John Zorn
John Zorn, the leading light of Avant-Garde Jazz, is a prolific and multifaceted artist: composer, arranger, producer, sax-player and multi-instrumentalist. He is listed as the performer, composer or producer on hundreds of albums, having cultivated countless genres: Jazz, rock, hardcore punk, classical music, klezmer, improvised music, soundtracks…
And if that wasn’t enough, Zorn is also the catalyst of an avant-garde scene, mainly based in New York, encompassing hundreds of musicians who boast enormous influence and repercussion. It is impossible to conceive Jazz made in New York without the intervention of musicians who move in Zorn’s sphere.
John Zorn’s fabulous performances at the Jazzaldia have left a strong impression: in 2013, with his Masada Marathon; in 2015, with the Bladerunner Trio, and in 2019, the year he received the Donostiako Jazzaldia Award, with Bagatelles Marathon. At this 59th edition of the Jazzaldia, the music brought to us by the great North American maestro will take the shape of 6 different formations giving performances over three days, on 26 and 27 July in the Kursaal Auditorioa and, on the 28th, in the Plaza de la Trinidad.
The six projects will feature ten musicians: Julian Lage, Gyan Riley, Brian Marsella, Jorge Roeder, Ches Smith, John Medeski, Matt Hollenberg, Kenny Grohowski, John Zorn eta Kenny Wollesen.
INCERTO
Julian Lage (guitar), Brian Marsella (piano), Jorge Roeder (bass), Ches Smith (drums)
Incerto is the birth of a new and exciting modern Jazz ensemble presenting four of the foremost musicians in the new generation taking up the baton in New York’s vibrant scene: Julian Lage, Brian Marsella, Jorge Roeder and Ches Smith. A quartet with no limits, perfect to perform Zorn’s extravagantly convoluted compositions.
Enormously varied, insanely complex, entangled and strangely structured, this is powerfully motivating and gut-wrenchingly beautiful music offering complicated changes of time, tuneless melodies and unusual harmonies.
Modern Jazz at its best!
SIMULACRUM
John Medeski (organ), Matt Hollenberg (guitar), Kenny Grohowski (drums)
Simulacrum may just be the most extreme trio ever, with an organ leading the way on a new path towards the wildest side of New York alchemist John Zorn, who, at his almost 70 years of age, continues to explore new worlds.
Compositions developed with cinematic logic, music that shuns classification, a mixture of metal, Jazz, minimalism, atonality, noise… Passionately performed by a true trio of stars made up of John Medeski, Matt Hollenberg and Kenny Grohowski.
