Great American Music Hall hosts 70th birthday residency for avant-garde giant John Zorn

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco hosts a landmark five-night residency with legendary NYC saxophonist and composer John Zorn to celebrate his 70th birthday starting Wednesday evening.

The concerts scheduled for August 30 through September 3 marks the first time the music iconoclast has participated in an extended run of performances in San Francisco since he participated in a similar series of shows for his 65th birthday at the Chapel in 2018. 

An important avant-garde composer and saxophonist who first broke out in the mid-1970s in New York, Zorn has been the object of both ecstatic praise and furious outrage, much like his forebears Igor Stravinsky and Ornette Coleman. Taking an omnivorous approach to music that draws on everything from classical, free jazz, and film soundtracks to lounge exotica, experimental noise and hardcore punk, the native New Yorker embraces a radical aesthetic that makes listener indifference nearly impossible.

Influenced by maverick jazz composer Anthony Braxton, Zorn studied music under experimental saxophonist (and future member of the World Saxophone Quartet) Oliver Lake in St. Louis before eventually returning to his hometown of New York City in the early '70s. Immersing himself in the underground downtown art scene, the saxophonist developed his howling, abrasive playing style while exploring structured improvisation with a series of what he called "game pieces" that required players to adhere to strict rules and cues. Recordings of those game pieces (usually named after actual sports) along with some other improvisations issued on cassette by fringe guitarist Eugene Chadbourne were the first albums produced by Zorn.

He would come to wider recognition in the mid-1980s with albums he released on the modern classical and minimalist focused Nonesuch Records label. His tribute to Italian film composer Ennio Morricone The Big Gundown that featured Zorn's revolutionary reworking of classic spaghetti western and crime movie themes in 1986 and Spy vs. Spy, his hardcore punk set of Ornette Coleman songs three years later, further established the musician as one of the most important American figures in experimental music.

His acclaimed all-star punk-jazz group Naked City featuring such virtuoso players as Bill Frisell on guitar, former member of British experimental rockers Henry Cow Fred Frith on bass, keyboard player Wayne Horvitz and explosive drummer Joey Baron. The band's self-titled 1990 debut mixed Zorn's volcanic original songs (some featuring screamed vocals by Yamatsuka Eye of Japanese avant-punk band Boredoms) with deconstructed takes on movie themes by Henry Mancini, John Barry and Morricone that frantically spliced moods and genres together.

During the '90s, few artists could match the constant output of recordings produced by Zorn from middecade forward. In addition to a string of albums featuring his chamber and orchestral music in the wake of Naked City's dissolution in 1993 and Painkiller -- the improv/grindcore collaboration with bassist Bill Laswell and former Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris -- the composer launched his Masada project aimed at exploring and expanding the Jewish musical tradition into the 21st century.

He formed his acoustic Masada quartet with Baron, longtime Tom Waits bassist Greg Cohen and acclaimed trumpet player Dave Douglas, recording a torrent of studio albums and touring the world to present his modern jazz exploration of Sephardic scales and rhythms. The Masada songbook would grow through the decade as Zorn churned out compositions and recorded them with a myriad of bands including the Bar Kokhba Sextet, the Masada String Trio and others.

A second Masada songbook would be tracked by an even wider range of collaborators on a series of CDs covering over 30 volumes. This period of increased productivity would coincide with Zorn founding not-for-profit, artist-focused experimental performance space the Stone in New York City, a venue that Zorn continues to work with as artistic director. Earlier in 2018, the venue had its final performances at its original Alphabet City location earlier this year with plans to move to the New School's Glass Box Theatre in Greenwich Village.

Other major projects have found Zorn writing a third Masada songbook, editing the first volume of Arcana: Musicians on Music -- a book series featuring interviews and essays featuring players discussing the creative process -- as well as establishing new groups like his popular surf/exotica outfit the Dreamers, the noise power trio Bladerunner with legendary metal/experimental drummer Dave Lombardo (Slayer, Fantomas, Dead Cross, Misfits) and bassist Bill Laswell, the similarly themed Buck Tonic Jam with Japanese drummer Tatsuya Nakamura and a spoken word album with Jewish mystic David Chaim Smith.

"ZORN at 70" will offer up a series of 15 performances curated by the composer over the course of five days at the Great American that will also include a solo organ performance Saturday afternoon by Zorn at Grace Cathedral. The concerts will include world premieres of new groups and music -- including the debuts of Awaking Ground, a trio with the saxophonist, organist John Medeski and volcanic drummer Dave Lombardo, and Love Songs featuring vocalist Petra Haden fronting a sextet -- as well as appearances by Zorn with fellow avant-gardist Laurie Anderson and guitar player Bill Frisell (who had his own successful GAMH residency earlier this year) and with the latest line-ups of his acoustic quartet Masada and his New Electric Masada group, both featuring Bay Area guitarist Julian Lage closing out the residency.  

Other highlights include a Sunday afternoon performance of his game piece COBRA with Zorn prompting an all-star cast of 13 improvisors including Mr. Bungle members Mike Patton, Trevor Dunn and Trey Spruance, experimental guitarist and composer Fred Frith, and a murders row of drummers including Lombardo, Kenny Wollesen, Ches Smith and Kenny Grohowski, a pair of Saturday shows featuring Medeski performing with a pair of fiery electric-jazz projects (Chaos Magick and Simulacrum), and several groups performing music for string ensembles including a guitar trio with Frisell, Lage and Gyan Riley. Full details on the expansive schedule of performances and special ticket packages for single days or the entire residency are available on the Great American Music Hall website. 

ZORN at 70
Wednesday-Sunday, Aug. 30-Sept. 1-3, times vary; $20-$100
Great American Music Hall