John Zorn
John Zorn
John Zornis an American composer, arranger, 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, klezmer, soundtrack, ambient, and improvised music. He incorporates diverse styles in his compositions which he identifies as avant-garde or experimental. Zorn was described by Down Beat as "one of our most important composers"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth2 September 1953
CountryUnited States of America
And I try to be as diplomatic as I can, but it always ends up being a psychodrama up there on stage.
I have had a very combative relationship with critics because I'm very impatient with people that don't give my work the respect I feel it deserves.
People are great. But there's people who you get together with and you talk and you go away feeling energized, you feel inspired. And then there's people who you talk with and you go away feeling horrible, feeling drained, feeling like you're incapable of doing anything. Those people are psychic vampires and I now stay away from them.
You need to believe in something that's bigger than yourself. I think that's what everybody wants to believe in that.
I don't ascribe to the idea of the ivory tower composer who sits alone in a room composing his masterpieces and then comes down from Mount Sinai with the tablets. It doesn't work like that. The job of a composer is putting something down on a piece of paper that will inspire the person who's playing.
Eye was a great discovery. He is one of the great vocalists of all time.
It's a matter of keeping people on a spontaneous edge.
Music is about people for me. It's not about sounds. It's about people; it's about putting people into challenging situations. And for me, challenges are opportunities.
I have a very beautiful life with great friends and I look forward to waking up every day. Every day is a vacation but every day is a workday. I don't want to take vacations because music is my life and if I escape from music, that's the same thing as death. So a vacation is death to me. Sitting on the beach for a week is my idea of hell. That would kill me.
I'm constantly tortured, and that's why I say happiness is irrelevant. Happiness is for children and yuppies.
When I'm writing, sometimes it gets to that place where I feel like the piece is writing itself and I'm trying not to get in the way
I feel like there are messages. I feel like there are angels. I feel that there is a legacy and an energy. And I feel that it's possible to tap into that.
The magic that you find in surf music, I think, is really timeless. You know, when I was very young, I was in a surf band. Surf music is an instrumental music that still means a lot to me, not in an nostalgic way, but as something that really gets to the heart of the guitar itself.
I see myself and many artists like me as the torchbearers through these dark ages.