When we once again asked an array of artists, writers, and musicians to share their reflections and birthday wishes on the occasion of John Zorn’s 70th birthday, a myriad of responses came flooding in that used various approaches to capture the essence of this vanguard music-maker. A celebrated improviser, experimenter, and genre-jumping producer, he’s become an icon of the New York downtown jazz and new music scenes, both for his own music and for the culture he’s helped foster through his label Tzadik, his venue, the Stone, and his Arcana series of music books. But as a mentor and friend, he’s welcomed new voices into his musical and spiritual communities, both in the US and overseas. To celebrate Zorn’s seventh decade, we present a three-part series in which we collect unfiltered well-wishes from over 70 collaborators, colleagues, and friends—including actor and director Mathieu Amalric and Founder of Eastside Sound Lou Holtzman to jazz bassist William Parker—who weigh in on the many facets of this versatile artist’s life and work.
Mathieu Amalric
Mathieu Amalric is a French filmmaker and actor
Oren Ambarchi
It’s no exaggeration to say that John Zorn changed my life.
I was a hungry, music obsessed kid from Australia (the end of the earth), and from a young age I wanted to soak up as many new sounds as possible. Expensive imported records were the only way I could do that in those days. In the late 80s, as soon as I finished high school in Sydney I split for New York hoping to experience live shows from all of the heroes from my record collection, in the flesh, in real time.
Although I had started playing live shows in Australia, it never occurred to me that I would be going to New York to play music, it was more than enough for me just to experience it live as a listener.
I went to shows religiously, barely eating any food so my money wouldn’t run out. Over time I realized that there was a small community of listeners in the experimental scene and I became friends with some of these people. I’d always see people like Stephanie and Irving Stone at all the shows, also people like Steve and Yuko Dalachinsky, and they ended up inviting me to sit together with them as they noticed this weird Australian kid who was on his own sitting at the front at all these gigs. Many of the shows were at places like the old Knitting Factory on East Houston street and I remember one time I was at a Zorn show (I’d been to many already as I was a huge fan), and after the first set Stephanie Stone said to me, “you’re at all these shows, you gotta meet John.” She insisted on me coming upstairs with her to meet Zorn backstage. I was completely terrified as I didn’t want to disturb this artist that I admired so much when he was chilling between sets. I told her “no, that’s ok” as I was this shmucky kid but she insisted and grabbed my arm and literally dragged me upstairs. When we got up there he was asleep as he’d been recording all day and was exhausted. Stephanie started tugging on his shoulder, waking him up which was absolutely horrifying to me. I felt so embarrassed and didn’t want to be there. He woke up and she said to him “John you gotta meet this kid from Australia.” We ended up having a quickfire, enthused conversation about music. Being the keen nerd that I was who taped every gig I went to, I had a Walkman in my coat pocket and I recorded our conversation without his knowledge. We spoke about music music music and I had soooooooo many things I wanted to ask him and not a lot of time to do so. There was an intense urgency to find out as much as possible in the little time that I had with him. I remember hearing mysterious names like Scelsi, Partch, Kagel etc and a million other things that I knew nothing about, stuff that I could barely catch in the moments we spoke. I was thinking to myself, “I hope this is being recorded.” I flew back to Australia a day or so later and once I got home I tried to decipher our conversation but the recording was garbled and muffled. So, I spent hours and hours trying to work out the names of the artists and albums he mentioned, with no way of referencing anything other than this shitty cassette recording. After that I tried to find releases of all of the artists he mentioned which really wasn’t easy in Australia in those days, but I did my utmost and that was really really huge for me, it opened so many doors musically.
A few years later (early 1993) my friend Robbie Avenaim and I had heard a rumor that there was a month-long festival taking place in September at the Knitting Factory, celebrating Zorn’s 40th birthday. We decided that we had to find a way to get there from Australia and experience the whole shebang. But how could we do this? We thought about borrowing money to make it happen. I’d remembered that Zorn had given me his fax number so I thought I’d write to him to see if it indeed was happening and to see if we could get a discount if we went to each and every show(!). I sent him a short, embarrassing fax, saying, “you might not remember me, I’m this Australian guy who was introduced to you briefly a few years ago. My friend and I want to come to your festival, we’re planning to borrow money to make it over, if we do, do you think we could get some sort of discount?.”
Literally one minute after the fax was sent, I started to receive a reply from a +1-212 number and couldn’t believe my eyes! He wrote back three sentences in point form:
1. Of course I remember you!
2. You are insane!
3. How would you and your friend like to play at my festival?
So we determinedly found the money, went over and ended up playing a few shows with Zorn and many other older artists from his orbit that we admired. We were nervous, inexperienced kids who knew nothing and were (happily) thrown into the fire! It still blows my mind to think about this pivotal moment in my life. It was incredibly risky and super generous that someone in his position would do that for two unknowns.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Zorn’s gesture absolutely changed my life. I wouldn’t be doing what I do now if it wasn’t for something like that happening to me. It was absolutely HUGE that an older artist would really stick their neck out for someone much younger who’s music they hadn’t even heard!
I was already on my way, but that gesture from a more established artist really set the wheels in motion for me, and that was it!
This is just one small example of Zorn’s incredible influence and support. I have no doubt that there are countless other examples. And I haven’t even spoken about his music, yowza!
I and many others are forever indebted. Wishing him a happy 70th! Here’s to many many more!
Love you! Oren
Oren Ambarchi is an Australian multi-instrumentalist whose practice focuses on the exploration of the guitar
Cyro Baptista
Happy Birthday Zinho!!!!! Mucho love!!!
Cyro Baptista is a composer and percussionist
Lisa Bielawa
JZ is discovery, humanity, beauty and vitality, all in strong doses, in one vibrant artist. He is the most irrepressibly inventive musical mind I know. I have gotten to climb into that mind from so many approaches – singing in his work, coaching it and programming it as a concert curator, flourishing in my own work through his joyful advocacy, and above all, listening, listening, listening to his restless ceaseless output of magical sound.
When the pandemic hit, we stayed connected – sharing new work and targeted encouragement. His work and camaraderie partnered and steadied me through months of isolation. We both wrote a lot of music during this weird time, and we kept checking in.
Some excerpts from my emails to him over the past few years:
“…so much voicing, these lines are so juicy and clear and varied in impulse and mood…so much to dive into, and so many sides of your brain…I find myself having a little moment with your music often these days…makes me feel such a release from the whole quarantine mindset, some beauty and chaos and chthonic energy…seems like the best way to combat the grief and difficulty around me…you are a radiant soul and dear to me.”
Happy Birthday dear JZ – love you always!!
Lisa Bielawa is a composer, vocalist, producer, and writer
Jim Black
Thank you, John. Thanks for blowing the mind of a young improviser with albums like Cobra, for turning film music into something relevant for a new generation, for showing how far out you could take Ornette Coleman’s music, and for making genre-breaking sound with all of your Naked City albums… driving young people to pursue life-long relationships with improvisation and the possibilities of composition. Thanks for giving so many musicians outlets to release their works on your labels, and to help sponsor venues year after year to give them places to play… NYC would simply be a different place without your love and support for this us and this music. I could think of 100 other things to thank you for, but I’ll end by thanking you for your belief in our abilities and trust in performing your music. Oh, yes, and thank you for making it to 70 years. You told me recently that composers do their best work after 70 and that you were in fact looking very forward to this next period in your life… I look forward to hearing, seeing, and feeling those sounds. Thank you, John… lotsa love, and a mega-happy birthday.
Jim Black is an American Jazz drummer
Louie Belogenis
Although I did not know it at the time, when I met John in the late summer of 1972, he had just turned 19 years old. While at a loft party on lower Broadway I heard a warm and welcoming voice, not without a sense of humor, but nevertheless, unfamiliar to me calling, “Where's Louie, where's Louie?” I made my way over to the speaker and found two young, thin men, both with very long hair, and was introduced to John by Phillip Johnston whose acquaintance I had recently made at NYU.
We must have enjoyed each other’s company because, while I do not remember anything else about that first meeting, we soon met for a more memorable second time at John’s family home in Queens. We began our afternoon with a game of handball at a nearby public school off Utopia Parkway. We played as friends, for the joy of it, not as competitors wanting to win the match. For anyone who has ever marveled seeing John onstage, playing, cueing, and conducting at the same time, it will not be a gratuitous observation to note that even while on an athletic field he demonstrated lightning reflexes, incredible coordination, and a sure sense of himself.
After leaving the courts, back in John’s childhood room, he played me a red vinyl pressing of Albert Ayler’s Bells, and my life was never again the same. That was followed by some astounding sax solos of Roscoe Mitchell’s and he finished the listening session with Thelonious Monk, also playing solo, albeit years earlier, but equally innovative, indecipherable, and inscrutable. Without saying a word, John communicated his profound understanding of music as an ancient, but timeless, living language, still evolving, and capable of expressing insight, mystery, wonder, humor, a wide range of emotions, and paradoxically unheard-of possibilities and potentialities.
These are memories of just a few hours with John, over half a century ago, that changed my life in the most beneficial of ways. More importantly, his life, dedication, generosity, perseverance, thought, art, and music have, over the intervening years, influenced the world in the most beneficial of ways and continue to do so. Now, and always, John, Happy Birth Day!
Louie Belogenis is a saxophonist and world well wisher
Peter Blegvad
Peter Blegvad is an artist, writer, and musician who had the good fortune to know John in the mid 70s in NYC. I remember attending a mysterious performance in his darkened apartment, John rolling tiny objects from a dice cup into a small pool of light. With Christian Marclay I was in one of the trios John featured on the record ‘Locus Solos.’ ‘Case Arose’ is one of the texts I recited. Fond memories. Many happy returns, Zorno!
Peter Blegvad is an artist, writer, and musician
Ossian Brown
John is such a beautiful man, an intensely wonderful person.
It’s an honor to be able to call him my friend. Every time I hear from John I feel lifted and aglow with happiness.
This is immeasurable.
Such a tremendous magick streams out of him through his work. It’s a breathtaking and glorious thing to experience.
He’s a searing visionary.
Always surprising, always moving, always exquisite. Never gratuitous.
Happy Birthday John, thank you deeply for all that you share, for your companionship, for the light that you bring. I love you.
Ossian Brown is an artist, composer and musician (Coil, Cyclobe, Shirley Collins, Haunted Air)
Rob Burger
Dear John, You are a true genius, and absolute master of your craft. More importantly, however, you are a loyal friend... a dear and generous soul, with a deep commitment to the well-being of community.
Thank you for your contributions and for stretching this world. Your musical output, productivity, and passion for authenticity is an inspiration to many. I wish you the happiest of birthdays.
Rob Burger is a composer, musician, and producer
Rachel Calloway
Dearest John - Your music has been a lifeline through these many years of collaboration. Thank you for sharing your special Tzadik magic with us, and the world. You are a beloved friend whose work is an inspiration! Happiest of birthdays…
Rachel Calloway is a mezzo-soprano, professor, mother, and arts advocate
Jay Campbell
Zorn’s music is where I really started learning how to make music. Once you truly crank something up past 11 for the first time, it’s impossible to settle for less after that. And yet, each time John writes a new piece, wherever 11 is on the dial keeps moving further into the unknown. Being around John and his music means perpetually growing, and thriving beyond the edge of my own abilities. What a gift it's been to be trusted with his music. Happy birthday John.
Jay Campbell is a cellist and member of the JACK Quartet
Vincent Capes
John Zorn is a unique free mind and precious force of nature. Musical maverick, visionary artist, amazing leader with an infectious enthusiasm, DIY example and inspirational model of integrity for many, tireless seeker of unexplored territories, wild dreamer, fearless boundaries breaker. All these sides—and many many more such as gourmet, art collector, insatiable reader, NYC lover, scholar, mentor, magickal initiate, supportive friend with wit and humor—rolled in one. I discovered his music more than twenty years ago—more than half of my life—and it had, on so many levels, such a huge influence on me since then—especially the File Cards pieces & Zoetropes. I’m still digging his musical world and I’m still impressed by his ever-growing body of work.
It’s very well-known: he’s the heart of a whole creative community which gravitate around him. An astonishing catalyst. One can find a solid respect and above all a tremendous flow of love in there. Who can lay claim to have done—and still do—so much for independent creation? As William Burroughs said: ‘It is the function of the Guardian to protect hybrids and mutants in the vulnerable stage of infancy.’ And since the 70s, John takes this role to heart very seriously. He gave a hand to so many outsiders, helped so many freaks to take theirs first steps in outer world—a hostile and harsh world for the avant-garde creation and groundbreaking innovations. His uncompromising life is like a blueprint of how to navigate. This is one of the major lessons I learned from him.
Another one is don’t pay attention to what people think. Do what thou wilt. Sounds easy but it’s quite more complicated than it seems—fortunately, figures like John make it look simpler. It’s a long and winding road, and sometimes one could alienate audience. It’s not important at all—but we have to be honest and admit sometimes it can be hard to live. Still, do what you will, and do what should be done.
Can we remember what is the purpose of Art when it no longer serves to entertain, what Art really is when it no longer responds to production constraints or commercial interests? John is one of those few very special people who reminds us constantly. Like Harry Smith, Isadora Duncan, Austin Spare, Arthur Rimbaud, William Blake, Leonora Carrington, Milford Graves or the late Kenneth Anger, John is a roaring love potency, inextinguishable, untamable, fiercely independent because aware of what was given to him—he was always grateful and has returned it a hundredfold. Defying light bearer, he made himself a human beacon which lighting up the darkness that surrounds us—the darkness of a world where everything is commodified. We never have enough radiant and visionary artists, such as Luis Buñuel or Antonin Artaud, who remember the incendiary power of Art, its ability to deeply change someone's vision. Maybe only one person, but sometimes, one is enough to change the world in return, to make it a better place. And John not only made me believe in it but also proofed in many ways and many times the effectiveness and the power of this spell commonly known as Art.
Thank you so much for everything, dearest friend. I’m endlessly grateful for the music, the aural cinema, the collages, the drawings, the words, the thoughts, the encouragements and for your foolproof generosity. I raise my glass to your 70 and hope for, at least, 93 more! Love is the law. Abounding love. Happy birthday John!
Vincent Capes is a French experimental filmmaker, collagist, artistic director of the label Thödol and manages the independent house publishing Anima.
Ashley Capps
Best wishes and countless blessing to Maestro Zorn as we celebrate his 70 years on the planet, with infinite gratitude for the exuberance, inspiration and joy of his wild and beautiful creative spirit. Cheers!
Ashley Capps is the Executive Director of the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville Tennessee
Nate Chinen
Everyone knows John Zorn to be uncompromising — the word itself, with its note of principled refusal, has trailed him around for more than 40 years. In our American system, there's something extreme about an artist taking such a position, and Zorn favors extremity, too. But anyone who has created music with John (or simply with his blessing) will tell you how generous and empowering he is as a collaborator, and how warm he can be behind the brash public persona. As a music critic, I belong to a general category of suspicious characters, but I've had the chance to experience this side of John Zorn myself. It happened first through my affiliation with impresario George Wein, whom I brought to a Masada show at Tonic around the turn of this century. I had a feeling that George, despite a reputation for conservatism in his taste, would understand what Zorn was doing with this band. He did, and became both a supporter and a friend to John, who recognized an enterprising spirit when he saw one. More than 20 years later, I had a wild idea to build an episode of the hour-long syndicated radio program Jazz Night in America around Zorn's 70th birthday, using music from a glorious array of performances at the Big Ears Festival. The core idea was one that anyone reading this tribute will understand: his magnificent breadth as a composer and instigator, and the way in which he willed a whole musical universe into being. Several times during the process of making the show, John wondered aloud how we were going to pull this off at NPR. I think back to one moment in our interview at Big Ears, when I mentioned how he is now the beneficiary of institutional support. “I can honestly say that it's not institutions,” he corrected me. “It's an individual. There's always one person who's gonna say, ‘I want this to happen here.’” That's a powerful idea, and of course it's exactly right. I'm honored to count myself among those who had any role to play in sharing Zorn's message. It may brook no compromise, but it also welcomes all comers.
Nate Chinen is the author of Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century, and has a Substack, The Gig
Greg Cohen
Happy Birthday John!
Many fond memories of many years
Including Viet food here in Minneapolis
A spree of gigs that set the tone for how it should be
Watching you work your magic
Shepherding your vision from pencil to public
Learning from your unique process and drive
Ricocheting off the community of artists which is Zorn
Wishing you a 70th filled with love, light and laughter.
Greg Cohen is an American jazz bassist
Joshua Cohen
Zorn is the sound of the horn: Zhorn, surely the name of his ancestral Hasidic dynasty. Coming up to 70, that Biblical attainment, I’d advise him to take it from the top, but John doesn’t need my advice and never plays or writes the same thing twice, so here’s to another seven decades of constant reinvention, both of himself and of our culture.
Joshua Cohen writes novels and essays and lives in Brooklyn, NY
Sylvie Courvoisier
Happy Birthday Dear John, So glad that I came to NYC and in your life since 1998, you gave me so much my friend, I learned a shitload from you, I love your music, I love playing your music, you are an inspiration for my life and my music. Bises & bisous, Sylvie
Sylvie Courvoisier is a composer, pianist, and improviser
Arnold I. Davidson
I first met John Zorn on the telephone. I was in Florence, Italy and George Lewis had come to visit me. I had just listened to John's Nove Cantici per Francesco D’Assisi, and I was overwhelmed with joyous enthusiasm. George turned to me and said, “Let’s call John. You can tell him yourself.” Within thirty seconds, I was recounting my experience of this music to John himself. What I will never forget about that first conversation was that, while talking to him, I recognized all of the virtues that I had heard in John’s music---among others, commitment and curiosity, a lack of fear and a resolute decision not to flee any challenge, a sensibility that does not acknowledge impossibility, and that therefore creates new possibilities that we had never before imagined. John doesn’t only write his music, he becomes his music.
Indelibly imprinted on my soul is my first listening experience of Kristallnacht. Hearing that piece was transformative for me and opened up new ways to think about the relationship between music and philosophy/theology. I was overwhelmed by Kristallnacht, as is anyone who listens attentively to it, that is, listens with the appropriate concentration. And John's music even teaches us the practice of this mode of concentration. John once remarked to me that he considers Kristallnacht a "sacred work". I slowly realized that the most important listener to Kristallnacht would not be one of us, but God. What might He have done if He had heard Kristallnacht?; how might He have acted differently? Would He have turned His face, no longer hidden, towards the Jewish people? Might the sounds of Kristallnacht have given voice to a suffering that not even God could bear?
Every musical revolution, either explicitly or implicitly, raises the question: What is music? And John is an undiluted revolutionary. Yet beyond this question, John's music also raises another question: What is philosophy? His music has multiple philosophical dimensions and thus the question of philosophy cannot be ignored. I will invoke here only the dimension of philosophical critique. I believe that John's music responds to a question posed by Michel Foucault. After telling us, following Kant, that critique is an analysis of limits and our reflections on them, Foucault writes:
But if the kantian question was to know which limits knowledge must renounce going beyond (franchir), it seems to me that the critical question today must be turned around into a positive question: in that which is given to us as universal, necessary, obligatory, what is the part of that which is singular, contingent and due to arbitrary constraints. It is a matter, in sum, of transforming critique exercised in the form of the necessary limitation into a practical critique in the form of the possible overcoming (franchissement).
John is a fearless critic of arbitrary constraints and is committed, through his music, to their overcoming. His overcoming of false necessity gives rise to our self-transformation. Furthermore, his music exhibits the highest positive philosophical values: freedom, individuality and community, creativity, transformation and vitality. Following Kant again, I might even say that John's corpus could be called, Prolegomena To Any Future Music That Will Be Able To Present Itself As A Philosophy.
Lastly, I want to insist on the fact that John is among the all too small number of people who know the genuine significance of the concept of friend and who put into practice that friendship, itself a transfigurative act of sympathetic understanding, recognition, trust, and encouragement, a kind of shared way of life. Friendship is a difficult art and John is a master of it. He is a magnificent composer, performer, and leader, but let us not forget that he is also a magnificent human being. All of my possible gratitude to you, John---70 years is only the beginning.
Arnold I. Davidson works on philosophy, theology, literature, and music. He is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Sam Eastmond
Happy Birthday JZ! 70 years of endless creativity and limitless imagination. It is impossible to overstate the myriad and profound ways your incredible music, belief, trust, warmth, generosity, and friendship have impacted my life. Your Masada Books and your curation of Radical Jewish Culture opened up so much for me. All those dedicated, peaceful warriors playing this crazy, wild, outrageous, and fundamentally Jewish new music. You kicked down a door to a brave, exciting new world of exploration, invention, and magic. A community of outsiders taking huge strides out. It is the deepest honor to have been entrusted with recording your beautiful music in Masada Book Two & Three, and the Bagatelles. To be a tiny part of your labyrinth world of mystical creation is a dream made real. You remain the greatest inspiration, your work, your ethos, your dedication to the arcane and esoteric. Have a great birthday, all of my love and deepest respect.
Sam Eastmond is a composer, arranger, and bandleader
Jed Eisenman
John is an American National Treasure whose towering musical achievements are complemented by the profound depth of his personal humanity.
Jed Eisenman is the Artistic Programmer of The Village Vanguard
Carol Emanuel
From the opening scream in Spillane to the heavenly heights of the Gnostic Trio, playing and listening over the years to your music I have experienced exultation, awe, joy, pain, fear, fearlessness, hard work, aliveness, fun and spiritual timelessness. If I wrote thank you around the circumference of the earth it would not be enough. I join so many others in being grateful for what you bring to the world. Much love on your 70th and many more years of health happiness and creation. Baruch HaShem. Yours always in devotion, Carol.
Carol Emanuel is a harpist
Jeremy Fogel
Seventy faces to the Torah, Seventy years to Zorn. Seventy faces to the Torah, Seventy faces to Zorn. Zorn the alchemist, drawing inspiration on high, initiated to the most inner secrets of sublime creativity & the transformation of all lowly matters into angelic golden music. Zorn the composer, working in his space capsule, a few keys, artefacts of magic & awakening, a genius at work. Zorn the Rabbi of stark, fearless and wise advice. Zorn the friend, always there, a bastion of support, kindness, generosity and strength. Zorn the musician, wild, undomesticated, shofaric horn blasting to the stars above. Zorn the New Yorker, drawing the fierce, exhilarating rhythms of the city into every fiber of his being & creation. Zorn the cook, subtle, inventive, loving. Zorn the collector, art, objects of inspiration and mystical presences, curator of human creativity and brilliance. Zorn the philosopher, inviting Nietzsche, Wittgenstein or Deleuze into his symphonies. Laughing Zorn, purified joy of life, friendship, food, music, God & New York. Zorn the Jew, Tzitzit reminding humans to look up & Deity to look down. Warrior Zorn, fatigues on hand, defiant, no compromise, no surrender. Zorn the cosmopolite, Japanese, French and Hebrew meet in the lower East Side. Zorn the Cinephile, running classics in the universe, in his bedroom, near the skull and the crusader’s sword. Zorn the lighthouse, uplifting, leading the way, showing the path. Avant-garde Zorn, always forward, beyond our camp, beyond the enemy territory, beyond us all. Zorn the genius, a force whose origins, mechanics and fruitfulness escape common understandings. Zorn the monk, dedicated, focused, single minded and sharp as a dagger. Angry Zorn, prophetic, like a storm, a volcano. Zorn the radical, alternative to the core, revolutionary at his roots. Neighborhood Zorn, suspicious of whatever treacherous realities await the lost souls above 14th street. Kaleidoscopic Zorn, from cartoon soundtracks to ancient Hebraic scintillations, from Chopin to tin pan alley, and everything else. Youthful Zorn, untamed & unfazed by time. Zorn the High Priest of absolute non-confirmation. Zorn the Hebraic adherent to the prophetic Blakean constitution, “create your own system or be enslaved by another man’s!” Atomic Scientist Zorn, creator of a monumental spiritual nuclear reaction, focusing all inner & outer resources with laser like precision on one of the most astonishing & passionately vital path of inspired creation throughout space-time. Zorn the artist, drawing nudes, drawing abstracts, reflecting realities sublime & transcendent. Spinozistic Zorn, “we feel and know by experience that we are eternal,” and “by eternity, I understand existence itself.” Jazz hero Zorn, recipient of the batons held by Coleman, Gershwin, Braxton, Coltrane & Sun Ra. Experimental Zorn, laboratories of music & of life, always exciting, enigmatic, unexpected, groundbreaking. Daring Zorn. Gentle Zorn. Masada Zorn, not reviving the original suicidal desert spirit, but much more significantly: making its symbolic meaning – resilience, freedom, courage - actual. Yeah saying Zorn, divinely inspired affirmer of life, existence, creativity, possibility. Lover Zorn, fleeting, mystical touching of the flesh, soixante-dix année érotique. Psychomagical Zorn, healing rituals of electric guitars, xylophones, ouds, bases & drums. Conductor Zorn, hand free, fingers buzzing. Gnostic Zorn, losing body to find preludes of pure soul. Pizza pie Zorn, in Yonkers, familiar, like a brother. Stoic Zorn, hardened character, disciplined, forged. Beatnik Zorn, spirit of Burroughs, Ginsberg & Kerouac right by the sink. Winter Zorn, hoodied & intense. Kabbalistic Zorn, something like the tree of life, something like a spark of God. Endless Zorn, the music never ceases, inspiration never stops. Melancholic Zorn. Exulting Zorn. Biblical Zorn, among the Heroes of Israel, Solomon’s wisdom, David’s harp. Cosmic Zorn, black holes, wormholes, stars & a big bang of sound. Questioning Zorn, examined life worth living. Restaurant Zorn, joyful, generous, inviting. Legendary Zorn, name spoken in awe, studied, never understood. Teacher Zorn, philanthropically initiating generations of young brilliance to the highest secrets. Grand Master Zorn, expert in craft & being, Zen like vision. Metropolitan Museum Zorn, looking for that presence that will translate into inspiration and be elevated to song. Transcendental Zorn, beyond categories, beyond classification. Shabbat Zorn, drawn by the blessed queen deep into her highest inner graces. American Zorn, statue of liberty incarnated in a saxophone. Tzadik Zorn, keeping the world alive with purity of righteous intention. Dweller of inner gardens Zorn, the grass, green and pleasant, behind the roses, a spring, a well of flowing waters. Mensch Zorn, eyes flowing with endless kindness, compassion & empathy. Holy Zorn, Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh. Oceanic Zorn, engulfed in the very fabric of all things, consciousness opened & wide. Zorn, John Zorn. Beloved Zorn, comrades saluting with beating hearts. My Zorn, continued inspiration, existential compass. Childhood Zorn, taught by life in Queens that “if am not for myself, who will be for me? And being for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” Timeless Zorn, now and for as long as ears will hear. Magick Zorn, ungraspable, unfathomable, explanations falter, descriptions inadequate. Blessed Zorn, Mazal Tov mon frere adoré, biz hundert un tsvantsik ach sheli hayakar, Ahava Raba always, Amen, Amen & Amen!
Jeremy Fogel is a scholar of Jewish Philosophy at Tel Aviv University
Beatrice Glow
John has been a friend and guide since my formative art school days. Through a chance encounter, we met at The Met looking at an exhibition of memento mori. Since then, John always encouraged me to challenge institutional narratives and conventions; a process of unlearning. Never judgmental about my naiveté, he has been open to insight and perspectives from younger generations, it's a form of generosity I try to pay forward. Happy Birthday John! Thank you for your singular voice and demonstrating to so many of us how to thrive with uncompromising commitment to one's practice, artistic vision and values!
Beatrice Glow is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher
Kenneth Goldsmith
About once a month, John Zorn and I meet for lunch, mostly in the East Village. And each time before meeting, John tells me to bring a bag because he's got new things to give me. The moment I arrive in the restaurant, he says, “open your bag,” and proceeds to fill it with new music. While John’s label Tzadik produces immense amounts of things, he doesn't ever give me anything from it; instead everything he gives me is his. At some lunches, he’ll give me ten new CDs of his own compositions; next month, I’ll get more.
While this scale of production is astounding, what’s even more astonishing is that each and every CD he gives me is excellent. While I'm no music critic, I do know enough to know good from bad and these CDs, while varying in style from free jazz to electronic to improv to metal, are all good. Not only are they beautifully composed but the playing on them is first-rate. While this will come as no surprise to any fan of John's, what I take away as much from the music that I receive from him, is the scope and depth and unknowability of his genius.
Historically speaking, such scale can cause problems, first and foremost that of evaluation. With so much production, the idea of knowing it all — never mind appraising it — is daunting. Beyond that, each disc is so absolutely unique and complex that one could spend one’s career — as some already do — evaluating mere slices of what he does. The end result being is that this vast and extraordinary achievement might very well have a posthumous slant to it; it will take decades if not more to untangle, understand, evaluate, and historicize Zorn’s immense oeuvre.
It’s hard to think of someone who produces on this scale. While we have examples of art machines like Warhol or automatic processors like Cage, there are great gaps in quality with those two artists. To my knowledge, there is no such instance in the works of Zorn — or at least I have yet to hear one. In this way, then, it’s probably better to compare the output of Zorn to Walter Benjamin’s “Arcades Project,” a gesamtkunstwerk which by means of its ambition, scope, and brilliance, can only be designated a singular vision. But whereas Benjamin fit between the covers of a book, there appears to be no end in sight for Zorn; at 70 he still has decades of production ahead of him.
All I can say is thank god I’m not a music historian working on Zorn; they’ve truly got their work cut out for them. But for a civilian like myself, I can only say that I am absolutely blessed to be in the presence of this completely extraordinary artist in my daily life. So very often, when I question or have doubts about my own work, all I have to do is invoke the example of John and I find the strength to move forward. What a gift he is.
Kenneth Goldsmith is a poet living in New York City and Istria, Croatia
Join John Zorn in person on September 9, 2023 at the Walker for a 70th birthday celebration with a 12-hour immersive festival featuring 20 key musical collaborators. Taking place across multiple venues—ranging from the Walker galleries, McGuire Theater, and the Basilica of Saint Mary—this one-of-a-kind marathon brings together Zorn and major figures such as guitarists Bill Frisell and Julian Lage, keyboardist John Medeski, the Jack String Quartet, as well as percussionists Ches Smith, Kenny Wollesen, and Sae Hashimoto.
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