Masada (John Zorn)
Masada is the generic term for a group of projects by the American musician John Zorn , which were created and continue to be based on three songbooks he wrote ( Masada Book of Songs , Masada Songbook Two - The Book of Angels and Masada Book Three: The Book Beriah ) arise. The common feature of these projects is a combination of elements of Jewish music with Jazz (particularly the free jazz of Ornette Coleman ), rock and other modern genres of music. The song titles all come from the Hebrew or Aramaic language, album covers are decorated with Jewish religious symbols.
The name of the series of works goes back to the mass suicide of the zealot defenders of the Israeli mountain fortress Masada in 73 before the conquest by the Romans ( a kind of national founding myth in Israel ).
history
The idea of Masada is seen as part of Zorn's turn to his Jewish roots, the first stages of which were the announcement of the manifesto of Radical Jewish Culture at the Art-Projekt-Festival in Munich in 1992 and the recording of the Kristallnacht album in the same year. The Masada Quartet , consisting of Zorn, Dave Douglas , Greg Cohen and Joey Baron , first came together to record the soundtrack for the film Thieves' Quartet . In 1994 DIW Records released his first album with this line-up, Alef . It was recorded by the original Masada Quartet in the summer of 1993, along with much of the material for another two albums: Masada: Beit and Masada: Dalet . The Masada: Gimel , which lies between the two in chronological order , was recorded in summer 1994.
“Masada came about because I've always wanted to write a 'book' of melodies ... it was a challenge - I'd never done it before. Ornette Coleman's compositions - Wow! What a book of pieces, unbelievable! I wanted to contribute something similar. "
The first Masada songbook contains 205 compositions, which were mainly recorded by the Masada quartet. The Book of Angels , created about 10 years later (2004), comprises 316 titles that are gradually being interpreted by different artists. In early 2014, the release of the third songbook in the Masada series, created in 2009 - The Book Beriah was announced . The Book Beriah was released in 2018 as a box set with 11 CDs and all 92 compositions. The pieces in the Masada Collection are seen as Zorn's attempts to develop a new and radical form of Jewish music ( Radical Jewish Culture ).
Sub-projects
The Masada Quartet
The original Masada band (also called Acoustic Masada ) consists of John Zorn , Dave Douglas , Joey Baron and Greg Cohen , a quartet whose model was Ornette Coleman's quartet . After Zorn appeared with various groups under the name Masada since 1993 , the quartet documented here emerged as a central line-up, with whom Zorn only partially went on tour. Later recordings were made with the participation of many other musicians and bands, often under other names - Masada String Trio, Electric Masada, Bar Kokhba.
Masada String Trio
The Masada String Trio consists of Mark Feldman , Erik Friedlander and Greg Cohen . Similar to its extension, the Bar Kokhba Sextet, it plays chamber music versions of the compositions from the Masada Songbook .
Bar Kokhba
The Bar Kokhba project, named after the Jewish resistance fighter Bar Kochba , interprets the compositions of the Masada Songbook as chamber music. Originally the band consisted of Marc Ribot , Erik Friedlander , Anthony Coleman and John Medeski . It was later renamed Bar Kokhba Sextet and also included Mark Feldman , Greg Cohen , Joey Baron and Cyro Baptista - this band was an extension of the Masada String Trio. The Circle Maker is a double album in which one side was recorded by the Masada String Trio and the other by the Bar Kokhba Sextet.
Electric Masada
Electric Masada is a jazz rock band that processes Zorn's compositions with elements of rock and electronic music. Its members were Jamie Saft , Ikue Mori , Marc Ribot , Kenny Wollesen , Joey Baron, and Cyro Baptista . It has been described as "a combination of Naked City's raw power, Cobra's crazy improvisation and the lyrical soul of the Masada songbook".
10th anniversary
On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Masada, five anniversary albums were released, on which Zorn's compositions were interpreted in very different styles: punk , noise , classical music or folk . Involved in the recordings were u. a. Bill Frisell , Marc Ribot , Medeski, Martin & Wood and Mike Patton .
Book of Angels
In 2005 the first album of the new Masada series was released - Astaroth: Book of Angels Volume 1 by the Jamie Saft Trio . In contrast to the first, the compositions of the second Masada songbook are made by various artists and groups that were not formed ad hoc for this purpose. Those involved include a. Pat Metheny , Secret Chiefs 3 , Uri Caine , Medeski, Martin & Wood or Joe Lovano . In 2017 the last, 32nd album of the series was released with Paimon by Mary Halvorson Quartet .
Book Beriah
The third Masada Book of Songs was released collectively as a box set; the individual partial albums were recorded by Secret Chiefs 3, Craig Taborn and Vadim Neselovskyi , Cyro Baptista's Banquet of the Spirits, Julian Lage and Gyan Riley, Klezmerson , among others .
Discographic notes
- See John Zorn / Discography , sections Masada Book of Songs and Book of Angels ( The Book Beriah under Composition Only ).
literature
- Tamar Barzel: New York Noise: Radical Jewish Music and the Downtown Scene . Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indianapolis 2015, ISBN 978-0-253-01557-0 .
- Joachim-Ernst Berendt, Günther Huesmann: The Jazz Book: From New Orleans to the 21st Century . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-596-15964-2 , pp. 238-242 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.allmusic.com/artist/john-zorn-mn0000239329/biography
- ↑ Barzel (2015), p. 123.
- ^ Joachim-Ernst Berendt, Günter Huesmann: The Jazz Book: From New Orleans to the 21st Century . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-596-15964-2 , pp. 239 .
- ↑ http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/930784/pat-metheny-on-digging-into-john-zorns-book-of-angels
- ^ John Zorn to premiere part three of his Masada project on The Global Jewish News Source [accessed January 28, 2014].
- ↑ John Zorn: The Book Beriah. PledgeMusic, accessed March 6, 2018 .
- ↑ cf. Masada Project
- ↑ http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-circle-maker-mw0000382830
- ↑ Album page on Tzadik.com , accessed August 31, 2013.