Why Zorn Matters

There's an article in The New York Times  that contrasts John Zorn's "downtown" roots with his slow acceptance by the "uptown" scene: I might not be familiar with the precise definitions of the two areas of New York culture, but the spirit of the article expresses the reasons why Zorn is so important to me. Having grown up in the aftermath of punk, and all the excitement of the rave explosion, Zorn occupied a specific space in my musical pantheon. Lending a murderous saxophone solo to The Violent Femmes, hanging out in the same places as Sonic Youth or Swans and mixing free jazz with hardcore punk, Zorn gave a musical credibility to the wild sounds of my adolescence.

Zorn was always and obviously different to the other musicians I adored for their willingness to experiment while still rocking hard. Sonic Youth might have followed a similar trajectory - Goodbye Twentieth Century is a fine testament to a band who acknowledge the roots of their own noise in formal classical experiments - but Zorn was a virtuoso from the first, and his playing connected him clearly to the imaginations of Coletrane or Ornette Coleman. Spy Versus Spy made his heritage explicit: an album of cover versions by the latter, performed at the speed of hardcore. It was the jazz album I needed to understand, especially in a period when jazz was becoming preoccupied with polish and conservation.

Ironically, by the time of post-punk, jazz had been occupied by an obsession with "style' and taste": it was turning up at the Proms, and the only talent from the golden age still in action was Miles Davis, throwing some uncomfortable shapes around hip hop. Meanwhile, Zorn was cultivating the same legacy to a far more visceral end.

Unlike many artists who pretend towards originality or experimentation, Zorn was interested in the history of music. Naked City, his version of the supergroup, would splice country, punk, romantic jazz and atmospheric soundtracks: he revisited film scores by Morricone. The double set of Cobra revealed how game theory could be used to bridge the gap between improvisation and composition, and by the time electronic musicians were citing minimalism - and remixing Reich and Glass to predictable monotony - Zorn was ready to become the heir of Cage.

Much post-modern composition is self-conscious and postures, or slips into pomposity: Zorn's trick was to treat different musical genres with equal respect. A turntablist could find themselves scratching a string quartet, Japanese hardcore vocalists would accompany be-bop saxophone. Now that the BBC has programmed an evening of his work, Zorn might be heading towards some kind of mainstream acceptance. And yet, even this programme has its surprises...




http://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/john-zorn-primer

Ripping off Zorn in Conversation...

Although John Zorn is unlikely to be giving me an interview this weekend - he hasn't spoken to the press in recent years - he did chat with fellow artist Michael Counts during the original production of his 'monodrama', La Machine de l’être. Counts was responsible for the animation that accompanied Zorn's composition, and the conversation was transcribed here.

Zorn's musical journey has been both restless and eclectic: from orchestrations based on game theory through hard bop jazz (fused with a ferocious punk sensibility) to his Masada project which focussed on the Jewish musical heritage, Zorn is a familiar face on the alternative and classical scenes. Far from suggesting a lack of definition, Zorn's enthusiastic for diverse genres reflects an interest in manifold musical paths, and he brings his distinctive aesthetic to every project.

Talking to Counts, Zorn does reveal a few of the key elements to his practice. "I always have a group of people that I trust," he says. "And that’s, for me, the only way to really get something done." His grounding in jazz lends all of his music an improvisational energy, and the emphasis on personnel rather than format is enlightening.  Like the groups put together by Miles Davis, Zorn's emphasis is as much as building connections as directing the musical direction.

"People are key in this process. Music-making, for me, is about people, which is why I like to work with the same people. You get a relationship. You get a real feeling of love between them. You can get a trust happening," he says. 

More unexpectedly, Zorn identifies the musical process as "sacred in a certain way." The emphasis on Jewish forms in the Masada recordings - and a smattering of compositions that take inspiration from magical thinking - hinted at an artist interested in spirituality and while his personal beliefs are not necessarily as explicit as, say, James MacMillan, he does set a religious sentiment at the heart of his music. He adds that "you don’t want to explain everything because then the mystery’s gone. Without the mystery— you lose a lot of depth."

If his eclecticism sets him firmly in one post-modern strand, his attitude towards the relationship between art and audience is equally post-modern, explaining that the work, once created, "creates its own reality." That he then asks Counts "How and where does divine inspiration come into play in your work?" complicates this vision. Like his abrupt musical shifts, his conversation with Counts reveals a mind comfortable working across genres and with a range of interests.

John Zorn: A Portrait 

Saturday, 12 January, 7.30pm

City Halls, Glasgow

January - First Top Five...

Having been locked up for the past fortnight with only the internet for company - there seemed to be some kind of celebration going on with my family in the adjourning room, but I was trawling for essays on the political traditions of puppetry - I am glad to see that at least some performance is happening in January. It used to be the case that July - as the Fringe approached - and January were dead months in the arts, but programmers realised that they had to provide critics with something to write about before we all became disillusioned and start making our own productions.

Celtic Connections will dominate Glasgow for most of the month - even the Tron is filled with folk song - but the SSO is doing a favour to fans of a more experimental bent. I know him best for his blistering interpretations of Ornette Coleman (Spy Vs Spy redoes free jazz through the filter of hardcore punk), but John Zorn has become one of the most important contemporary classical composers who isn't in the minimalist or squeaky gate schools.

It's difficult to believe he has hit sixty, or that the BBC are offering a portrait of his orchestral works - there's even a new commission, Suppôts et Suppliciations. I picture him as that slightly geeky looking hard bop saxophonist, a contemporary of Sonic Youth and full of that bad-ass attitude that was the interesting legacy of punk. The SSO have got in their principal guest conductor, Ilan Volkov - himself no stranger to the more intriguing end of classical music - to throw down with his wordless opera La Machine de l’être and the strings only special Kol Nidre.

Zorn will be present, although he is not down to play. I suggest that a chant ought to go up at the end, to get him to honk a number out on his saxophone. Maybe that wild solo he scattered over Black Girls  by The Violent Femmes. 

City Halls, 12 January

I've banged on about the Lyceum's revival of A Taste of Honey and The Maids at the Citizens before, but I am still excited by both. Being a bit of a curmudgeon, I complain about most things that aren't brand new, except when they are pieces that my random sense of aesthetics has decided are "important." A Taste of Honey is obviously a crucial jewel in the threaded necklace of contemporary scripted drama - tersely political, confrontational, it predicted a social engagement that is a key theme of modern drama. The Maids is an example of how Genet was experimenting so radically with theatre that half a century later, it still has a forbidden exoticism.

A Taste of Honey fits in with the emergence of Britain's "Angry Young Men" playwrights (only the author was a woman, indicating how even the twentieth century was falling foul of a certain gender blindness): The Maids jumbles up sexuality and sex, murder and manipulation into a queer mixture that predates the celebratory adoption of the word. As I prepare for a few months of Live Art and Object Manipulation (Buzzcut and manipulate are on their way to my heart), here's a couple of reminders that I probably ought not to ignore the script.

The Maids, Citizens Theatre, 17 January - 2 February

A Taste of Honey, Lyceum, 18 January - 9 February

At the risk of being Glasgow-centric, my last two choices have got to be part of Celtic Connections. I'd give a shout for the whole festival - before it was instituted, January was a moribund month. Not only did it find new audiences, it has livened up the city after Christmas and probably encouraged the theatres to programme earlier in the year. However, a few specific choices would bring this list up to five...

I am going to be vaguely sentimental in picking an  All Will be Well - The Life and Songs of Michael Marra. To be honest, I don't really want to hear Hue and Cry do Mother Glasgow, but there are a few other names that are less tainted by my youthful prejudices against polished pop. Michael Marra came from Dundee and wrote not a few songs that dealt with contemporary life in an idiom that was as much Tom Waits as it was folk.

His recent death was a loss to Scottish music - I liked him the best for his compositions in Plan B's A Wee Home From Home and this tribute is an appropriate way to remember his song-writing brilliance.

Royal Concert Hall, 28 January

The final choice is too easy. Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares: described as "magnificent, otherworldly soundscapes of dissonant diaphonic harmonies," I was one of the trendy indie kicks who loved this in the 1990s and so "helped kick-start the whole world music movement." Admittedly, there's a few problems with that whole category, but there's few things more astonishing than a Bulgarian choir in full assault mode.

Kelvingrove Art Gallery, 24 January