Constantly Questioning With John Zorn

Constantly Questioning With John Zorn

By mark cooney
John Zorn was a very inspiring  unique guest for composer's forum. In the past guests have demonstrated their work to the class and talk about their process through the lens of their work. I found Zorn's approach very fresh. He decided to talk to us instead of at us and it created an interesting and thought provoking discussion. The only problem I saw with his approach was that it was missing context. I felt it was difficult to understand where Zorn's perspective was coming from without a vast knowledge of his work.

At the same time I feel like that was intentional. Most of Zorn's points focused mainly around relationships in the music community and not the music itself. To him, the music comes from a relationship between the composer and performers. It was very thought provoking to hear him talk about the different large ensembles and the problem with their "lack of commitment." At times it felt harsh but I feel like his points have some validity. At one point he said “not all 80 musicians are going to be into your music.” Expression is hard to fake and unless you really feel the music it shows. I thought this point was really interesting when he talked about writing in certain ways for certain ensembles and not others. Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses and realizing that help the performers get a great performance. The only problem I have with this is that Zorn has the privilege of choosing really great musicians for his music. Composers at our stage are just lucky to get any performance of our work. I think this kind of “my way or the highway” approach could be detrimental to a young composer’s portfolio and possibly their reputation. It was very relieving though to hear him talk about performances in such an open and honest way.

It seemed to me that Zorn primary concern is that the performers enjoy and are "challenged" by the music he writes. One of my favorites thoughts from his talk was “performers are the ones that keep the music going.” Even though that might be an obvious comment but I’ve never thought about the legacy of music being held by the people who perform it. Zorns comments seemed to reflect life as a whole as opposed to just music. His approach to strengthen relationships in your musical world is very inspiring. I've heard very similar words come from some of the most successful musicians.  


Another inspiring concept John Zorn talked about was to not wait for an excuse to write music. “I don’t need an excuse to write.”  I believe that is a very good way to think about any creative pursuit. An outside source does not need to give you permission in order to make anything creative.

Overall John Zorn’s presentation was extremely eye-opening and thought provoking. The pursuit of knowledge is never over. According to Zorn it is good to have a lot of questions. I walked away from his talk with a lot of questions for my own creative path.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bora Yoon - Musical Perspective

            This week’s guest in composer’s forum, Bora Yoon, (multi-instrumentalist, singer, and composer), really inspired me in many ways I had never experienced before.             Her perspective on the relationship between sound and space, and between spirituality and sound completely fascinated me. She manipulated common sounds and vessels through which sounds can be created into really beautiful and moving music. To me, it wasn’t just music; rather, it was a total sonic experience that effected the mind, body, and soul.             The first example of her ability to create music in this way was in the very first piece she showed the class, which she explained she normally opened or closed her performances with. In this piece, she used a looper to layer sounds using objects, voice, and common instruments. While I foun...
Read more

On Nico Muhly's discussions of practicality in collaboration

This past Monday’s guest was American composer Nico Muhly, who has written in a variety of genres, including opera, scores for TV and film, and contemporary concert works. He’s also collaborated with some incredible artists . I was really interested in his orchestration and harmonic techniques, and how great pacing works together with these elements to create engaging compositions, regardless of genre. The discussions also led to more practical concerns regarding collaboration and orchestration. Nico first showed us excerpts from his opera, Marnie , during which he discussed some ideas for staging and orchestration, as well as some of the practical things to keep in mind in bigger collaborations. I really appreciated some of the staging decisions that he and the director came up with, including using dancers to represent men always looking at Marnie, rather than having the men sing outright (I hope that this is written in the score, so that it wil...
Read more

500 words on Jonathan Bailey Holland

Jonathan Bailey Holland hinted that for him, composition is essentially a solitary sport. In spite of this, he has engaged in interesting collaborations, and not without their difficulties. For example, he mentioned at least twice that the drummer of the group The Tree Ring couldn’t read music — and in those moments of the lecture, it became clear that notated music is clearly the form that Holland feels most comfortable. Holland’s work “Synchrony” features oboe, bassoon, violin, cello, and piano as its instrumentation, and incorporates pre-existing audio recordings as well. The blending of the live instruments with the audio fragments is extremely effective. The live elements re-contextualize the audio, and vice versa — it makes the ears perk up. Holland made clear that as an artist, he is interested in “reflecting back” his experience, and though he avoided taking on the label of “activist,” the subject matter of “Synchrony” is by its very nature deeply political. On ano...
Read more