Sunday,
March 2 at
2pm
Ars
Nova Workshop
Radical
Jewish Music Festival
John Zorn's
The Dreamers + Essential
Cinema
with
Cyro Baptista,
percussion;
Joey
Baron,
drums;
Trevor
Dunn,
double-bass;
Ikue
Mori,
electronics;
Marc
Ribot,
electric
guitar;
Jamie
Saft,
Fender Rhodes;
Kenny
Wollesen,
vibraphone/drums;
John
Zorn
alto saxophone
Please
join us for this matinee performance featuring
two very different projects from composer
John Zorn.
Essential
Cinema
features the members of Electric Masada performing
live scores to American experimental filmmakers
Maya Deren's Ritual
in transfigured time, Joseph
Cornell's
Rose Hobart, Harry
Smith's
Oz: The Tin Woodman's Dream and
Marie Menken's
Go!
Go! Go!.
Continuing
in the tradition of his popular project The
Gift, Zorn again combines a lifetime of musical
passions — world music, movie soundtracks,
jazz, minimalism, exotica, funk, surf rock
and more — to create a vibrant and multifaceted
experience of instrumental fairy tales. Masterfully
performed by the all-star players from Electric
Masada, The Dreamers
is a project of breathtaking variety
and one of Zorn’s most beautiful and appealing
projects. Seductive lyricism, hypnotic grooves,
catchy hooks and romantic moods from this
genre-bashing master of surprise.
A
lifelong New Yorker, composer and saxophonist
John Zorn made
his mark as a central participant in the fertile
"Downtown" experimental music scene
beginning in the mid-1970s. In the mid-1980s
he signed to the Elektra-Nonesuch label, releasing
the critically-acclaimed breakthrough The
Big Gundown: John Zorn Plays the Music of
Ennio Morricone, which was endorsed
by Morricone, and incorporated elements of
traditional Japanese music, soul jazz, and
other diverse musical genres. Since
then, he has been exceptionally prolific,
usually putting out several new recordings
each year.
In
1993 Zorn began composing and performing his
208 tunes that now comprise his Masada songbook.
Over the years, these compositions have been
performed by various artists including his
ensembles the Masada String Trio and Bar Kohkba,
but most frequently with his extremely popular
Ornette Coleman-influenced quartet Masada
– featuring Joey Baron, Dave Douglas and Greg
Cohen. He has also founded Painkiller,
a mix of heavy metal and free jazz, and Naked
City, an often aggressive mix of jazz, rock
and thrash metal. He has worked with
musicians such as Bill Frisell, William Parker,
George Lewis, The Boredom’s Yamatsuka Eye,
Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, Melt Banana, John
Medeski, and the Violent Femmes. He has written
music extensively for television and film,
continues to oversee his recording label,
Tzadik, which is dedicated to experimental
music, and is the principal force behind The
Stone, an avant-garde performance space in
New York's Alphabet City. In 2006, Zorn was
honored with a MacArthur Fellow.
Sponsored
by Penn Hillel, Kehillah of Center City, National
Museum of American Jewish History, Society
Hill Synagogue, uwishunu.com, International
House Philadelphia and Kol Tzedek. Rose
Hobart shown courtesy
of The Museum of Modern Art.
