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John Zorn: A Major Coup

1. John Zorn: Improvisations (now at the RRC Main Stage)
2. John Zorn's The Dreamers
3. John Zorn's Electric Masada

The Guelph Jazz Festival has scored a major coup in bringing New York's John Zorn to the city for the first time. He's one of the most influential jazz composers in the world today, with a huge critical reputation based on his accomplishments as a bandleader and alto sax player as well. We're presenting Zorn and his band in two concerts and three different combinations (the second concert is a double-bill), all on Sunday, Sept. 7, on the Main Stage of the River Run Centre. Here's a description of our one-day focus on John Zorn. (For tickets or seating inquiries, contact the River Run Centre Box Office, 35 Woolwich Street, Guelph, 519-763-3000 / 877-520-2408, riverrun.ca / . You can also listen to excerpts of John Zorn's music on our website: guelphjazzfestival.com.)

1. John Zorn: Improvisations (now at the RRC Main Stage)

Collective improvisation - inspired by American models in jazz and experimental music as well as European streams of free improvisation - is at the core of John Zorn's musical background. This presentation, featuring members of the Electric Masada band in small-group collective improvisations, will be a showcase for the fertile imaginations that have helped to shape Zorn's musical output over the years. We hope, too, to hear plenty of his highly appealing saxophone playing!
Sunday, Sept. 7, 10:30 AM, River Run Centre, Main Stage, tickets $25/$20

* Due to overwhelming demand, the "Improvisations" concert is now playing on the Main Stage venue of the River Run Centre. All seating will be assigned in priority sequence based on previous purchases.

2. John Zorn's The Dreamers

The Dreamers is a new suite by the ever-prolific composer for a band with the same personnel as Electric Masada. Here, Zorn unabashedly mines a feeling of nostalgia, as the ensemble explores material that draws on surf music, organ-trio jazz, film music, and psychedelia, with Marc Ribot's inimitable guitar playing nearly always at the centre of the music-making. It almost goes without saying that the band is comprised of utterly crack players and, as they delve into the nuanced grooves with which Zorn furnishes them, the band's sound is totally slick and almost classically precise. On stage, Zorn's role is primarily that of conductor and metteur en scène; he delivers decisive cues to his stage mates and directs the proceedings with puppetmaster care. However, an outburst or two of caustic saxophone will surely be on tap too, as if to add spice to what, all told, is one of the smoothest and, indeed, most dreamlike concoctions in the Zorn canon.
Sunday, Sept. 7, 2 PM, River Run Centre, Main Stage (first half of double-bill), tickets $40/$35

3. John Zorn's Electric Masada

Within John Zorn's massive oeuvre, the name Masada tends to be associated with his classic (acoustic) quartet, documented on a staggering number of recordings throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. However, the name refers just as readily to Zorn's book of 500-plus brief compositions that are at the core of his exploration of what he calls "Radical Jewish Culture". This book lends itself to diverse interpretation by several small groups under his leadership. Electric Masada is perhaps the most active of these ensembles over the past few years. Featuring stellar and by-now-legendary members of New York's Downtown scene, the band interprets the compositions through a canny blend of Bitches Brew-derived jazz fusion and contemporary noise music. At the centre of it all, however, are Zorn's razor-sharp conducting and distinctively idiosyncratic saxophone playing - acidic, lyrical, and violent in turn.
Sunday, Sept. 7, 2 PM, River Run Centre, Main Stage (second half of double-bill), tickets $40/$35