A guide to John Zorn's music

Anything and everything goes in Zorn's constantly evolving musical

world: his pieces are a vision of what happens when postmodern
practices become something much more meaningful

'Wild, weird and wonderful' … John Zorn in 2003. Photograph:

Mephisto/Rex Features

John Zorn. Finding any one label to define the man and his work is
pretty well impossible, but that impossibility reveals just how
important his music is. You'll see what I mean.

Perennially youthful – even though he's 60 next year – Zorn, who was
born and lives in New York, is a Pulitzer-prize nominated composer
of pieces for classical musicians, a saxophonist (he's one of the most
thrillingly inventive improvising players out there), an impresario –
founder of the Tzadik record label, he also runs a club – The Stone,
for experimental and avant-garde music, and he has done more
to support and sustain an entire generation of musicians in the
downtown New York scene than anybody else.

Pause for breath, but there's much, much more. In the 70s, Zorn
created a new kind of collaborative composition for supergroups of
improvising musicians, his series of "game pieces", he's worked with
everyone from Derek Bailey to Slayer's drummer Dave Lombardo,
and ex-Faith No More and Fantômas vocalist Mike Patton, he has
created a repertoire of what he calls "radical Jewish music", his
ongoing Masada project, and has composed films for the ears,
masterpieces of aural cinema, Godard and Spillane. And all that's just
the tip of the Zornian musical iceberg. He was most famous in the 80s
for his Ennio Morricone reworkings, The Big Gundown, and for
founding the world's most avant-garde pop band, Naked City (with
guitarist Bill Frisell, bassist Fred Frith, Wayne Horvitz on keyboards,
and drummer Joey Baron) which took the world's collective ear by
storm.

What looks on the surface like a bewildering array of forms and styles
in his music is connected, Zorn says, by the way he deals with his
material. That means that whether it's the high-concept grindcore of
his trio Painkiller, the ferocious energy of the Game Pieces, or the
apparently chaotic changeability of such music as his solo piano
piece, Carny – one of the most important works for the instrument of
recent decades, I think – there's something that makes you realise
you can only be listening to music Zorn has created. This isn't a
question of style – how can it be, when this is a musician who has
written everything from a purely visual music he called the Theatre of
Musical Optics to orchestral pieces? – it's a sense that Zorn is able to
virtuosically inhabit the worlds of the musicians with whom he's
working, whether they're string quartets, chamber ensembles, or
experimental-metal combos, and at the same time to be critical,
objective and creative about their conventions, to turn their usual
ways of doing things on their heads. That means he can ask his
musicians to go places they have never been before. Heavy metal
never sounded like this – but then neither has the string quartet.

John Zorn performing in 1989. Photograph: Peter Williams/Corbis

The way Zorn works means he's often reusing music by Ornette
Coleman, Ives, Stockhausen, or Bartók, and indeed any and all of the
musical material he finds and hears, anywhere. His "file-card" pieces,
like Carny or For Your Eyes Only for chamber orchestra, are made
from fragments of found material, reorchestrated or set in a new
context, but essentially based on music Zorn took from pre-existing
sources, everything from cartoon scores to Boulez. But the effect is
more than musical channel-surfing or a postmodern pig-out: these
pieces are a vision of what happens when postmodern practices
become something much more meaningful.
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Zorn is always in charge of what you're hearing, even if he didn't

write any of the original notes of these pieces. What he's doing is
controlling what happens when, how long each fragment or musical
file-card lasts, the music's flow of ideas, of textures. That's similar to
what he's doing when he's leading one of his Game Pieces for a group
of his favourite musicians: he's not controlling what sounds the
musicians play, but their intensity, their character, how long they play
for, and in what combination.

Zorn is an essential composer for me, because he is living proof of the

truism that everything – every sound, every style, even, more
controversially, every culture – is available to composers today to use
as musical material. And he shows the wildness, weirdness and
wonder of what's possible.

But as soon as you think you've managed to get a handle on what

Zorn is up to, the next project will pull the rug out from your feet.
Who else could have turned easy listening into something strangely
seductive but disturbing with his album The Gift, or reconceived
metal extremica as a route to occultist spirituality in the albums he
made with Mike Patton, Joey Baron, and bassist Trevor Dunn since
2006's Moonchild? There are new classical pieces, new
collaborations, new forms of musical expression that Zorn is
inventing on an apparently monthly basis. Keeping up with Zorn may
be a near-impossible task, but your musical life will be richer,
stranger, and noisier, if you try.

Naked City
Unclassifiable band-based magic. Has the avant garde ever been
more entertaining?

Carny
Zorn's brilliant piano piece, infinitely more than the sum of its
apparently infinite musical parts
Masada
Zorn's supergroup that created a new repertoire of "radical Jewish
music".

Six Litanies for Heliogabalus

My pick of Zorn's recent albums of occultist, avant-metal

Zorn in improvisation
Zorn on the saxophone with drummer Milford Graves
John Zorn's latest album is Dreamachines, which is inspired by Brion
Gysin and William Burroughs' cut-up techniques.
Scott Irvine/Courtesy of the artist
At 60, New York City-based composer John Zorn is wiser, sure, but no
less prolific, thoughtful and antagonistic than before. His oeuvre is
fantastically wide, from cutthroat jazz improvisation and pummeling
noise-rock to gorgeous chamber music and, believe it or not, a
genuine Christmas album. The saxophonist also runs the
prolific Tzadik label, which releases Zorn's many works — including
his latest album, Dreamachines — and highlights a vast swath of
avant-garde and experimental music.
Celebrations for Zorn's birthday started earlier this summer, but
continue through September, with events at places ranging from
the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Anthology Film Archive. He
tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that, at his age, "there are no more
doubts."

Interview Highlights
On turning 60
"There are no more doubts. It means that little guy that sits on my
shoulder, the guy in the red suit with the pitchfork and the pointed
ears and the tail, that little guy that's on your shoulder that once in a
while used to whisper in your ear, you know, 'You could be really
wrong about this.' That guy isn't around anymore. I brushed him off.
Everything is very clear: what I need to do, why I'm on the planet, the
best way to accomplish it, what is a distraction, what helps me focus.
Everything is really there."
On his 'gift' of music
"I feel like there are messages, I feel like there are angels, I feel that
there is a legacy and an energy. I feel that it's possible to tap into
that. I just don't believe in ego that much. I don't think it's just me. I
think you can even just talk about community. I could not do this
music without these musicians. It's about people. Music is about
people for me. It's not about sounds. It's about people; it's about
putting people into challenging situations. And for me, challenges are
opportunities."

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On being exposed to different cultures growing up in New York
"I was never hit with any kind of value judgments about different
kinds of music. Another thing I should say, growing up in New York,
and in particular going to the UN school... I went to the United
Nations school from kindergarten all the way through high school. I
had the same 25 friends in the same class the whole time. And these
are kids that came from Nigeria, from Japan, from France, from
Germany, from Holland, from India, from Pakistan. I had friends from
all over the world. That's how I grew up.
"I studied classical and was also turned on to jazz, I listened to rock, I
listened to soul. Growing up in the '60s in New York, you listened to
everything."

On his home environment

"I make music in my home, and I'll tell you what my home is. My
home is not just an apartment. I've been living in the same place for
38 years. My home is a device — a device for enabling creativity. A
device for cutting out the chaos outside that people think is reality;
that's chaos. My home is a way of insulating myself and stripping that
away so I can get into what reality is for me, which is creativity."
On being sensitive to other people's energy
"I need to be around supportive people, because I'm very susceptible
to other people's energy. Some people are that way. And it took 50,
60 years to figure that out. I was wondering, 'Why am I so depressed
when I get together with this guy?' Well, now I know why. It's nothing
to do with me; there's nothing wrong with me, except that I'm very
susceptible to all kinds of energies. I used to read reviews and I would
be unable to write a note of music for months at a time, because
some guy I don't even know who doesn't know me didn't like my
work? Now I can look at it and say, 'You didn't like it? Well, there are
many people who do.'"

John Zorn: master of all styles and none

However intense music becomes, there’s always a limit to how far it
can go. And that limit is marked out by its genre or style. It’s no good
expecting flights of mad erotic passion from Eric Satie’s dry surrealist
style, and it’s vain to think Wagner’s surgingly chromatic musical
language could be an apt vehicle for French neoclassical wit.
It’s an age-old rule, this insistence on “horses for courses”, but in the
modern era many musicians have become impatient with it. They
dream of a music that knows no limits, which can do everything, all at
once.
These days that dream flourishes most in the area of organised
musical freedom known as “free improvisation”, or “free jazz” if the
musician claims an ancestry in jazz. It’s peopled by wild visionaries,
who make music on the borderline between mere chaos and inspired
“speaking in tongues”. John Zorn, composer, improviser, record
producer and leading light for the past 40 years of New York’s
downtown music scene, is one of them. One of his many talents is his
stellar ability as an improvising saxophonist. To see Zorn in full flood
with the quartet Masada is to realise that he could have made a good
career as a straightforward free-jazz player.
But pulling Zorn in quite another direction is his passion for good old-
fashioned genres and styles. He has a greedy passion for the tangy
flavour of very specific idioms, and recreates them in his own
compositions. He loves the cartoon music of Carl Stalling, he loves
film composers, he loves the severe late music of Stravinsky and the
extravagant melancholy of Renaissance composer Orlandus Lassus.
The flavour of these composers is rooted in their craftsman-like
precision, which is another passion of Zorn’s. He may thrive on the
unpredictability of improvisation, but he also relishes the exactitude
of composing with pencil and paper. Trying to fuse all these
contraries together would seem the height of folly, but it’s a folly
Zorn has devoted his life to.
Now aged 60, Zorn can look back over a career of staggering
productivity, created in conditions of monk-like austerity. He has
hardly any furniture in his house because he’d rather fill it with
books. He has no kitchen, preferring to eat out. He despises
journalists and hardly ever gives interviews. On one of the few
occasions when he did (to Bomb magazine), he described the doubt
that haunts him. “I’m constantly tortured and that’s why I say
happiness is irrelevant. Happiness is for children and yuppies. I’m not
striving for happiness, I’m trying to get some work done. And
sometimes the best work is done under doubt. Constantly rethinking
and re-evaluating what you’re doing, working and working until it’s
finished.”
The Utopian attempt to fuse spontaneity, composing, unfettered
freedom and the specific flavour of a genre means that Zorn has had
to rethink the act of composition. For example, instead of composing
with notes, he might treat a whole idiom as his raw material, to be
parcelled out in exactly timed musical blocks. These are then placed
in interesting patterns and juxtapositions, sometimes by a sort of
chance procedure whereby the players are given cues. It’s a method
that owes something to that other great American radical John Cage,
though in aural terms the results are more reminiscent of Stravinsky’s
“blocks” of sound. What is unlike Cage is Zorn’s fascination with his
ancestral Jewish culture. Over the years he’s composed hundreds of
melodies based on Jewish synagogue chant.
This aspect of Zorn is more reminiscent of another famous New
Yorker, Steve Reich. Zorn is indeed the point where all the trends of
New York’s downtown music scene meet. He’s been a tireless
supporter of that scene, through his record company Tzadik, and his
experimental music venue, the Stone. He’s a rare visitor to the UK, so
for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra to bag the premiere of his
latest work, Suppôts et Supplications, for its all-Zorn concert, is quite
a coup. As always, Zorn is refusing to say anything about it in
advance. But though the specific sounds may be impossible to
predict, the intense aspiration for something wild and close to the
edge is sure to be there.

The one word virtually everyone can agree on in any discussion of the work of
composer John Zorn is "prolific" in the strictest sense of the definition. Though
he didn't begin making records until 1980, the recordings under his own name
number well over 100, and the sheer number of works he has performed on,
composed, or produced easily doubles that number. Though now an
internationally renowned musician and the founder and owner of the wildly
successful and equally prolific Tzadik imprint, Zorn is a cornerstone of New
York's fabled and influential downtown scene. In addition, he has played with
musicians of every stripe. He is also a musical gadfly: genre purity, and pursuing
the ends by which it is defined, are meaningless in Zorn's sound world, thus
making him a quintessential mirror of 21st century culture. He has mentored
countless musicians in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, and has broadened the
exposure of many other artists stateside via his Tzadik label. His compositions
have been performed by hundreds of artists, including the Kronos
Quartet and Medeski, Martin & Wood. In addition, he has composed literally
dozens of film scores. He has been the subject of books and documentary films,
as well.

Zorn was born in New York in 1953. His parents and brother were avid music
fans all; from an early age he was exposed to jazz, classical music, doo wop,
country, and rock & roll. In addition, being a child of the '50s he was exposed to
the music of television via its various program themes and especially cartoon
music, which influenced him early on, and continues to. Zorn's musical
education began in adolescence, studying guitar and flute. He was exposed to
European and American vanguard classical music in adolescence and was
affected deeply by it. He also reportedly played bass in a surf band in his teens.
He studied composition at Webster College in St. Louis, where he was exposed
to the music of free jazz, and claims he picked up the alto saxophone after
hearing Anthony Braxton's seminal recording For Alto in 1969. Zorn's early
influences and experiments in integrating free jazz, improvisation, 20th century
classical, and cartoon music can be heard on the album First Recordings 1973,
released by Tzadik in 1995.
Zorn dropped out of college, moved to Manhattan, and began hanging out with
other improvisers and jazz musicians. He also began composing in earnest, but
with his requisite sense of humor. His early compositions and recordings were
all "game pieces" named after, well, games. They
include Baseball and Lacrosse (1976); Dominoes, Curling,
and Golf (1977); Cricket and Fencing (1978), and Pool and Archery (1979). His
most enduring and influential game piece, Cobra (1984), was issued in 1987 on
the Hat Hut imprint; subsequent recordings of the work were released in 1992,
1994, and 2002, and it has been performed many times. These works were
complete with cards, hand signs, cues, and strategies, and could employ the
use of many musicians. His smaller group works are documented on Locus
Solus (1983). He issued two completely solo albums of pieces for duck calls
in The Classic Guide to Strategy. Most of these were issued on his own
Parachute imprint.

The first larger public acclaim for Zorn's work occurred when he signed with
the Warner Bros. Nonesuch imprint in 1984, and released The Big Gundown:
John Zorn Plays the Music of Ennio Morricone. He later issued two similar
tribute recordings, Spillane (in tribute to the crime author) and Spy vs. Spy:
The Music of Ornette Coleman, where he performed Coleman's works in
thrashing hardcore punk style (most pieces lasted only a minute or two) in a
quintet with Tim Berne playing the other alto, drummers Joey
Baron and Michael Vatcher, and bassist Mark Dresser. The album was praised
by some and raised howls of often vicious criticism, ironically mirroring, of
course, the same kind of treatment given Coleman himself when he appeared
on the scene in the '50s. Zorn followed this with the self-titled recording by a
new band he put together called Naked City, with guitarist Bill Frisell, Baron,
bassist Fred Frith, and keyboardist Wayne Horvitz. This band combined
everything from punk and jazz to funk and improvisation in a unit that could
play beautifully articulated and complex melodies composed by Zorn and let
loose with fury and reckless abandon. Only this debut appeared on Nonesuch;
four other studio recordings and a live album were issued on a variety of labels
in both the United States and Japan until Zorn released them as a box set in the
early 21st century. Also during this period, Zorn issued his first compilation of
film scores; it was his final effort for Nonesuch. Film Works 1986-1990 was the
first installment in a series that numbers almost two-dozen volumes.

During this period, Zorn was releasing albums on various European and
Japanese imprints, including Avant and DIW. These include Ganryu Island and
his vanguard jazz-metal group Pain Killer with bassist Bill Laswell and
drummer Mick Harris. Zorn continued releasing records of many stripes in the
'90s, including the harrowing Kristallnacht, his first engagement with his Jewish
heritage on record that later became part of the Radical Jewish Culture series
on Tzadik, a musical and cultural movement Zorn helped to found and steer. It
radicalized him and prepared the way for Masada, a jazz quartet modeled
after Coleman's original quartet. The band included Zorn's alto, Dave
Douglas on trumpet, Baron on drums, and bassist Greg Cohen. The group
issued ten limited-edition studio recordings beginning with Alef (the first letter
of the Hebrew alphabet, though they didn't follow consecutively). They also
released a handful of live dates from various places on their groundbreaking
and widely acclaimed world tour. Zorn's compositions by this time had begun
to incorporate Coleman's ideas of melody with Jewish folk music and
improvisation.

Zorn established the Tzadik label in New York -- after what he considered to be
a disastrous relationship with Warner and Nonesuch -- to control his own
destiny as a recording artist, producer, and composer, and has since purchased
back all of his masters from Warner/Nonesuch. Tzadik has been the flagship of
the Radical Jewish Culture movement, and has also introduced many important
composers and musicians, as well as younger talents first arriving on the scene
from all over the world. According to legend, no title has ever lost money --
which is saying a lot since there are literally hundreds of releases in its catalog.

Zorn's own releases throughout the '90s and into the 21st century include
many hallmarks of his career: his chamber pieces, Bar Kohkba (1996) and The
Circle Maker (1998); the first recordings from his Masada Songbook series; a
larger work, Aporias: Requia for Piano & Orchestra (1999); String
Quartets (1999); the fabulous Cartoon S&M album (2000), and Madness, Love
and Mysticism (2001). Also in 2001, after a steady string of issues of his film
scores, Masadarecordings, and his more classically oriented works, he
surprised listeners again with The Gift, an album that showcased his own love
for exotica, influenced by the music of Martin Denny, Les Baxter, and Esquivel,
among others. The set was played by a group that included all the members
of Masada, percussionist Cyro Baptista, Jamie Saft, Ned Rothenberg, Mike
Patton, Trevor Dunn, and others. The ninth volume of Zorn's Film Works series
was issued in 2001 as well; it was the score for the award-winning film
Trembling Before G_D, a documentary about gay Hasidic (Orthodox) Jews.
The results of Zorn's 50th birthday celebration (which occurred in 2003) were
released in 2004, capturing a month-long series of live concerts for Tzadik
releases. Many of these are indispensable; they include Masada
Guitars, Masada String Trio: 50th Birthday Celebration, Vol. 1, the debut
of Electric Masada (an intermittent group that includes Zorn, guitarist Marc
Ribot, Saft, Baptista, Ikue Mori, drummers Baron and Kenny Wollesen,
and Dunn), a proper Masadaquartet reunion, and many others.

Since that time, Zorn has won a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" (2006)
and has released recordings of his own works along three different themes --
with some exceptions, of course. The first two involve the continuation of
the Film Works documentation project and getting his "occult" works --
influenced and inspired by mystics and often controversial historical figures and
dominated most of all by the inspiration of Aleister Crowley -- on tape and
released. The occult works are documented most importantly by three
recordings: 2006's Moonchild and Astronome, with a band comprised of
vocalist Patton, Baron, and Dunn; and 2007's Six Litanies for Heliogabalus,
with Mori and Zorn added to the trio. The third area of concentration, and
perhaps most important, is the documentation of his second book
of Masada compositions entitled Book of Angels. Since 2005 over ten volumes
of this series have been recorded by a variety of artists. They include recordings
by Saft(Astaroth); the Masada String Trio (Azazel); Koby Israelite (Orobas); the
Bar Kohkba Sextet(Lucifer), and Medeski, Martin & Wood (Zaebos).

In 2008, Zorn released The Dreamers, a beautiful follow-up to The

Gift recorded by a small group that included Ribot, Saft, Baron, Dunn,
and Baptista with help from Wollesen on vibes. Zorn performs a bit on it as
well. The recording combines his deep appreciation for film noir and
exploitation movie soundtracks, surf music, incidental commercial music, and
library records, among other things. He also issued another recording for
his Moonchild ensemble entitled The Crucible, but it differed from earlier
offerings for the unit in that its compositions were informed by the
improvisations of the original Masada group. Zorn played alto with vocals
by Patton, drums by Baron, and bass by Dunn, with Ribot helping out on the
hinge piece "9x9." This was followed by the stellar sequel O'o in 2009 with the
same band. Femina also appeared in 2009. The album is a four-part
composition and a tribute of sorts to women in the arts, returning to the card-
file method of Zorn's early middle period of composition and featuring an all-
female sextet, including pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, violinist Jennifer Choi,
and Mori on her trademark laptop. In 2010, Zorn continued to explore the
feminine and its place in mysticism and myth with The Goddess: Music for the
Ancient of Days, another chapter of his In Search of the Miraculous series of
compositions. As a working strategy, it combines minimalism and the card-file
system that makes for quick changes in dynamic and texture. The performers of
this work are his ever-expanding Alhambra Ensemble, featuring soloists Carol
Emanuel on harp and guitarist Marc Ribot.
Zorn also used the card file system in his tribute to William Burroughs,
entitled Interzone, with key members of his extensive working crew
including Baptista, Dunn, John Medeski, Mori, Ribot,
and Wollesen. Zorn played alto on the date. Also in 2010,
the Dreamers ensemble reassembled to record Ipos: The Book of Angels, Vol.
14. It was quickly followed by Baal: The Book of Angels, Vol. 15, performed
by the Ben Goldberg Quartet, and Haborym: The Book of Angels, Vol. 16,
by the Masada String Trio. The composer also released another chapter in his
growing body of compositions informed by esoteric spiritual practices and
ritual magic, with the elliptically lyric In Search of the Miraculous, with an
ensemble that included electric bassist Shanir, Rob Burger on piano and organ,
acoustic bassist Greg Cohen, Ben Perowsky on drums, and Wollesen on
vibes. Zorn kicked off 2011 with the release of Caym: The Book of Angels, Vol.
17, recorded by Baptista's Banquet of the Spirits, and Nova Express, the
companion volume to Interzone, issued under his own name and featuring the
quartet of Medeski, Wollesen, Baron, and Dunn.

Zorn added to his body of mystical compositions with a classically influenced

composition work entitled At the Gates of Paradise, also featuring the quartet
heard on Nova Express. It included elements of minimalism, modal jazz, and a
nod to Vince Guaraldi, all encompassed in Zorn's own trademark sense of lyric
harmony. The album is the perfect bookend to In Search of the
Miraculous. Zorn kicked off 2012 with the release of Mount Analogue, a long-
form file card piece inspired by George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. In the
studio, Zorn conducted Cyro Baptista's Banquet of the Spirits group
with Wollesen on vibes. In March, he formed a chamber group of harpist Carol
Emmanuel, Frisell, and Wollesen to record The Gnostic Preludes: Music of
Splendor. He also created an original score for a Polish stage production
of Nosferatu. The recorded version, featuring Zorn on saxophone, bassist Bill
Laswell, keyboardist Rob Burger, and percussionist Kevin Norton, was released
in May of 2012, along with the sixth installment in the Moonchild project
entitled Templars: In Sacred Blood, featuring Patton, Baron, Dunn,
and Medeski.

In August 2012, Zorn issued Rimbaud, a series of four classical compositions

that were all named for works by the 19th century French Symbolist poet. Later
that year, he issued The Concealed, a further recording of mystical works
played by the Nova Express quartet augmented by Mark Feldmanand Erik
Friedlander. Zorn reconvened Emmanuel, Frisell, and Wollesen in late 2012 to
work on The Mysteries, which was released in March 2013. Dreamachines, the
chamber work follow-up to Nova Express, was issued in July, performed by the
same ensemble that appeared on the previous offering. The year 2013 also saw
the release of @, a collaborative album of sax/guitar improvisations with fellow
N.Y.C. fringe dweller Thurston Moore. In late 2013, Zorn recorded a
collaborative set with veteran free jazz trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and
avant-garde trombonist George Lewis; the album, Sonic Rivers, was released
by Tzadik in 2014, as were two more volumes in the Book of Angels series -
- Alastor: The Book of Angels, Vol. 21 was performed by Eyvind
Kang, Adramelech: The Book of Angels, Vol. 22 was cut by Zion 80,
and Aguares: The Book of Angels, Vol. 23 by Roberto Rodriguez. Zorn also
issued a steady series of theme-based projects. More classical oriented works
included Fragmentations, Prayers & Interjections for orchestra, and The
Alchemist, a series of chamber pieces for string quartet and vocal trio. The jazz
trio of drummer Tyshawn Sorey, pianist Stephen Gosling, and bassist Greg
Cohen recorded In the Hall of Mirrors, while On Leaves of Grass, a tribute
to Walt Whitman, was recorded by Dunn, Medeski, Wollesen, and Baron.
These titles accounted for roughly half of Zorn's recorded work that year.

He led off 2015 with the Gomory: The Book of Angels, Vol 25, recorded by the
vocal quintet Mycale, which consisted of Ayelet Rose Gottlieb, Malika
Zarra, Sara Serpa, and Sofia Rei (they took their name from Mycale: The Book
of Angels, Vol. 13, issued five years before). Another vocal album was the
diverse The Song Project that featured the composer in writing partnerships
with Patton, Jesse Harris, and Rei (who also sang on the record), backed by a
quintet that combined members of
the Moonchild and Dreamers bands. Amon: The Book of Angels, Vol. 24 was
cut by Klezmerson, and the Dreamers released Pellucidar: A Dreamers
Fantabula, written especially for them. The composer also released a rare
collaboration in Forro Zinho: Forro in the Dark Plays Zorn with the Brazilian
jazz-funk group.
The first half of 2016 began with The Painted Bird, with the noisy avant-rock
group that combined members of Nova Express and Moonchild bands. It was
followed by Madrigals (For Six Female Voices). While the Nova Express
Quintetperformed his Andras: The Book of Angels, Vol. 28, a jazz trio
(bassist Christian McBride, pianist Craig Taborn, and drummer Sorey) recorded
the jazz-centric Flaga: The Book of Angels, Vol. 27. Zorn issued a fourth volume
in his Hermetic organ recitals in the spring. and in June, he wrote The
Mockingbird for his Gnostic Trio (Emmanuel, Frisell, and Wollesen). There Is
No Firmament, a collection of compositions from 2013-2016, arrived in 2017.