Anyone taking a good look at alto saxophonist and composer John Zorn's productivity will be struck with admiration for this musical jack-of-all-trade's enthusiasm and creativity. Take for instance one of his bands' CD, Naked City, with 41 tracks of which the shortest is only 10 seconds and the longest is 17 minutes and 40 seconds, but most are around 15 seconds. It's clear: this unique musician totally shatters the cliché that jazz musicians can be long-winded at times. His commercial insight also enabled him to release hundreds of CDs on his own Tzadik label. On this label, he has done his best to promote Jewish culture, with series like Radical Jewish Culture and Great Jewish Music. With his band Masada, with whom he made a whole series of albums, he interweaves free improvisation with Jewish folk music. In addition, he writes movie scores (he prefers cartoons and SM-type porn), compositions for string quartets and so on and so forth. This year in The Hague, he will be presenting the electric version of Masada, with guitarist Marc Ribot and master percussionist Cyro Baptista as spearheads. You have to have seen John Zorn at least once, but sensitive souls and jazz purists might do well to skip his show. Jazz Snob: Eat Shit, the title of one of his compositions (24 seconds), speaks for itself in this respect.
