be true to your own music————some thinkings after John Zorn's speech

John Zorn, the guest speaker last week in the composers' forum, is the cooooooooooooool artist that I really appreciate. He is true to himself and his music.

As a young nobody-knows composer, it’s very common that the musicians you cooperated with are not that serious to your music, they may play the music correctly, but they refuse to dig further your piece to make an excellent interpretation. John Zorn is the person that will not yield to this situation, he suggests composers should be the “band leader” of the music group: Composer has the responsibility to inspire other people and make people become emotionally committed to the music. As John Zorn said he is the composer that got high standard and low tolerance. I think nowadays composers are easy to compromise to orchestra，ensemble, or musician because they hardly get an opportunity to officially perform their piece. So, I and my friends established our own contemporary ensemble in China in order to give more opportunities to Chinese young composers and do some really good music.

John Zorn composes and needs to compose. He said that he never waits for a commission or something, he just writes music as the idea comes. This is the true composer’s attitude. Being a composer that waits for commissions is acceptable, but John Zorn’s writing attitude is the ideal one for me.

In China, there is a very weird phenomenal: There is a type of commissions called “Government-commissioned opera” which has a really high paying and a certain script (The stories usually are traditional, like the story of a self-devoting party member, or some great people in history, or some historical/regional famous events/stories.)  As far as I have experienced, those composers usually just write some ***** to get their money, that is really shameful. If you don’t like the story, just refuse it!!!!! I do think that they humiliated their own career, how could a composer be so indifferent to his own music? Composers should at least be serious to their works. This world needs more composers like John Zorn.

Finish composing is only the first step of making music, we all should get some Like-minded friends and make music together. Just like John Zorn said：“Music is people”