John Zorn Celebrates 70
Who Knew Classical Music Could be So Much Fun
By: Susan Hall - Sep 22, 2023
One of the reasons John Zorn’s music attracts is that it’s so damn much fun. Leaping on and off the stage to introduce the numbers in his first of many 70th birthday celebrations at the Miller Theatre at Columbia, Zorn looked like he was going to last forever. And let’s hope he does.
Zorn’s writing for strings, the focus of this concert, is powerful and entertaining. Yet, blasting off his birthday celebration, Zorn first presented Circe, a magical invocation for two trumpets, played by Peter Evans and Sam Jones. They pointed their instruments away from me. (I did not take it personally. They were directed by Maestro Zorn.) Yet the startling blasts were unmistakable.
Sigil Magick: A Curious and Detailed Exposition of Sigils, Signs, and Hieroglyphs Peculiar to the Occult Orders, Hermetic Brotherhoods, and Dark Mystery Schools of the Late Middle Ages opened the string display.
Zorn suggests he will count the ways in which these familiar string instruments can sound, many of them unfamiliar to us. No one creates buzzes like Zorn. Or slashes the air. Or gives us lovely intermittent phrases.
This concerto for cello and string quartet featured Zorn’s frequent fabulous collaborators, the JACK Quartet, performing with masterful Michael Nicolas on cello. The “n” may be missing in the title, but nothing else is missing in this wildly exciting work.
Zorn has always been interested in Dada and Surrealism. He takes Tristan Tzara’s The Gas Heart into the land of sounds, some musical and others, surprising extensions of the human voice. Two cellos and two percussionists never exhaust themselves in the demanding roles of musician and operatic diva/divos. If you can do gestures of various organs, eye, mouth etc., you could imagine yourself ‘singing’ on stage.
The opera was presented in three full acts, which lasted about as long as one short act. Absurd texts, virtuosic chamber music, bizarre sound effects, and wild improvisations create a strange and special landscape where anything can happen.
Concluding the concert was a twenty-minute piece scored for six strings, one of Zorn’s major recent works: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science. A quote by eternal Nobel prize nominee, Jorge Luis Borges, explains: “Magic is not the contradiction to the law of cause and effect, but its crown or nightmare.”
One friend suggested this went on a bit too long, but since it was the last piece in an evening, you did not want to end. I relished every second.
My finale was a meet and greet with performer Michael Nicolas, an enfant terrible of the cello. He agreed that the stage looked like one of Lou Harrison’s sets, crammed with interesting percussion instruments, and on the floor, the chains to be banged against metal and a wind machine to be whirled. A mysterious door leading to nowhere was at the center of the rear. It banged open at the start of the opera and banged closed at the end. Its diamond-shaped window suggested the texture of this extraordinary evening.
Downtown at the intriguing new Perelman Performing Arts Center, these Zorn jewels are missing from the programming. Uptown exciting classical music is still thriving at the Miller Theater.
Circe: a magical invocation for two trumpets (2019)
Peter Eants, trumpet; Sam Jones; trumpet
Sigil Magick: A Curious and Detailed Exposition of Sigils, Signs, and Hieroglyphs Peculiar to the Occult Orders, Hermetic Brotherhoods, and Dark Mystery Schools of the Late Middle Ages for string quintet (2020)
Jack Quartet
Chris Otto – violin
David Fulmer – violin
John Pickford Richards – viola
Jay Campbell – cello
with
Michael Nicolas – cello
The Gas Heart: a mini opera for two celli and two percussionists (2020) a mini opera for 2 celli and 2 percussionists (2020)
Jay Campbell – cello and voice
Michael Nicolas – cello and voice
Sae Hashimoto – percussion and voice
Ches Smith – percussion, and voice
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science for string sextet (2020)
Jack Quartet
Chris Otto – violin
David Fulmer – violin
John Pickford Richards – viola
Jay Campbell – cello
with
Yura Lee – viola
Michael Nicolas – cello
The series continues on October 19 and November 16 at the Miller Theatre, Columbia