Zornmania

At the Big Ears festival last March, I was fortunate enough to catch three guitarists - Julian Lage, Gyan Riley, and Bill Frisell (l. to r., above) - perform a suite of compositions by composer John Zorn from the 2019 LP, Nove Cantici Per Francesco D’Assisi. The music was incredibly beautiful, featuring intricate interplay between the three supremely talented guitarists.  It was my first set of that day - Saturday, Day of the Tower according to the Universal Solar Calendar, and Day Three of that year's festival - and set me off to a great start to a day that also included Zorn's Suite for Piano and his New Masada Quartet, as well as William Parker's Mayan Space Station and saxophonist Zoh Amba.   

That guitar trio has recorded other albums for Zorn, but it's hard to keep up with releases by the prolific Zorn, not only because of the sheer volume of his output, but also because he refused to release his music to streaming services.    

Until last week. For whatever reason, Zorn has decided to reverse his position and licensed Spotify and other services to stream the releases of his Tzadik label.  In certain circles of music fans, which include your humble narrator, this is a cause for much rejoicing.

Prior to last week, the John Zorn discography on Spotify was a short list of a few odd projects on other labels that Zorn did not control.  Spotify now has over 250 Zorn LPs, and he releases new music at least monthly.      

This Retired Old Man has nothing if not time on his hands, so I sat down today to begin my long journey through the intimidating catalog.  I was most pleased to see that the most recent release - top of the long, long page of the Zorn discography - was a brand new (September 15, 2023) album by the Frisell-Lage-Riley guitar trio titled, Nothing Is as Real as Nothing. The album consists of six new John Zorn compositions inspired by the writings of Samuel Beckett, and is apparently the sixth Zorn album by the trio. 

I had to track the series down on the Tzadik website because Spotify is no help with documentation (they provide music, titles, and little else). The series apparently consists of two trilogies, which I think consist of:

• Nove Cantici Per Francesco D’Assisi (2019),
• Virtue (for Julian of Norwich) (2020), and 
• Teresa de Avila (2021)

and

• Parables (2021),
• A Garden of Forking Paths (2022), and
• Nothing Is as Real as Nothing (2023)

All the albums above are now on Spotify, although for some reason Virtue doesn't appear in the Zorn discography but can be found under Julian Lage's name. Go figure. 

Here's a taste for you: Stirrings, Still, the first track from the latest album, Nothing Is.  Enjoy!