John Zorn Recommendations
Posted by: Markus on 28 March 2002
One more aspect of how I'm ranking these has to do with whether or not I can play them when my wife is around. My wife is an absolutely great wife but her musical tastes tend towards the Dixie Chicks, Allison Krause and James Taylor. If something is too noisy or too abrasive or weird, she's not into it and I wouldn't play it when she's around. This may not be a criteria you think is important but it's an important one for me and you might be interested to know that she enjoys each of the first four recommendations I'm posting below.
Here's my list of favorites in the order in which I'd recommend to someone new to Zorn's music to buy them:
1. My top fave--The Circle Maker by the Masada Chamber Ensemble. This is an absolutely brilliant release. How to describe it? See below.
2. Bar Kohkba--Masada Chamber Ensemble. The first release by the group and also extremely fine though has a few tunes which some might find a little on the avant-garde. I'd describe this as follows; imagine you have group of very traditional, very talented Jewish musicians who make their living playing traditional music for weddings, ceremonies and the occasional gig with the symphony orchestra. After a long week we find them retreating to an after hours club where they jam alternately with Medeski, Martin and Wood, Charlie Haden and Lee Morgan. I want to create a picture of music that it technically superb, very well recorded, artistically strong and enjoyable. I can't imagine a jazz lover who wouldn't be grateful to have stumbled across these releases.
3. Filmworks VIII. This album has two distinct sections--the first half is devoted to music composed for the film "The Port of Last Resort", a documentary about Jewish refugees escaping Germany in the '30s and emigrating to Shanghai. The second half is from a film titled something like "Portugese boys go to hell". I listen mostly to the first half where most of the members of the Masada Chamber ensemble are joined by pipa virtuoso Min Xiao-Fen. What's a pipa? Some kind of funky chinese string instrument that sounds like a cross between a guitar and a koto, but man, on this release it rocks! Very listenable, very enjoyable. This is from the film category.
4. The Gift. See the other thread which does a pretty fair job of describing it. Probably falls somewhere between the categories, or maybe there should be a fifth category comprised of Les Baxter/Martin Denny influenced surf jazz. That's how I'd classify this one.
5. Spillane. This was my first ever Zorn record (my copy is on vinyl even). What Zorn did was to compose musical snippets conveying various musical ideas and then sequence these to convey a mental picture. In this case the main focus of Spillane is to convey the feeling of reading a Mickey Spillane novel through music. He does a great job and, having read some Spillane, I'd say he gets it spot-on. On side two he's joined by Albert Collins. I'd classify this as from the Film category.
6. Filmworks III. This is a pretty interesting release and compiles a bunch of different Zorn film/commercial soundtrack projects from various periods of time. You'll hear snippets of very nice jazz with a total run time of around a minute, pieces that sound like a punk band got jammed into a blender with Ornette Coleman that last about 30 seconds, and a lot of bits and pieces that sound like the sketches for Spillane. I classify this as falling more into the experimental category. I enjoy it.
I think a lot of people get put off Zorn by picking up one of his projects like Painkiller or Naked City. These are too noisy for me. I'd describe them as a highly accomplished and talented group of musicians getting together to play industrial noise. Occasional glimpses of musical brilliance but mostly not what I'd what I want to kick back and listen to with a cup of coffee.
One last observation is that the weirdness of the cover art for Zorn's work tends to reflect the musical weirdness contained inside. Hence, the Painkiller stuff seems to convey pictures of bondage and torture, the filmworks have pictures of movie cameras, the Masada series are title using Hebrew characters. None of the releases I'm recommending include covers that are very weird or disturbing. A v. short story--a buddy of mine, having been "turned on" to Zorn and having picked up the first two recommendations, took a chance on one of the "bondage" covers. When I commented on it being in his collection he said, "yeah, thats a little weird...I'm not really into it..."
Follow up recommendations, anyone?
Mark
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I want to add another recommendation that I have just remembered that Zorn is associated with: Voodoo by the Sonny Clark Memorial Quartet. On the Black Saint label. Available on vinyl. Not only is this a superb straight-ahead jazz record but it is a very fine recording. I don't remember who I was talking to back some time ago but it was someone who worked in a hi-fi store and he said he hated this record because it made any system sound great. Anyway, it is another Zorn project that is worth seeking out.
Marku
[This message was edited by Markus on THURSDAY 28 March 2002 at 16:41.]