanted purely instrumental compositions. As a compromise, Frith and Cutler agreed, early in 1978, to release the songs already created on their own album, Hopes and Fears, under the name Art Bears (with Dagmar Krause). The instrumental material was recorded by Henry Cow on Western Culture later that year, after which the band split. The Art Bears trio continued purely as a studio group until 1981, releasing two more albums, Winter Songs in 1979 and The World as It Is Today in 1981.
During this time Frith also released Gravity (1980), his second solo album, recorded at Norrgården Nyvla in Uppsala, Sweden with Swedish group Samla Mammas Manna, and at the Catch-a-Buzz studio in Rockville, Maryland with United States band The Muffins. It showed Frith breaking free from the highly structured and orchestrated music of Henry Cow and experimenting with folk and dance music. “Norrgården Nyvla” was also the title of one of the tracks on the album and is considered one of Frith’s most recognisable tunes.
New York
Towards the end of 1979, Frith relocated to New York City, where he immediately hooked up with the local avant-garde/downtown music scene. The impact on him was uplifting: “… New York was a profoundly liberating experience for me; for the first time I felt that I could be myself and not try to live up to what I imagined people were thinking about me.”[14] Frith met and began recording with a number of musicians and groups, including Henry Kaiser (With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?), Bob Ostertag (Getting a Head, Voice of America), Tom Cora, Eugene Chadbourne, Zeena Parkins, Ikue Mori, the Residents, Material, the Golden Palominos, and Curlew. He spent some 14 years in New York, during which time he joined a few bands, including John Zorn‘s Naked City (in which Frith played bass) and French Frith Kaiser Thompson (consisting of John French, Frith, Henry Kaiser and Richard Thompson). Frith also started three bands himself, namely Massacre, Skeleton Crew, and Keep the Dog.
Massacre was formed in 1980 with bassist Bill Laswell and drummer Fred Maher. A high energy experimental rock band, they toured the United States and Europe in 1980 and 1981, and released one album, Killing Time (1981), recorded at Martin Bisi‘s later-to-be historic studio in Brooklyn. Massacre split in 1981 when Maher left, but later reformed again in 1998 when drummer Charles Hayward joined. The new Massacre released three more albums.
Skeleton Crew, a collaboration with Tom Cora from 1982 to 1986, was an experimental group noted for its live improvisations where Frith (guitar, violin, keyboards, drums) and Cora (cello, bass guitar, homemade drums and contraptions) played a number of instruments simultaneously. They performed extensively across Europe, North America and Japan and released Learn to Talk in 1984. Zeena Parkins (electric harp and keyboards) joined in 1984 and the trio released The Country of Blinds in 1986. In October 1983 Skeleton Crew joined Duck and Cover, a commission from the Berlin Jazz Festival, for a performance in West Berlin, followed by another in February 1984 in East Berlin.
Frith formed Keep the Dog in 1989, a sextet and review band for performing selections of his extensive repertoire of compositions from the previous 15 years. The lineup was Frith (guitar, violin, bass guitar), René Lussier (guitar, bass guitar), Jean Derome (winds), Zeena Parkins (piano, synthesizer, harp, accordion), Bob Ostertag (sampling keyboard), and Kevin Norton (drums, percussion). Later Charles Hayward replaced Norton on drums. The group existed until mid-1991, performing live in Europe, North America and the former Soviet Union. A double CD, That House We Lived In, from their final performances in Austria, Germany and Italy in May and June 1991, was released in 2003.
Other projects
During the 1980s, Frith began writing music for dance, film, and theatre, and a number of his solo albums from this time reflect this genre, including The Technology of Tears (And Other Music for Dance and Theatre) (1988), Middle of the Moment (1995), Allies (Music for Dance, Volume 2) (1996), and Rivers and Tides (2003). Exploring new forms of composition, Frith also experimented with chance or accidental compositions, often created by building music around “found sounds” and field recordings, examples of which can be found on Accidental (Music for Dance, Volume 3) (2002) and Prints: Snapshots, Postcards, Messages and Miniatures, 1987–2001 (2002). He was featured in ‘Crossing Bridges’, a 1983 music programme based around jazz guitar improvisation, and broadcast by Channel 4[15]
As a composer, Frith began composing works for other musicians and groups in the late 1980s, including the Rova Saxophone Quartet, Ensemble Modern, and Arditti Quartet. He composed and performed the song “Choral Ode 2” for the 1993 opera Agamemnon. In the late 1990s, Frith established his own Fred Frith Guitar Quartet consisting of Frith, René Lussier, Nick Didkovsky, and Mark Stewart. Their guitar music, varying from “tuneful and pretty, to noisy, aggressive and quite challenging”,[16] appears on two albums, Ayaya Moses (1997) and Upbeat (1999), both on Lussier’s own Ambiances Magnétiques label.
The ex-Henry Cow members have always maintained close contact with each other and Frith still collaborates with many of them, including Chris Cutler and Tim Hodgkinson. Cutler and Frith have been touring Europe, Asia, and the Americas since 1978, and have given dozens of duo performances. Three albums from some of these concerts have been released by Recommended Records. In December 2006, Cutler, Frith, and Hodgkinson performed together at the Stone in New York City, their first concert performance since Henry Cow’s demise in 1978.[17][18]
In 1995, Frith moved to Stuttgart in Germany to live with his wife, German photographer Heike Liss, and their children Finn and Lucia. Between 1994 and 1996, Frith was composer-in-residence at L’Ecole Nationale de Musique in Villeurbanne, France.
Frith relocated to the United States in 1997 to become Composer-in-Residence at Mills College in Oakland, California. In 1999 he was appointed the Luther B. Marchant Professor of Composition in the Music Department at Mills, where he taught composition, contemporary performance and improvisation.[19] He is currently Professor Emeritus of Music at Mills, after having retired in 2018.[20] While Frith had never studied music in college, his credentials of over forty years of continuous practice and self-discovery got him the position. He has, however, maintained that “most of my students are better qualified to teach composition than I am,” and that he learns as much from them as they learn from him.[21]
In March 1997 Frith formed the electro-acoustic improvisation and experimental trio Maybe Monday with saxophonist Larry Ochs from Rova Saxophone Quartet and koto player Miya Masaoka. Between 1997 and 2008, they toured the United States, Canada, and Europe, and released three albums. In March 2008, Frith formed Cosa Brava, an experimental rock and improvisation quintet with Zeena Parkins from Skeleton Crew and Keep the Dog, Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and the Norman Conquest. They toured Europe in April 2008, and performed at the 25th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada, the following month.[22]
In 2013, Frith formed the Fred Frith Trio in Oakland, California, an improvising group with bassist Jason Hoopes and drummer/percussionist Jordan Glenn, both from the Oakland experimental song group Jack O’ The Clock.[23][24][25] The Trio toured Europe in February 2015,[26] recorded a studio album, Another Day in Fucking Paradise, in January 2016,[27] and toured Europe again in February 2017.[28] The album was well received by music critics.[29][30] In January 2018 the trio recorded their second album, Closer to the Ground, which was released in September 2018.[31]
Frith supplied guitar to the albums The Fates (2013)[32] and Folklore (2017) by Matthew Edwards and the Unfortunates.[33]
Frith has also collaborated with a number of prominent musicians, including Robert Wyatt,[14] Derek Bailey,[34] Lol Coxhill,[35] Lars Hollmer,[36] and the Scottish deaf percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie.[37]
Step Across the Border
Step Across the Border is a 1990 documentary film on Fred Frith, written and directed by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel, and released in Germany and Switzerland. It was filmed in Japan, Europe, and the United States, and also features musicians René Lussier, Iva Bittová, Tom Cora, Tim Hodgkinson, Bob Ostertag, and John Zorn.
Fred Records
In 2002, Fred Frith created his own record label, Fred Records, an imprint of Recommended Records, to re-release his back catalogue of recordings and previously unreleased material.
Personal life
During the early years of Henry Cow, Frith was married to Liza White, a teacher in Cambridge. They wed in 1970,[38] but divorced in 1974 after Frith’s commitment to the band left little private life for the couple.[39] In the early- to mid-1980s, after Henry Cow had split up and Frith had moved to New York City, he was married to Tina Curran, a musician and artist. She played bass guitar on several tracks on Frith’s albums at the time, and did the photography and artwork for a number of his albums during that period.[40] In the early 1990s Frith married German photographer and performance artist, Heike Liss. She has done the artwork for many of Frith’s albums, and has performed with him on several occasions. They lived in Germany in the mid-1990s, then moved to California where Frith taught at Mills College until his retirement in 2018.[41][42]
Musical style and instruments
Guitars and playing technique
Fred Frith has used a number of different guitars, including homemade instruments, over the years, depending on the type of music he is playing. For the more structured and refined music he has often used a Gibson ES-345, for example on his solo album, Gravity. For the heavier “rock” sound, as in Massacre, he has used an old 1961 solid body Burns guitar, created by the British craftsman Jim Burns. On his landmark Guitar Solos album, Frith used a modified 1936 Gibson K-11 guitar (q.v. for details).
For Frith’s early unstructured music, as with Henry Kaiser on With Friends Like These, and his early table-top guitar solo performances, he used a homemade six- and eight-string double-neck guitar created by a friend, Charles Fletcher. Frith told DownBeat magazine in 1983: “It was the one and only guitar that he ever built … he constructed it mainly out of old pieces from other guitars that I had, and for the body I think he used an old door.”[12] The possibilities offered by homemade instruments prompted Frith to start creating his own guitars, basically slabs of wood on which he mounted a pickup, a bridge, and strings stretched over metal screws. “The basic design of the instrument is supposed to be as rudimentary and flexible as possible,” Frith said, “so I can use an electric drill to bore holes into the body of it to achieve certain sounds … .”[12]
Frith uses a variety of implements to play guitar, from traditional guitar picks to violin bows, drum sticks, egg beaters, paint brushes, lengths of metal chain, and other found objects. Frith remarked: “It’s more to do with my interest in found objects and the use of certain kinds of textures which have an effect on the string … the difference between the touch of stone, the touch of glass, the touch of wood, the touch of paper – those kinds of basic elements that you’re using against the surface of the strings which produce different sounds.”[12]
In a typical solo improvising concert, Frith would lay a couple of his homemade guitars flat on a table and play them with a collection of found objects (varying from concert to concert). He would drop objects, like ball bearings, dried beans, and rice on the strings while stroking, scraping, and hitting them with whatever was on hand.[43] Later he added a live sampler to his on-stage equipment, which he controlled with pedals. The sampler enabled him to dynamically capture and loop guitar sounds, over which he would capture and loop new sounds, and so on, until he had a bed of repeated patterns on top of which he would then begin his solo performance.
Effects and amplification
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- Effect pedals
- Pro Co RAT distortion
- Boss FV-50L volume foot controller
- Boss RC20-XL Looper
- DigiTech Whammy 4
- Line 6 DL4 delay
- EBow
- Electroharmonix POG
- Amplification
Compositions
Since the late 1980s, Fred Frith has composed a number of longer works. The following is a selection (years indicating time of composition).[44][45]
- The As Usual Dance Towards the Other Flight to What is Not (1989) – for four electric guitars
- Helter Skelter (1990) – for two sopranos, contralto, and a large electric ensemble
- Stick Figures (1990) – for six guitars and two players
- Lelekovice (1991) – (for Iva Bittová) string quartet no. 1
- Stone, Brick, Glass, Wood, Wire (1992) – graphic scores for any number of players
- Freedom in Fragments (1993) – a suite of 23 pieces for saxophone quartet
- The Previous Evening (1993) – a tribute to John Cage for four clarinets, tapes, bass, footsteps, electric guitars, whirled objects, and voice
- Elegy for Elias (1993) – for piano, violin, and marimba
- Pacifica (1994) – a meditation for 21 musicians with texts by Pablo Neruda
- Seven Circles (1995) – for piano
- Impur (1996) – for 100 musicians, large building, and mobile audience
- Shortened Suite (1996) – for trumpet, oboe, cello, and marimba
- Back to Life (1997) – for trumpet, oboe, cello, and marimba
- Traffic Continues: Gusto (1998) – for large ensemble with improvising soloists
- Landing for Choir (2001) – for Flamenco singer, cello, saxophone, and samples
- Allegory (2002) – for string quartet and electric guitar
- Fell (2002) – for string quartet and electric guitar
- The Happy End Problem (2003) – for flute, bassoon, gu zheng, percussion, violin, and electronics
- The Right Angel (2003) – for orchestra and electric guitar
- Save As (2005) – for cello and percussion
- Snakes and Ladders (2006) – for clarinet, electric guitar, piano, percussion, cello, and double bass
- Episodes (2007) – for Baroque orchestra
- Water Stories (2007) – for clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, and cello
- For Nothing (2008) – for contralto and Baroque string quartet
- Fair (2008) – for guitar quartet
- Small Time (2009) – for percussion quartet
- Rocket Science (2012) – (clarinet/bass clarinet, bassoon, viola, electric guitar, percussion, and piano/keys
- What Happens (2015) – percussion quartet and prepared piano
- If I Could (2015) – clarinet, viola, electric guitar, piano, vibraphone, and mezzo-soprano
- Episodes for Orchestra (for Amanda Miller) (2007/2015) – Baroque orchestra
- Calle Calle (2016) – flute, saxophone and electronics
- Coulda Woulda Shoulda (2016) – viola solo
- Zena (2017) – for clarinet, flute, piano, percussion, violin, viola, and cello
- Rags of Time (2018) – for girl’s chorus, percussion and keyboards
Discography
Fred Frith appears on over 400 recordings: with bands, in collaboration with other musicians, solo, albums he produced for other bands and musicians, and albums featuring his composed work performed by others.
Documentaries
- 1990 Step Across the Border – a documentary on Frith by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel
- 1991 Streetwise – by Charles Castella about Frith’s work in Marseille with “unemployed rock musicians”
- 2000 Le voyage immobile – about Frith’s trio with Louis Sclavis and Jean-Pierre Drouet for France 3 national TV
- 2004 Touch the Sound – by Thomas Riedelsheimer about Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie and her collaboration with Frith
- 2007 Attwenger Adventure – on Austrian folk-punk duo Attwenger by Markus Kaiser-Mühlecke, with special appearances by Frith rehearsing and performing live with Attwenger and Wolfgang “I-Wolf” Schlögl at Music Unlimited XX. in Wels, Austria.[46][47]
- 2009 Act of God – by Jennifer Baichwal about the metaphysical effects of being struck by lightning, with music by Frith and others, and a segment showing Frith conducting an experiment to measure the effect of improvisation on brain waves.
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John Zorn
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Zorn in 2023
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| Background information | |
| Born | September 2, 1953
New York City, U.S.
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| Genres | |
| Occupations | Musician, composer, producer, arranger |
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| Works | |
| Years active | 1973–present |
| Labels | Tzadik, Avant, DIW, Elektra Nonesuch, Earache, Hathut, Shimmy-Disc, Eva, Toy’s Factory, Nato, Lumina, Black Saint, Subharmonic, Parachute, Yukon, Rift |
| Member of | Naked City, Painkiller, Masada, Moonchild, Simulacrum |
| Website | https://www.tzadik.com |
John Zorn (born September 2, 1953) is an American composer, conductor, producer, arranger and saxophonist who “deliberately resists category”.[1] 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”.[1][2] Rolling Stone noted that “[alt]hough Zorn has operated almost entirely outside the mainstream, he’s gradually asserted himself as one of the most influential musicians of our time”.[3]
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.[4][5] His following albums, Spillane (1987) and Naked City (1990) continued to merge styles and challenge formats.[6][7][8] His alternative hardcore influenced bands, Naked City and Painkiller gained him wider exposure in the early 1990s.[3] From 1994 until 2018, Zorn composed and recorded over three hundred Masada project compositions performed by many different ensembles.[9]
Zorn’s extensive recordings have been released through his independent Tzadik Records since 1995.[10] 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.[11]
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.[12][13][14] 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.[15] 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.[3][10][15][16]
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.[17][18] 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.[1][3][19][20] “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.”[21]
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.[3][22] Zorn immersed himself in the underground art scene, assisting filmmaker Jack Smith with his performances and attending plays by Richard Foreman.[23]
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.[1][24] 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.[25]
Zorn’s early major compositions included many game pieces described as “complex systems harnessing improvisers in flexible compositional formats”.[26][27] These compositions “involved strict rules, role playing, prompters with flashcards, all in the name of melding structure and improvisation in a seamless fashion”.[24] 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.[28][29] 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.[30][31][32]
In the early 1980s, Zorn was heavily engaged in improvisation as both a solo performer and with other like-minded artists.[24] 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.[33] 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.[34] Ganryu Island featured a series of duets by Zorn with Michihiro Sato on shamisen, which received limited release on the Yukon label in 1984.[35] Zorn has subsequently reissued these early recordings.[36]
Breakthrough recordings
Zorn’s breakthrough came in 1986 with the acclaimed The Big Gundown released on Nonesuch Records.[37] 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”.[38]
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.[39] This method of combining composition and improvisation involved Zorn writing descriptions or ideas on file-cards and arranging them to form the piece.[40] 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.[21]
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.”[21]
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.[24]
Music
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.
Jazz
Zorn’s most direct explorations of jazz included a ‘memorial’ to hard bop composer Sonny Clark, Voodoo in 1986,[41] 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.[42][43] He recorded Spy vs Spy featuring hardcore punk versions of Ornette Coleman‘s compositions in 1989.[3][44][45] 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”.[1]
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”.[46] While interest from Hollywood was not forthcoming, eventually independent filmmakers like Sheila McLaughlin and Raúl Ruiz sought his talents.[47] Filmmaker Walter Hill rejected his music for a film to be called Looters.[48] 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.[49] 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.[50] 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.[51]
Hardcore: Naked City, Painkiller and beyond
Zorn established Naked City in 1988 as a “compositional workshop” to test the limitations of a rock band format.[52] Featuring Zorn (saxophone), Bill Frisell (guitars), Fred Frith (bass), Wayne Horvitz (keyboards), Joey Baron (drums), and vocalist Yamatsuka Eye (and later Mike Patton), Naked City blended Zorn’s appreciation of hardcore punk and grindcore bands like Agnostic Front and Napalm Death with influences like film music, country or jazz often in a single composition.[53] The band performed pieces by film composers Ennio Morricone, John Barry, Johnny Mandel and Henry Mancini and modern classicists Alexander Scriabin, Claude Debussy, Charles Ives, and Olivier Messiaen and recorded heavy metal and ambient albums.[54][55]
In 1991, Zorn formed Painkiller with Bill Laswell on bass and Mick Harris on drums.[56] Painkiller’s first two releases, Guts of a Virgin (1991) and Buried Secrets (1992), also featured short grindcore and free jazz-inspired compositions.[57] They released their first live album, Rituals: Live in Japan, in 1993, followed by the double CD Execution Ground (1994), which featured longer dub and ambient-styled pieces.[58] 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.[59]
Both bands attracted worldwide interest, particularly in Japan, where Zorn had relocated following a three-month residency in Tokyo.[60]
In 2006, Zorn formed Moonchild with Mike Patton, Trevor Dunn, and Joey Baron as “a compositional challenge, as a song cycle, songs without words” as he decided “I want to work with Patton more; Patton was very hungry to do more work together. ‘OK, so let’s start it with just bass, drums, and voice”.[3][61] Rolling Stone said that Moonchild was “a band that, much like Naked City, mutated radically across its lifespan as Zorn kept raising his compositional bar. While it touched on similar extremes as that group… its episodes are more sustained, its structures more conventionally songlike” noting “For the first five of Moonchild’s seven albums, released from 2006 through 2014, Patton utilized his full whisper-to-scream range while operating entirely without lyrics”.[3]
Concert music
As Zorn’s interest in Naked City waned, he “started hearing classical music in [his] head again.”[62] Zorn started working on compositions that drew on chamber music arrangements of strings, percussion and electronic instruments. Elegy, a suite dedicated to Jean Genet, was released in 1992.[63]
The establishment of Tzadik allowed him to release many compositions which he had written over the previous two decades for classical ensembles. Zorn’s earliest released classical composition, Christabel (1972) for five flutes, first appeared on Angelus Novus in 1998.[64] He credits the composition of his 1988 string quartet Cat O’ Nine Tails (commissioned and released by the Kronos Quartet on Short Stories) to awakening him to the possibilities of writing for classical musicians. This composition also appeared 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 the first Masada Book.[65]
Aporias: Requia for Piano and Orchestra (1998) was Zorn’s first full-scale orchestral release featuring pianist Stephen Drury, the Hungarian Radio Children’s Choir and the American Composers Orchestra conducted by Dennis Russell Davies.[66]
Much of Zorn’s classical work is dedicated or inspired by artists who have influenced him:
- Duras: Duchamp (1997) contains tributes to Marguerite Duras and Olivier Messiaen[67]
- Songs from the Hermetic Theatre (2001) features compositions dedicated to Harry Smith, Joseph Beuys, and Maya Deren[68]
- Madness, Love and Mysticism (2001) featured Le Mômo, inspired by Antonin Artaud, and Untitled, dedicated to Joseph Cornell[69]
- Chimeras (2001) was based on Arnold Schoenberg‘s atonal composition, Pierrot Lunaire[70]
Several of Zorn’s later concert works drew inspiration from mysticism and the works of Aleister Crowley in particular; Magick (2004) featured a group called the Crowley Quartet.[71] A 2009 performance of the album’s centerpiece 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”.[72]
Later works expanded to include vocal and operatic works; Mysterium released in 2005 featured Frammenti del Sappho for female chorus;[73] Rituals (2005) featured Zorn’s opera composed for the Bayreuth Opera Festival in 1998;[74] and La Machine de l’Être composed in 2000, premiered at the New York City Opera in 2011, and recorded for the 2012 album Music and Its Double.[75][76]
Zorn’s concert works have been performed all over the world and he has received commissions from the New York Philharmonic, Brooklyn Philharmonic and BBC Radio 3.[77][78]
Masada books
Conversations with Joey Baron led Zorn to explore and embrace Jewish culture. A further file-card composition Kristallnacht (1992) reflected on the Night of Broken Glass that violently and destructively targeted Jews in Germany and Austria in 1938.[79][80] Several movements used the Phrygian dominant and Ukrainian Dorian scales common to klezmer music.[81][82] Zorn set himself the task of writing 100 compositions using the scale within a year.[83]
Book One
In 1993 Zorn engaged Baron along with Dave Douglas (trumpet) and Greg Cohen (double bass) to provide musical cues for Joe Chappelle‘s first film Thieves Quartet (later collected on Filmworks III: 1990–1995) and established the first Masada group to perform his recent compositions using the instrumental lineup and improvisational approach of Ornette Coleman‘s pioneering free jazz quartet.[84][85]
Within three years, the number of compositions had grown to 205 and became known as the first Masada Book. Zorn explained:
The project for Masada was to create something positive in the Jewish tradition something that maybe takes the idea of Jewish music into the 21st century the way jazz developed from the teens and 1920s into the ’40s, the ’50s, the ’60s and on … My initial idea was to write a hundred tunes. And then I ended up writing over 200 for the first book and then performed it countless time for years.[86]
In 1996, Zorn released Bar Kokhba featuring Masada compositions recorded by a rotating group of musicians.[87] Two ensembles arose from this album: the Masada String Trio, composed of Greg Cohen (bass), Mark Feldman (violin), and Erik Friedlander (cello); and the Bar Kokhba Sextet which added Marc Ribot (guitar), Cyro Baptista (percussion), and Joey Baron (drums), both of which were featured on 1998’s The Circle Maker.[88] The Masada String Trio were also featured on Zorn’s Filmworks series, as part of his 50th Birthday Celebration, and released two albums as part of the Book of Angels project, Azazal and Haborym.[89][90][91][92] In 2003, Zorn formed Electric Masada, a band featuring Zorn, Baptista, Baron, and Ribot, along with Trevor Dunn (bass), Ikue Mori (electronics), Jamie Saft (keyboards), and Kenny Wollesen (drums) releasing their debut live album from Zorn’s 50th Birthday Concert series and a double live CD recorded in 2004.[93] In 2019, Zorn formed the New Masada Quartet with Julian Lage (guitar), Jorge Roeder (bass), and Kenny Wollesen (drums).[94]
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, and Tim Sparks; Masada Recital by Mark Feldman and Sylvie Courvoisier; Masada Rock by Rashanim; and two albums featuring various artists, Voices in the Wilderness and The Unknown Masada.[36]
Book Two
In 2004, Zorn began composing the second Masada Book, The Book of Angels, resulting in an additional 316 compositions.[95][96] Zorn explained:
After 10 years of performing the first book, I thought “Maybe it’d be nice to write some more tunes.” And I wrote 300 more tunes. When I started writing those it was “Let’s see if I can write a hundred songs in a month this time.” I’ve been working on these scales and playing these tunes all this time. In the back of my head somewhere are lodged all kinds of new ideas. Let’s see if I can come up with 100 tunes in a month instead of in a year. So in the first month, I popped out a hundred tunes; the second month, another hundred; in the third month, a third 100 tunes. I had no idea that was going to happen.[86]
Zorn released thirty-two volumes of Masada Book Two compositions performed by many varied artists.[97][98] The titles of many Masada Book Two compositions are derived from demonology and Judeo-Christian mythology.
The Masada quartet performed at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in March 2007 for what were billed as their final concerts.[99] Zorn reformed the band as a sextet with Uri Caine and Cyro Baptista in 2009 saying:[100]
I felt like we kind of hit a plateau a little bit with it in 2007 and I said, “Well, maybe the quartet is really done. Maybe we’ve accomplished what we can accomplish. Maybe it’s time to put this to bed.” And then I was asked by the Marciac Jazz Festival to put together a slightly larger group. They asked me what if I added a couple of people to Masada and I said, “I can’t add anybody to the quartet. The quartet is the quartet, that’s what we do.” But then I thought, “Well, if I was going to add someone I would probably ask Uri and Cyro.” So we tried it at Marciac and it was unbelievable. We didn’t even have any rehearsal time. I just passed the charts out and said, “OK, just watch me because I’ll be conducting. Let’s just do it.” And it was one of those magical clicks on the bandstand that sometimes happens. So yeah, this band is taking off again. After 15 years of doing this music, we can still find new things.
Zorn’s Masada compositions and associated ensembles have become a central focus of many concerts and festivals and he has established regular ‘Masada Marathons’ that feature various bands and musicians performing music from the Masada Books.[95][101]
Book Three
Zorn completed the third Masada book, titled The Book Beriah, in 2014.[102]
The Dreamers
Zorn released one of his most popular albums, The Gift, in 2001, which surprised many with its relaxed blend of surf, exotica and world music.[103] On February 29, 2008, at St Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, Zorn premiered The Dreamers, which saw a return to the gentle compositions first featured on The Gift and established the band of the same name.[104] The Dreamers released their second album, O’o, in 2009, an album of Zorn’s Book of Angels compositions in 2010 and a Christmas album in 2011.[105][106][107]
Other work
Tzadik Records
In 1992, John Zorn curated the Avant subsidiary of the DIW label with jazz producer Kazunori Sugiyama and released several Naked City recordings on the label as well as many other albums featuring Zorn affiliated musicians including Derek Bailey, Dave Douglas, Erik Friedlander, and Marc Ribot.[108]
In 1995, Zorn established the Tzadik label, allowing him to record and release his continually expanding catalog and works by others. Zorn stated “I do feel that it’s a lot easier to keep your head clear from greed if you’re not involved with major corporations. When I was working with Nonesuch for a short period, I got wrapped up with the same shit of like, “Why does Bill Frisell have a bigger budget than me?” I mean like, that’s something to think about? I could feel greed growing in me like a cancer. And for me, it’s very hard to deal with..”[24]
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 featured 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.[109]
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.[110]
The Stone (music venue)
Zorn’s earliest New York performances occurred at small artist-run performance spaces including his own apartment.[24] As his profile grew, he became associated with several Lower East Side alternative venues such as the Knitting Factory and Tonic.[86] On Friday April 13, 2007, Zorn played the final night at Tonic before it closed due to financial pressures.[111][112][113]
Zorn was the principal force in establishing The Stone in 2005, an avant-garde performance space in New York’s Alphabet City which supports itself solely on donations and the sale of limited-edition CDs, giving all door revenues directly to the performers.[114] Zorn holds the title of artistic director and regularly performs ‘Improvisation Nights’.[115] Zorn feels that “The Stone is a unique space and is different from Tonic, the Knitting Factory, and most of the other venues we have played at as there is no bar … so there is NO pressure to pack the house with an audience that drinks, and what night you perform has nothing to do with your power to draw a crowd or what kind of music you might play”.[116] 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.[117] In December 2016 Zorn announced that The Stone would close in February 2018 but that he was hopeful that a new location could be found, stating “Venues come and go, but the music continues on forever!”[118] By March 2017 Zorn had negotiated with The New School to move The Stone to Greenwich Village.[119] On February 25, 2018, the last performance was held at the original venue and Zorn moved operations to The New School’s The Glass Box Theatre on the basis of a handshake deal.[120]
50th and 60th birthday concert series
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 Factory.[121][122][123] 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.[124] A total of 12 live albums were released on his 50th Birthday Celebration Series.[125]
Zorn’s 60th birthday celebrations encompassed concerts across the globe from festival appearances to unique events in art galleries and unusual venues across 2013 and into 2014.[126] The first concerts under the Zorn@60 banner were performed at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in April 2013.[127] This was followed by performances at the Museum of Modern Art and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.[128][129] The European leg of Zorn@60 commenced at the Barbican Theatre in London in July 2013.[130] Festival appearances in Belgium, Poland, Spain and Germany followed soon after.[131][132][133][134][135] These were followed by concerts in Victoriaville, Canada.[136] Returning to New York City other concert appearances occurred at Alice Tully Hall and Lincoln Centre.[137][138]
Zorn undertook another of his celebrated Masada Marathons at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in August.[139] Further New York City concerts in September included performances of music for film at the Anthology Film Archives, classical works and Cobra at the Miller Theatre, a day-long concert at the Metropolitan Museum of Art[140] and a performance of improvised duets with Ryuichi Sakamoto.[141][142][143] In October, the International Contemporary Ensemble performed a retrospective of Zorn’s classical music at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.[144] The final Zorn@60 concerts were performed as part of the Adelaide Festival in Australia in March 2014 featuring a four concerts covering the breadth of his compositional and improvisational range.[145][146]
Arcana (book series)
In 2000, Zorn edited the book Arcana: Musicians on Music featuring interviews, essays, and commentaries by musicians including Anthony Coleman, Peter Garland, David Mahler, Bill Frisell, Gerry Hemingway, George E. Lewis, Fred Frith, Eyvind Kang, Mike Patton and Elliott Sharp, on the compositional process.[147] 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.”[148] New volumes have since been released; the eighth volume was published in September 2017.
In other media
Zorn also appeared on the 1985 Henry Hills film Money about the financial struggles of Manhattan avant garde artists during the age of Reaganism.[149]
Awards
In 2001, John Zorn received the Jewish Cultural Award in Performing Arts from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture.[150] In 2006, Zorn was named a MacArthur Fellow.[151][152] 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.”[153]
In 2011, Zorn was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame by Lou Reed, and was awarded the Magister Artium Gandensis, an honorary degree from the University of Ghent.[154] In 2014, he received honorary doctorates from The State University of New York and the New England Conservatory of Music.[155][156][157]
Discography
Filmography
- Money (1985), a “manic collage film” by Henry Hills on “the early days of “language poetry” and the downtown improvised music scene.”[158]
- Put More Blood Into the Music (1987), documentary by George Atlas on New York avant garde music, aired Sunday March 12, 1989, as episode 292 of The South Bank Show.
- Step Across the Border (1990), documentary on Fred Frith.
- A Bookshelf on Top of the Sky: 12 Stories About John Zorn (Tzadik, 2004), film portrait by Claudia Heuermann.
- Masada Live at Tonic 1999 (2004), concert film.
- Celestial Subway Lines / Salvaging Noise (2005), experimental documentary by Ken Jacobs with soundtrack by Zorn and Ikue Mori.
- Sabbath in Paradise (Tzadik, 2007), documentary by Claudia Heuermann on Jewish musical culture in New York’s avant garde Jazz scene in the 1990s.
- Astronome: A Night at the Opera (2010), an opera by Richard Foreman, music by John Zorn.
- Zorn I (2016) by Mathieu Amalric
- Zorn II (2018) by Mathieu Amalric
- Zorn III (2022) by Mathieu Amalric
Bibliography
- Zorn, John (editor). Arcana: Musicians on Music. Hips Road: New York 2000, ISBN 1-887123-27-X.
- Zorn, John (editor). Arcana II: Musicians on Music. Hips Road/Tzadik: New York 2007, ISBN 0-9788337-6-7.
- Zorn, John (editor). Arcana III: Musicians on Music. Hips Road/Tzadik: New York 2008, ISBN 0-9788337-7-5.
- Zorn, John (editor). Arcana IV: Musicians on Music. Hips Road/Tzadik: New York 2009, ISBN 0-9788337-8-3.
- Zorn, John (editor). Arcana V: Musicians on Music, Magic & Mysticism. Hips Road/Tzadik: New York 2010, ISBN 0-9788337-9-1.
- Zorn, John (editor). Arcana VI: Musicians on Music. Hips Road/Tzadik: New York 2012, ISBN 0-9788337-5-9.
- Zorn, John (editor). Arcana VII: Musicians on Music. Hips Road/Tzadik: New York 2014, ISBN 0-9788337-4-0.
- Zorn, John (editor). Arcana VIII: Musicians on Music. Hips Road/Tzadik: New York 2017, ISBN 0-9788337-3-2.
- Zorn, John (editor). Arcana IX: Musicians on Music. Hips Road/Tzadik: New York 2021, ISBN 0-9788337-2-4.
- Zorn, John (editor). Arcana X: Musicians on Music. Hips Road/Tzadik: New York 2022, ISBN 0-9788337-1-6.
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