John Zorn
Composer
American,
1953-
Drawing on his experience in a variety of genres including jazz, rock, hardcore punk, classical, klezmer, film, cartoon, popular and improvised music, John Zorn has created an influential body of work that defies academic categories. Born and raised in New York City, he has been a central figure in the downtown music scene since 1975, incorporating a wide range of musicians in various compositional formats, his experimental work with rock and jazz earning him a large cult following. His early inspirations include American innovators Ives, Cage, Carter and Partch, the European tradition of Berg, Stravinsky, Boulez and Kagel, experimental rock and jazz as well as avant-garde theater, film, art and literature. He tours extensively with his various ensembles, playing a great variety of music and his works are performed worldwide by rock bands, improvisers, jazz musicians and classical ensembles. He is astonishingly prolific with over sixty CDs of work available, mostly on his own label Tzadik and has received numerous commissions from, among others, the Kronos Quartet, the New York Philharmonic, EOS Orchestra, Netherlands Wind Ensemble, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Bayerischer Staatsoper, WDR Orchestra K?ln and American pianist Stephen Drury.
—biography courtesy Carl Fischer Publisher
Selected works by John Zorn:
“[W]e are modern by the very simple fact that we live in the present. Nobody has yet discovered the art of living in the past, and not even the futurists have discovered the secret of living in the future. We are modern whether we want to be or not.”
--Jorge Luis Borges