Unpacking Big Ears: The John Zorn Sets

"No photography," the signs said, and to make sure no one missed it, the ushers walked up and down the aisles of the Bijou holding up the signs. Now, I'm not a big fan of following the rules just because the rules exist, and while it would have been very easy to sneak a few quick shots of the John Zorn performances from the seats, I uncharacteristically complied. Others didn't, apparently, so all the pics here of Zorn and company are from social media sources (the signs didn't say "no reposting pics that others might have taken").

For the third time in five years (by my count), the 2026 Big Ears festival included a Zorn residency, basically handing over The Bijou Theater to him for two days (Friday  and Saturday). As far as I'm concerned, they can give him a residency every year - let him have the full run of the Bijou all four days to do whatever the hell he wants. His music is that diverse, his roster of associated artists that large, and his universe that expansive and fascinating that it wouldn't get old. Alternatively, if there were a multi-day Zorn festival every year (most likely in New York), I'd go.

This year's residency included a duet set with Laurie Anderson, his vocal arrangements for soprano Barbara Hannigan, Love Songs featuring Petra Haden, piano compositions for the Brian Marsella Trio,  Incerto, featuring Marsella and Julian Lage, chamber music with the Junction Trio, and a live soundtrack for experimental cinema with Ikue Mori. No disrecpect, but I didn't see any of those sets mostly due to schedule conflicts with other must-see Big Ears shows. 

Probably the most anticipated Zorn set was the reunion of his original Masada quartet, featuring Zorn, trumpeter Dave Douglas, bassist Greg Cohen, and drummer Joey Baron. The original OG Masada, who haven't performed together since 2001, as far as I know. The four of them together on stage, performing the music from the sadly now-out-of-print CDs on the Japanese DIW label, was a truly historic event, the kind of thing Ken Burns should do a documentary about if only he could break free of Wynton Marsallis' influence and learn to connect the dots between post-bop jazz and Zorn's klezmer-influenced, post-Ornette music.  

The demand for the show was such that they played twice, once on Friday morning (well, starting 12 noon) and again on Saturday night. I caught the Friday show and intended to go on Saturday, too, but got caught up in the aforementioned schedule conflicts. 

The set was fantastic. The band swung hard, the solos were outstanding, and the rhythm section of Cohen and Burns was tight. I'm hoping, praying, that the set was recorded, as I would love to be able to relive the experience again. If you're not familiar what with what the hybrid of Zorn's downtown avant-garde, Ornette's harmolodics, and traditional klezmer might sound like, here's the quartet in 1999 (back in Zorn's long-hair period): 

On Sunday night, I also got to see Masada trumpeter Dave Douglas and his own quartet, which included the iconoclastic saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, cellist Tomeka Reid, and guitarist Rafiq Bhatia and drummer Ian Chang of the band Son Lux.

 

After starting the day with Masada, I ended that Friday with Zorn's closing set, Awakening Ground, a trio improvisation of Zorn, keyboardist John Medeski, and drummer Dave Lombardo (of Slayer fame).  

The set was energetic and amazing, but one thing that really stood out to me was how limited rock-music drumming is compared to jazz. This isn't a knock on Lombardo - he's a great drummer, albeit a great rock drummer. But after a day of listening to Joey Baron, Ben Lumsdaine (with Jeff Parker's trio), Ben Perowsky (of Steven Bernstein's band), and Jordan Glenn (Fred Frith), rock drumming sounded lead-footed and clumsy. 

One big difference is the use of cymbals. While jazz drummers are playing several different rhythms simultaneously and keeping the cymbals in constant use in support of one rhythm or another, Lombardo tends to use them only at the end of a run across his toms and snare, as a sort of exclamations point ("boom-boom-ba-doom-splash!"). After listening to all those cymbals all day, it almost felt like I was listening to recorded music with one track missing - where's the rest of the drum set?

Not to say Lombardo wasn't heavy and powerful - he was. But as another example of the difference between rock and jazz drumming, at one point during Awakening Ground, Lombardo lost his drum stick in the middle of his big showcase solo. Not dissing Dave - everyone loses drumsticks (it happens). I clearly saw the stick go flying up in the air after a particularly powerful strike. But the lost stick seemed to throw Lombardo off, and he had to temporarily stop his solo, grab another stick and start again from where he had left off. All this was probably took no more than a second or two and many people might not have even noticed, but Zorn walked over to Dave's drum set after the song ended to console him for his faux pas.                

By contrast, on Saturday night, part of the reason I didn't see the second Masada set was because I was at The Blackbox (formerly the Old City Performing Arts Center) watching the Darius Jones Trio with veteran jazz drummer Gerald Cleaver.

Like Lombardo, Cleaver (unfortunately, not in the picture above) also lost a drumstick during his performance (like I said, it happens). But Cleaver literally didn't miss a beat - his other hand busily tapping out a polyrhythm (on the cymbals) and his feet working the bass drums, he calmly pulled another stick out of his kit and kept on going, and if you didn't see the stick fly off, you'd never have known it happened by listening.

Anyway, I'm not shitting on Lombardo, and my observation (not even a criticism) is the well-known difference between rock and jazz drumming. But as long as I mentioned Darius Jones, although he's not a Zorn associate (i.e., in the Zorniverse), I'll mention here that his set was magnificent, the sort of mysterious, almost mystical, late-night free jazz one might of heard in a downtown loft in the 1970s.

Back to Zorn. I started Saturday off with a performance of his game-piece, Cobra, performed by a large, all-star ensemble including Lombardo, Ches Smith, Brian Marsella, John Medeski, Jorge Roeder, Simon Hanes, Ikue Mori, Sae Hashimoto, Wendy Eisenberg, William Winant, Kenny Wollesen, and many more.

It's difficult to describe a performance of Cobra. It's basically a group improvisation set to some arcane set of rules, conducted by Zorn and based on suggestions by the performers. Hands are raised, signs are flashed, headbands are worn at various performers at various times, and it's all chaotic and bizarre and wonderful and strangely humorous, and no two performances are ever anything like each other.

Which brings me around to two other sets by two other large ensembles. While not officially part of the Zorn residency, both were led by members of his core group of performers and featured participants in his Cobra set.

First, Sunday started with a set by Brian Marsella's Imaginarium. 

The large ensemble included three horns, a drummer, two percussionists (including Sae Hashimoto), a violinist, a guitarist, and a bassist, and credit should also go to the projectionist, who showed a continuous series of dazzling lights, trippy films, and other visual effects that changed with every song. This short video was screened during the first full piece of the set after Marsella's sung/spoken introduction:

"Imaginarium" is a fitting name for the ensemble, as their performance was all over the musical universe, never lingering in one spot for long. Violinist Meg Okura and guitarist John Lee had particular standout moments, but everyone contributed, and contributed mightily, to the effort. If you like Burnt Weenie Sandwich/Waka-jawaka-era Frank Zappa, this was the set for you. If you like having your mind blown by sheer creativity, this was the set for you. If you just like good music, daringly composed and flawlessly performed, this was the set for you. Along with Masada, it was one of the standout sets of the whole festival for me. 

Finally, later on that same Sunday, I caught Simon Hanes' Gargantua, a fitting name for his 18-person ensemble. Three was the operational number for this band, as it had three vocalists, three French horns, three trombones, three electric guitars, three bassists, and three drummers, all conducted, frantically, by Hanes.

Hanes is best known to Zorn fans for his punk-rock outfit Trigger and their CD of Zorn's Bagatelle compositions. He's also part of the Italian soundtrack-pop band Tredici Bacci and has collaborated with pianist Anthony Coleman. But Gargantua was something else entirely. What it was, I'm still not sure, as it turned on a dime, sometimes mid-song, from chamber ensemble to noise to almost ambient vocal harmony to punk to funk and every other possible genre Hanes could imagine. At one point, just to give you an idea of the variability, the score called for the three singers to yell and swear at Hanes ("fuck you, Simon!") as they balled up the sheet music and threw it at him. Two minutes later, they were singing beautiful polytonal harmonies. There were triple trombone solos reminiscent of Centipede's Septober Energy. There were shrieking guitar solos. It was fun, if exhausting in the sheer exuberance of its creativity.

I was at the front row, right behind Simon's conducting, and it was hard to capture the full ensemble or anything other than Hanes' butt. Here's a pic I found of the set on social media, with your humble narrator visible on the rail wearing my trademark brown cap.   

And that's it, although that a lot - three "official" Zorn residency sets, a set by his Masada bandmate Dave Douglas, two large ensemble sets led by two of his frequent collaborators, and Darius Jones thrown in for good measure.

Like I said, Big Ears could hold a Zorn residency every year, just give him the keys to the Bijou for the weekend, and I'd he happy.