John Zorn Reflection

                  The visit from John Zorn was super interesting, and it was a nice change of pace to hear is rather raw, off the cuff, honest answers to the questions that he gave no matter what it was. He said a few things that were super interesting for me, and that was that he writes for friends because he wants the players that he knows for sure will give the most honest and intense emotional commitment to the music that they can and that the first performance of the piece is only the beginning, not the end of the process of shaping and molding the piece. 

                  The fact that he writes for players that he knows as opposed to players that he doesn’t know, is something that I think is very important. His preoccupation with getting the absolute best performance out of the players is not uncommon, but I believe it can be somewhat common for players and composers to lose sight of the emotion of the piece as opposed to the craft of playing the piece. There are many musicians who are technically very skilled and can read down the most difficult of pieces, but the performance is as good as the players’ emotional commitment, as he puts it, and that is of the utmost importance. Therefore, it becomes increasingly difficult to trust players that one has never met, because one doesn’t know how much of themselves the players will give to the piece. And even the most skilled players will need to take the time to really learn the piece, not just have the ability to read it. He spoke about how some players would read his piece the day of, and then perform it later, but even super skilled players cannot overcome the time it takes simply sitting with a piece and exploring the emotional complexity of it. This is relatable to the world of film music, which is my predominant area, because the deadlines and demand is so intense, that pragmatically, I would want to write music for players that I know will be able to play it well and with the right emotion. I wouldn’t have time to rehearse the piece a lot, and so having a player I trust to deliver what I want in high-stress environment is crucial.

                  This ties in perfectly with his idea that the first performance of the piece is not the end. I really liked this because it is very easy to look at the performance date that looms for a composer as the end of the journey with the piece. Writing the material, organizing it in a cohesive way, orchestrating it, revising, rinsing, repeating—this can get tiring and sometimes frustrating and the date of the first performance can feel like the end of all that—the target of all that work. This makes sense because all of that does indeed need to be done by that time, but if the piece is to truly evolve, it requires the collaboration of the other artists, the players. Rehearsing and exploring the piece with skilled, emotionally mature players can transform the piece, and the players and the composer would need time, rehearsals, and multiple performances to really get at what is inside the piece, waiting to be unlocked.