Favorite Zorn Output

[mikestack]

Wow! Lots of interesting discussion going on here re: Masada. Here's my take:

I think firstly, and this may not be the case with ANYONE here, that the Masada songbook gets targeted a lot because it has its foundation in something that seems quite contrary to the notion of avant-garde music, namely melody. But I'm of the opinion that disregarding melody as a form of expression is contrary to Zorn's generally inclusive nature. And while I don't think it gets annunciated much, I think this is in the back of people's minds.


To justify this, I'll posit Thelonious Monk who wrote what, 80 songs or so and generally used only about 15 of them as part of his regular sets (find me a live recording of "Stuffy Turkey"). But no one says that Monk stagnated over his 30 year career. Zorn OTOH has spent 15 years or so with Masada and gets slammed with it endlessly.

With regards to staleness or lack thereof, it seems to me the greatest strength of the Masada songbook is that it's a springboard for improvisation-- Zorn's written what, 500+ songs for the project and consistently a great release shows up every six months to a year and the rest are generally highly listenable-- that's a pretty good batting average, one that I'd certainly be happy with. I think though that because Zorn is so prolific, we get spoiled pretty easily. On the other hand, Monk managed what, 25 studio sessions between the late '40s with Blue Note and the Black Lion stuff in the '70s, Zorn's done well more than that in those 15 years of Masada, maybe it is a bit of overload, but I think the constant strengths of the performers and performances and constant variation of the music is to its benefit.

Regarding live performances-- I'd guess if you wanted something else outside of NYC, it's time to start harassing organizers of festivals, events, etc. I don't think Zorn books himself.

[Sordel]

mikestack said:

I think firstly, and this may not be the case with ANYONE here, that the Masada songbook gets targeted a lot because it has its foundation in something that seems quite contrary to the notion of avant-garde music, namely melody.

If that's the complaint, of course, then it should equally be levelled against some of the Filmworks discs. Personally, I see the continuum as more one between consonance and dissonance: there's exactly the same melodic material in Electric Masada performing "Karaim" and the Masada String Trio playing the same piece, yet EM is regarded as "cutting edge" while MST is not.

Going along with the wider Zorn project to me means taking the rough with the smooth: the hyper-aggressive stuff attunes the ear to enjoy the transition to the bland stuff, and vice versa. The longer that Zorn stays in either mode, however, the more likely the listener is to conclude that either is boring, which is maybe why the rapid resets in Heliogabalus work so well. The listener can take a lot of junk at either end of the spectrum just as long as there's enough inherent contrast.

I suppose, then, that the danger with Masada is those rather saccharine Jewish melodies that sound so great when you first hear them need to be reined in with other material. The Uri Caine disc, which is great in terms of performance, would do a lot better interleaved with Asmodeus, where the melodic line is sunk a little deeper below layers of noise.

Acephale, of course, seemed to take a different line on this question; he seems to be more bothered by the "opprtunity cost" of Zorn spending so much time on Masada when he could be doing other things. Frankly, though, until his workrate dips below a disc a year, I'm not going to worry about that too much.

[mikestack]

sordel said:

If that's the complaint, of course, then it should equally be levelled against some of the Filmworks discs. Personally, I see the continuum as more one between consonance and dissonance: there's exactly the same melodic material in Electric Masada performing "Karaim" and the Masada String Trio playing the same piece, yet EM is regarded as "cutting edge" while MST is not.

Now this brings me to another point I've heard from a few people-- last time I saw Zorn was the Bar Kokhba band a couple weeks ago playing Book I then Book II on consecutive nights (IMHO the Book II set just knocked it out of the park). Someone who was waiting in line with me indicated he came to the show because it was (in his view) the A list performers and that Rashanim, et.al. were not up to snuff to perform Zorn's material.

Furthermore, this was not the first time I've heard this-- in fact, I've seen arrows slung at nearly all the younger musicians associated with Zorn at performances, that they lack something the previous group had (my guess, in terms of accuracy, would be experience).equivalent

(for the record, I absolutely love Rashanim, but that's besides the point)

Could the issue be not so much with the volume of Masada material but rather with the performers?

I suppose, then, that the danger with Masada is those rather saccharine Jewish melodies that sound so great when you first hear them need to be reined in with other material. The Uri Caine disc, which is great in terms of performance, would do a lot better interleaved with Asmodeus, where the melodic line is sunk a little deeper below layers of noise.

Interestingly, I felt the Uri Caine disc was rather weak relative to the Masada output. It was a good listen, but not a great one.

Acephale, of course, seemed to take a different line on this question; he seems to be more bothered by the "opprtunity cost" of Zorn spending so much time on Masada when he could be doing other things. Frankly, though, until his workrate dips below a disc a year, I'm not going to worry about that too much.

I think this a non-starter simply because it's not like Zorn's composition isn't prolific enough to get around this and he certainly has the budget to record whenever he wants. Further, he blasted off 300 Book II songs in a few months-- I don't think it's stopping him from other things in the studio. We're also quite spoiled and I think it gets the better of us-- Zorn pumped out (by my count) four records last year, one of his slowest years in recent memory and nine records in 2006. Of these 13 total, 6 of them were Masada pieces and of this year's 4, 2 were. Even if you remove Masada from the equation, that's 2 records in 2007 and 7 in the last two years. And in early 2008, there's so far 3 announced-- 1 Masada, two otherwise. Even if you discount Masada and assume Zorn takes a vacation for the rest of 2008, that's 9 albums in three years. Who else puts out this much material?

Live may be a different point, but to my point earlier-- he's not necessarily setting up his own gigs. If he got calls saying "come do an improv show at the XYZ jazz festival", I'm betting he would.

The improv shows, FWIW, are usually a lot of fun, but they've not produced "great" performances for me the way Electric Masada or Bar Kokhba (or for that matter, Rashanim, Ribot's Ceramic Dog, Dave Douglas' Keystone, etc.) have.

[Sordel]

mikestack said:

Someone who was waiting in line with me indicated he came to the show because it was (in his view) the A list performers and that Rashanim, et.al. were not up to snuff to perform Zorn's material.

Furthermore, this was not the first time I've heard this-- in fact, I've seen arrows slung at nearly all the younger musicians associated with Zorn at performances, that they lack something the previous group had (my guess, in terms of accuracy, would be experience).

The fact that Zorn owns the label, and uses the Masada project to acquaint listeners with performers on that label who might not otherwise be able to reach a wider audience, is surely significant here. Of course, that's not to say that Zorn himself is doing that for cynical reasons: after all, he must really like the artists in question to give them a recording deal on Tzadik in the first place, but there is that slight fear that he pads the release schedule with albums that aren't in the mainstream of what he himself is doing. I'm not wild, for example, about the Koby Israelite disc, and it seems to me that one-man-band multitracking is a long way from the improvisation side that is Zorn's metier.

That said, someone such as Uri Caine is a pretty big name, and he doesn't (mainly, if at all) record on Tzadik, so I think that one has to be careful about accusing Tzadik of using Masada as a marketing ploy. I think that it's more likely that the "grand plan" for Masada Book II will only become evident further down the line as Zorn (hopefully) takes from each of the albums to develop his own statement about the series.

[DISEman]

Altough I put my vote in for Masada the sheer breadth of JZ's output really makes a poll like this quite hard to choose from his various sides. I almost voted for Filmworks because they probably contains aspects of all the bits I love about Zorn - In varous albums you can hear the first Masada recordings, bits of Naked City, classical forms and Carl Stalling inspired rapid fire.

Perhaps we should narrow it down and develop a poll for favorite (acoustic) Masada album (even futher reduced to one poll for studio and one for live recordings, another for Electric Masada, MST, one for Bar Khokba, one for Book of Angels, another poll for favourite Filmworks, favourite Naked City, favourite classical.

Even this still leaves some of my favourites out in the cold like Spy vs Spy, News for Lulu, Big Gundown, Spillane - I guess I'm pretty fickle but I'd have to admit that my favourite JZ output is the one I happen to be listening to at any given time.

DISE (Deciding Is Seldom Easy)