John Zorn Music

This bizarre double disc reiterates the fact deconstructionist Zorn is most comfortable playing into his own audience. For starters it seems clear that the recordings are available on other (arguably better) discs, and for finishers I cannot help but feel reworking these compositions into this two-disc release seems pretentious at best. Everyone should embrace their inner schizophrenic Zorn, but only few die-hards actually need to embrace this much. Amongst his "studies" into these sporadic, atonal, stringed freak-outs, the challenged-out composer offers seldom few hard reasons to stay musically invested inside these post-classical alienations. The longer compositions only are slightly more involving from their extended run time- Zorn's complete annihilation of melody and rhythm for more then a few seconds pervade both cartoon and s&m. To help clear the mind disc-to-disc, he has attached one of his slower, introspective compositions in different forms, a nice gimmick, but still no reason to invest in the experience outside of being a completionist. Still, as compositionally fractured as it all is, one can never accuse Zorn of hiring insensitive players to do his bidding, playing here with a ferocity as dazzling as it is confusing.

John Zorn's "Cartoon S&M" is a collection of eight chamber ensemble performances, broken into two distinct sections (and cleverly two CDs). All of the material had previously been released on other albums, but these are all new recordings.

The first disc consists of music overtly influenced by Carl Stalling-- "Cartoon" music so to speak. The three pieces presented in this form-- "Cat O'Nine Tails" for string quartet, "Carny" for solo piano, and "For Your Eyes Only" for 20-piece orchestra, are all similar in form-- blocks of related, unrelated or bizarrely consistent music are arranged together in a continuous sequence of consistently changing mood and texture-- from swing to neo-Baroque to frantic energy music, cartoonish bursts, sensitive passages, etc. It moves and consistently keeps moving. Of the three, "Cat O'Nine Tails" gets the best reading (by the Mondriann Quartet)-- enormously sensitive and in-tune with the intent of the piece, although solo piano workout "Carny" (handled expertly by Tomoko Mukiyama) is my favorite of the three. Admittedly, this reading is in my assessment inferior to Stephen Drury's rather brilliant reading on "Angelus Novus", but nonetheless, it is an amazing piece. As a coda, one of Zorn's most fragile and beautiful pieces, "Kol Nidre" is presented. Performed as a string quartet (again by the Mondriann quartet), they again find a lovely and sensitive atmosphere and infuse one of zorn's most mournful composition with a stunning power. It may not be superior to the reading on "The String Quartets", but it certainly is comparable.

The second disc is grouped as "S&M", but honestly, i don't hear it. Two string quartets-- "The Dead Man" and "Memento Mori" (both previously recorded for "The String Quartets") and a violin/piano/percussion trio piece ("Music for Children") are presented and are quite similar to the material on the first disc, except the moods tend to stay darker. Both string quartets are again perforemd by the Mondriann Quartet and receive fine readings-- "Memento Mori" in particular seems to benefit from this reading. While it may be one of the most challenging listens in Zorn's catalog, a slightly more open and seemingly confident performance allows it to really shine as a thing of bizarre and delicate beauty. "The Dead Man" and "Music For Children" I found, in both cases, somewhat lesser than previous issues (on "The String Quartets" and "Music For Children" respectively)-- neither are bad listens per se (although "Music for Children" is presented in a hushed, hard to hear, tone), but I feel both had superior readings previously. Like the first disc, this one closes with a presentation of "Kol Nidre", this time scored for four clarinets. Again, the unnerving beauty of the piece shines forth, though truthfully I prefer the string version, both are stunning.

There is clasical work by Zorn which I prefer to "Cartoon S/M", but it does make a good sort of summary of his work prior to 2000. Those seeking an entry into Zorn's classical work could do worse than to start here.

In 1999 and 2000, John Zorn went to the Netherlands to record some of his best chamber music with a foreign orchestra. The result is this double-disc album. It's arranged in two parts: The cartoon disc and the S&M disc. But the material on both discs is almost interchangeable --- Zorn tends to blend his influences, even when he's trying to keep them apart. (And the violence in cartoons is nearly sadomasochistic, anyway, which gives him a head start.)

The cartoon disc is inspired by one of Zorn's heroes, Carl Stalling, the guy who wrote and conducted the music for Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons. Zorn's version of Stalling's music was written for imaginary, more adult cartoons. The three songs on this disc have three different arrangements. One is a full orchestra (For Your Eyes Only). It's loud and fast. The second, Cat O'Nine Tails, is for string quartet. It's just as fast, with sharp cuts between blocks of music. The third, Carny, is for solo piano. It re-creates the tone of the first two, but without the luxury of multiple instruments. It's also the best track on the disc.

The second disc has three moody S&M pieces. They could be the soundtracks to a couple of avant-garde erotic films. In The Dead Man (indexed on the CD into thirteen blocks for some reason), the musicians explore brief melodies, sound effects, and single tones. The piece is very abstract. Music for Children follows the same theme. It begins as music and ends with violent cracks and snaps. There's a sound of splintering wood in there, too. The third piece, Memento Mori, is very challenging --- for 26 minutes, a string quartet plays one block of music after another, each stretched out and subtle, with no repeating melodies. The piece grows on you, but only if you listen intently about ten times.

Both discs have a bonus track: Two versions of Kol Nidre, a ceremonial klezmer song that John Zorn wrote to evoke Jewish religious rites. On one disc, the song is played by a clarinet quartet. On the other, it's played by a string quartet. Although Kol Nidre doesn't fit the cartoon S&M theme, the song is a perfect coda.

This isn't a good place to start if you haven't heard John Zorn's music. But if you've had a taste of his work --- or if you like any kind of avant-garde classical music --- you should hear this. There's a lot of music here, so you'll have to listen over and over to get it all. But the effort is worth it.

As I have said in other reviews, I am not an uncritical fan of Zorn's concert music. I find him intermittently brilliant or archly referential depending on the piece. He is undeniably facile as a composer. The ideas seem to pour out of him. It's just that so often the ideas are not really his.

This 2CD set is a case in point. Some of the works on it are really brilliant, and some are just annoying. The name of the CD says it all really. Music on the first disc is mostly inspired by Zorn's fascination with the cartoon music of Chuck Stallings or Tex Avery. As a result, on pieces like Cat 'o Nine Tails and Carny the ideas fly fast a furious, but with no significant development. What is humorous and wacky in Zorn's Naked City albums, ends up sounding pretentious in these pieces. And then there are bleeding chunks of everything from Tex Ritter to Varese thrown in. Quotation is not necessarily a bad thing in concert music, but you really have to have something new to say about the work you are quoting. Berio did this in the masterful third movement of his Sinfonia, summing up the progression of western history through brilliant commentary on an entire movement from Mahler. Zorn is just showing off here. We learn nothing new about the works quoted, or about Zorn. It comes off as pastiche. There are lovely moments in these works...but they are dropped. It's like listening to musings of a composer with ADD!

On the other hand, some of the works here are wonderful, particularly on the second CD, S & M, though I am also partial to the chamber orchestra piece, For Your Eyes Only. (Seems to hang together betterl than the other cartoon material.) The second CD starts with The Dead Man, which is a structurally sound piece in small movements (ostensibly representing the sound track to an imagined S and M movie.) Though even in this piece, there is some Mickey Moused moments, it hangs together well and makes a statement of a sort. The rest of the second CD is uniformly good. Music for Children is a serious piece. In it, Zorn shows an uncanny ear for sound combinations, microtones and well constructed barrages of atonal runs. The work has an improvisatory quality, while still maintaining directionality. Memento Mori is perhaps the most serious work in the collection and my favorite Zorn string quartet. It is a long work in an unashmedly modernist style. At times it is reminicent of the work of Boulez or Stockhausen. At other times, is resembles Crumb. This is a great work and worthy of the price of the disc alone (though you can get this in other guises, by the Kronos Quartet or on Zorn's own label Tzadik.)

Finally, my two favorite pieces on the CD are the two versions of Kol Nidre. This work is an homage to Arvo Part and late Beethoven. In fact, the opening and closing of the work could be lifted directly from Part's Fratres. However, the middle section is a soulful Klezmer style melody that seems closer to Zorn's real soul than anything else on the CD. This rediscovery of his Jewish identity is to me, the best thing that Zorn has done in his career. Long after his S and M pieces fade away, and the cartoon stuff looses it's meaning, the music of Kol Nidre, along with his Masada quartet and Bar Kolkba will remain fresh and deeply personal.

The performances on these discs are outstanding, even in the most cartoonish material. The Dutch groups represented on the disc play with conviction and good modernist sensibilities. Though there is a lot of competition for particularly the string quartet material, the Mondrian quartet holds up very well next to the competition.

So now to the reccommendation...I only gave three stars. On the basis of the strongest pieces I would give five...but there are alot of weak pieces on this CD so I had to take some stars off my rating. If you have heard some of Zorn's cartoon music and you like it, then add the two stars back and get this CD. Otherwise, you may want to see if you can find other versions of Memento Mori, Music for Children and Kol Nidre. They are, in my opinion, the works to savor from this collection.

2 1/2

Covering some of the same warped Classical compositional ground this fearless artist has covered in the past, Zorn, for Chimeras, injects operatic vocalist Ilana Davidson into the mix, to decidedly repetitive results. While producing unquestionable moments of palpable, eerie suspense, musically many tracks just blend into each other with Davidson's apparent instructions to use her voice to pretty much the same exact effect throughout the entire more then-slightly pretentious affair. Balancing shrillness and grace, John Zorn only slightly outruns the narrow confines of his current construct by making these hazily piercing tracks practically indistinguishable, in his typically frustrating, though slightly-brilliant avant-garde way.

A highly unusual composition, even for John Zorn, "Chimeras" consists of twelve movements (and one interlude) scored for sextet plus voice. Each movement pits the vocalist (primarily soprano Ilana Davidson, joined by Elizabeth Farnum on two movements) against some combination of the accompaniment-- two reeds (Tara O'Connor on flutes, Mike Lowenstern on clarinet), two strings (Jennifer Choi on violin and Fred Sherry on cello), keyboard (Stephen Drury, performing at piano, organ, and celesta) and percussion (William Winant). The music is loosely influenced by Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire", with the same instrumentatal arrangement but with percussion added), but it's probably the cover, a reproduction of a painting by Heironymous Bosch, that best sums up what's held inside.

Zorn subtitled the piece "A Child's Adventures in the Realms of the Unreal", and perhaps this is an accurate assessment. The movements find the vocalist in a number of contexts, sometimes framing, sometimes supporting, sometimes leading-- everything from frantic piano-violin-cello trios to delicate percussion, droning organs and bass flute, horn-and-strings, and so on provide shifting colors against which the vocal works. A couple instrumental passages serve as almost a deep breath (particularly the percussion only interlude) in the midst of this.

When it's over, honestly, I'm left with not much feeling. It's an excessively difficult piece, and I can't really say I got much from it. Given that I've found much of Zorn's classical work to be moving, this always sort of disappoints me. Having said that, I find the experience of listening to this one oddly compelling (and curiously enough, it seems to raise my productivity at work), and as such, I tend to listen to it a lot. I may change my mind in the future, but for now I'll call this three stars. If you're into Zorn's classical work, it's well worth the investment.

John Zorn's most recent entry to his New Composers series is one that succeeds on multiple levels. It is a genuinely disconcerting sonic experience. The internal mechanics of the composition itself is remarkably intriguing and it succeeds in isolating and maintaining a deep emotional resonance. Says Zorn: "Although based on mathematical models I have tried to make _Chimeras_ a work of passion, drama and imagination." I can't say much about how it is composed, but it is an amazing piece, very intense.

_Chimeras_ is scored for the same chamber ensemble as Schoenberg's _Pierrot lunaire_, with percussion added and an additional vocalist on two pieces. Superficially, it does sound like _Pierrot lunaire_, and different pieces use different combinations of instruments. But Zorn's work is actually more fantastic, weird, and evocative like an Alice-in-Wonderland-on-acid, compared to Schoenberg's piece, which is melodramatic and outlandish and frightening. The percussion of avant-garde virtuoso-genius William Winant adds a great deal to the sonic possibilities here. _Chimeras_ is an organic, mysterious and kaleidoscopic soundworld. The vocals are remarkable, switching to shrill outbursts to glassy vibrato in a split-second. Well nuanced, contrapuntal, and forceful is the instrumentation with its serpentine atonal evocations chasing each other through a demented scene. The moods range from tense & menacing to devilishly whimsical to alienated & saddening. Rich colors spring from the strange tonal combinations and timbral connections. The twelve pieces (and an interlude) seem to build a dangerous drama, culminating in the tutti of "Eleven" (for all instruments), until it is released in the final piece for voice, piano, cello, and percussion, which excludes the pitch Bb.

All in all, a great new composition from great American composer performed by some of the best musicians in the world.

Chimeras isn't as bad as they say. In fact it's not really bad for a piece of new music that neither contains anything I would consider "new" nor anything most would consider "music."

Every piece on this album is strikingly original. In fact, I have purchased 4 other albums from the artists on this CD just to hear more of what they have to offer! Should appeal to lovers of world music, jazz and classical.

This CD is a real classic among enthusiasts of Late 20th Century Music. It offers jazz, contemporary, and even minimalist genres of music. John Somebody started out as my favorite selection from this CD many years ago, as it makes a good example of spoken word turned into music. In addition, the Philip Glass selections make a wonderful introduction to his music. I could go on and on about all of the music on this Sampler, as all of it is excellent.

I highly recommend this CD to anyone who is either an enthusiast of late 20th century music or anyone who is curious. My disclaimer, however, comes in that this is not for someone who is not open to new things. Some of the music on this CD can be like an acquired taste. In the meantime, enjoy!

In the mid-1980s, John Zorn recorded two LPs worth of solo performances, released as the first two volumes of "The Classic Guide to Strategy" (and now available as a single CD on Tzadik). What is on those performances is the sound of a musician ten years into his career, having pioneered a unique system for organized improvisation (game pieces) that would be the pinnacle of the career of almost any other, showing his rather stunning and often unique technique as a reed player, and his incorporation of game calls into music. Loosely categorizable as jazz, these recordings are the obvious child of Braxton's "For Alto", but by someone with a more varied array of sound and expression on his instrument.

It took twenty years after volume 1 and seventeen after volume two for this volume three to appear (Zorn states in his liner notes to volumes 1 & 2 that this was originally intended to be five volumes). In that time, the man who had already established his legacy reinvented himself dozens of times, showing a restlessness rarely seen in music (Miles Davis comes to mind) and leaving behind a series of masterpieces whose only link seems to be that only John Zorn could have recorded them.

Had Zorn done nothing but game pieces, he would still be legendary (if only critically). Had he done nothing but Naked City, he would still be revered by fans of dozens of genres. Had he done nothing but Masada, he would still be recognized as a genius of modern music. Had he done nothing but his chamber music, he would still be studied intensely. The list goes on. It is in this context that Zorn performed nightly during September of 2003 at Tonic in Manhattan's Lower East Side to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. Among the performances of this month was a show of solo alto saxophone performance, termed on disc as "The Classic Guide to Strategy Volume 3: The Fire Book".

What Zorn illustrates with this is just how far his technique has come-- in the 40+ minutes on this performance, the playing ranges from smooth, gentle, keening to brusque, aggressive, and squealing. He plays with space-- using silence as counterpoints to his punctuated performance, or with density, sustaining for what seems to be minutes while somehow intertwining a melody in addition to his held note. Rhythmic figures, percussive tongue slapping, overblows, underblows... the pure range of technique he covers is, if nothing else, breathtaking. And when you think he's exhausted the full extent of his technique, he removes the mouthpiece from his horn and displays what he learned during his experimentation with game calls, providing a whole new array of expression, including a unique animalistic effect accomplished by dipping his mouthpiece into a cup of water. That the performance is engaging, powerful, and imbued with a sense of cohesion rarely expressed in solo performance on any instrument is even more amazing. It is my assessment that there is no peer of John Zorn in terms of the range of sounds and variety he can coax from his instrument, that there are few who can match him as an improviser, and that as a composer and especially an arranger, he is in a category all of his own. Playing with no other accompaniment allows all of these facets to come distinctly into focus.

(Remarkable as this display is, Zorn does leave out his occasional performance of the sax without the mouthpiece, which results in a breathy, bassy sound out of the instrument-- this not being his full range of technique is quite frankly borderline unnerving)

This is, in truth, not for everyone. You have to accept that your expectations as to the structure of music are likely not to be found here and allow the seemingly boundless talents of a master who never seems to find his peak to take hold. For any who enjoy adventurous music and can leave their notions behind, this is one of the great recordings.

And to run the risk of sacrilege amongst those with a jazz background, I'd state this is the single greatest solo saxophone performance on record.

John Zorn's Game Pieces are among his most dense and frustrating music to understand. For those unfamiliar, Game Pieces are a system of improvisation-- a set of rules that are set up to provide a framework for collective group performances. "Cobra" is the most well documented, with no less than four recordings of it on the market, including this double and footage of a recording session available on the documentary A Bookshelf On Top Of The Sky. I would highly recommend anyone interested in exploring Game Pieces by Zorn should check out this documentary or see one live first-- I found that listening to the recordings makes a whole lot more sense after having some appreciation for the visual aspect of the Game Pieces.

All of which brings us to these recordings-- a studio take of "Cobra" from May of 1986 and a live one from October of the year prior. By this time, Zorn's Game Pieces were both reasonably well documented (see The Parachute Years, 1977-1980: Lacrosse, Hockey, Pool, Archery [7-CD Set]) and, at least by the community of musicians performing on here as they'd been playing these for several years (pretty much all the usual '80s downtown suspects are here in some capacity-- Jim Staley, Zeena Parkins, Carol Emanuel, Bill Frisell, Elliot Sharp, Arto Lindsay, Anthony Coleman, Wayne Horvitz, Christian Marclay, Bobby Previte and about half a dozen others). Given that "Cobra" also seems to imply more structure than the earlier recordings, unlike the Parachute stuff, there seems to be significantly more of an implied structure. It could be the rules or the musicians, tough to say. Either way, the pieces (on both the studio and the live recording) seem to consistently have some suggestion of form (granted, Archery has a form too, but it was incredibly hard to follow on record). Each of the tracks seems to follow a pretty consistent pattern of tension and release-- building to a head before coming crashing back down and switching gears completely.

I suspect if I'd bought this at the time it was originally recorded, I'd've thought a whole lot higher of it, but "Cobra" has received so many recordings over the years (most notably John Zorn's Cobra: Tokyo Operations '94) that it's hard not to view this in context of those. While on their own, these recordings are quite intriguing, comparatively, I much prefer the Tokyo recording and for that matter the later studio record, Cobra: John Zorn's Game Pieces, Vol. 2.

El problema con ciertas luminarias de la música o de cualquier otra rama, es que a veces exponen cosas que, o van más allá de su tiempo, o después descubrimos que no eran más que intentos que nunca alcanzaron una articulación plena. Y este es el caso de COBRA. Es un disco que por más que lo escucho no le acabo de entender, y no tanto por como suena, sino que no me es clara la evocación a las guerrillas que sostienen los diversos improvisadores. Desde luego que si se escucha con atención se nota el estilo juguetón al que invita Zorn para con cada uno de sus integrantes, pero creo que sería mucho más apreciable si en el booklet se hubiera explicado bien en qué consisten las reglas del juego. COBRA es más un disco de intensidades agresivas a las que hay que permanecer en tensión como escucha que un trabajo en el cual se goce con los distintos colores que pasan cási aleatoriamente como en "The Bribe", "Cobra Tokio operations", o "Spillane". De estar en lo cierto, esperaría que Cobra pasara a la historia como una de las primeras obras en las que la música deja de ser racionalidad o pasión para convertirse en una exposición sonora del caos como intencionalidad; pero mientras eso ocurre y esperamos entender el disco, dejémosle tres estrellas.

El problema con ciertas luminarias de la música o de cualquier otra rama, es que a veces exponen cosas que, o van más allá de su tiempo, o después descubrimos que no eran más que intentos que nunca alcanzaron una articulación plena. Y este es el caso de COBRA. Es un disco que por más que lo escucho no le acabo de entender, y no tanto por como suena, sino que no me es clara la evocación a las guerrillas que sostienen los diversos improvisadores. Desde luego que si se escucha con atención se nota el estilo juguetón al que invita Zorn para con cada uno de sus integrantes, pero creo que sería mucho más apreciable si en el booklet se hubiera explicado bien en qué consisten las reglas del juego. COBRA es más un disco de intensidades agresivas a las que hay que permanecer en tensión como escucha que un trabajo en el cual se goce con los distintos colores que pasan cási aleatoriamente como en "The Bribe", "Cobra Tokio operations", o "Spillane". De estar en lo cierto, esperaría que Cobra pasara a la historia como una de las primeras obras en las que la música deja de ser racionalidad o pasión para convertirse en una exposición sonora del caos como intencionalidad; pero mientras eso ocurre y esperamos entender el disco, dejémosle tres estrellas.

This peice was originaly recorded in 85, and fetures a typical all-star line up of Ikue Mori on lap top, Cyro Baptista on percussion ,etc. Recomended. Fetures some beutiful string work. Espescilly on the last track.

John Zorn's enormous catalog is full of challenging music, but none perhaps more so than the Game Pieces. Describing them is a bit difficult, but in brief: a Game Piece is a compositional framework for improvisation. The musicians are not given chords, scales, melodies, rhythms or anything like that to work with, rather they are presented with a set of rules for structured communication. The early Game Pieces are rather difficult listens-- it's incredibly hard to follow what's going on in them at times, particularly in large group settings (Pool), but as time wore on, either Zorn's rules became better at defining something that made sense on record or the performers better understood how this works, or perhaps some combination thereof. The net result is the later Game Pieces are significantly easier to understand on record, "Cobra" being a great example of this.

Having been recorded several times before (Cobra (Studio & Live Versions), John Zorn's Cobra: Tokyo Operations '94 and John Zorn's Cobra: Live At The Knitting Factory), the piece has the unusual position of being both familiar and yet alien. Performed by a large ensemble of Zorn regulars who clearly have worked in this environment many times, the stew they whip together is highly coherent, very listenable and, after many listening, highly rewarding.

I suspect that in addition to all of this, my enjoyment of this performance has a lot to do with the material available on it-- underneath the CD tray, Zorn published some or all of the rules-- they don't make a ton of sense in isolation, but if you combine them with clips from the recording session for this album you can see on the superb A Bookshelf On Top Of The Sky, you can get a really good feel for what's going on here.

The music itself-- unpredictable, engaging, exciting-- look no further than "Uluwati", driven largely by guitarist Derek Bailey. Performing a fractured guitar riff with laptop musician Ikue Mori providing counterpoint, Bailey seems to inspire a tribal feel out of drummer Susie Ibarra, who gives him a loping backdrop to work on. It proves to be quite interesting because what you get is the usual Derek Bailey energy but with the other musicians maintaining their own identity rather than assuming something relative to his.

"Uluwati" is just one example though-- other feels, motifs and sounds emerge throughout the recording, from a "pass the puck" feel that seems to come straight out of Hockey on opener "Pendet" to an almost straight swinging jazz feel during parts of "Tamangiri" (check that loping bass over Ibarra's gentle high hat meanderings and later Jamie Saft's downright funky Rhodes workout that could have come straight off an early fusion Miles record) to a highly cinematic, genre blurring, building motif ("Penganggahan").

Is "Cobra" for everyone? Not really, it's actually quite a different way of listening, and it's not going to be everyone's thing. But for anyone interested in improvisation, this is a critical record to understanding Zorn's Game Pieces. Highly recommended.

John Zorn's _Cobra_ is one of the most frequently performed compositions in 20th century art music. It is a "game piece," a title Zorn gave to numerous compositions based on structured improvisation. Here, under the supervision of the composer, is the definitive performance with some of the best musicians in the world. While _Cobra_ could essentially be played by any group of musicians, Zorn's work is usually written with certain artists considered. All the musicians here are ones that Zorn has worked closely with before, and with that tighter social element Zorn is able to devise a thrilling, masterful performance.

The musicians are Jennifer Choi and Mark Feldman (violin), Erik Friedlander (cello), Trevor Dunn and Mark Dresser (bass), Josh Roseman (trombone), Marcus Rojas (tuba), Ikue Mori (laptop computer), Annie Gosfield (sampler), Jamie Saft (keyboards), Sylvie Courvoisier (piano), Susie Ibarra and Cyro Baptista (drums & percussion), and Derek Bailey (guitar). The music? It's very odd, but strangely pleasant, despite having most musical relations stemming from technicalities of the "game" rather than rhythm, harmony, or melody. _Cobra_ is avant-garde, but it's lots of fun. What other album is dissonant, funky, mind-twistingly complex, lethal, pretty, and catchy all at once?

Very highly recommended. This one of the Zorn's best releases.