John Zorn: A brilliant composer with genuine music talent and genuine humanity

John Zorn, our this week’s guest speaker, is a composer with multiple musical skills. From Wikipedia, we can find that he is a “composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist, and multi-instrumentalist with hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, and producer across a variety of genres including jazz, rock, hardcore, classical, surf, metal, soundtrack, ambient, and improvised music”. He was described as “one of our most important composers” by Down Beat.

This Monday, John Zorn introduced his process of composition and also his attitude to composition. Same with most people seating in the hall, John Zorn also has a traditional classical music background. He started to study classical music composition at the beginning. But something changed after someone, like Cecil Tylor and Sun Ra,  enters his world. Under the effects of this kind of improv musicians, John picked up his saxophones again. Obviously, this is the right path for him and it also proves his opinion that things like atonal, twelve-tone music is not fit with everyone. That’s it! I cannot imagine if he did not meet those improv musicians, what will happen today. He may keep study on traditional music, write atonal things and unknown to the public. 

One thing he always talking about is the sense of community with musicians. From the aspect of being a composer, I cannot agree more. Just as he said, a composition by composer just part of the stock, how performers perform the pieces are the continuity of stock. No one knows what it will turn out to be before the starting of the next part. So, it’s necessary for a composer to communicate with the performer and listen to them. Sometimes performers will also give some BOOM creation things to the composer. Music is the outcome of the combination, or the dialogue, between composers and performers. At the same time, as a performer, do not just read the score from others. Performers are also a musician, they also have the same ability of music creation. So, performers, try to improvise. Of course, the prerequisite is that you have good enough playing ability and appreciation, understanding the ability of music. As John said if composers do not have the performers that they want who are the best to perform their music, “JUST FORGET IT!”. 

One other thing interests me, John Zorn mentioned that do not wait for an excuse to write music. “I don’t need an excuse to write.” Many composers around me are always waiting for assignments or other opportunities to inspire them to compose. As a composer, you have to be pure in music. Music is the language in which we express our thoughts and emotions. Feelings don't have to wait for a task or command to come out. The same thing with music, when the idea comes to mind, write it down! Don’t wait! 

This was John Zorn, a brilliant composer with genuine music talent and genuine humanity. His attitude towards music, his cognition of the creation of music and his pursuit of the meaning of music resonated with me.