Skip to Main Content

Rabble Without A Cause
Wednesday February 13th, 2013 with Bernard Stepien
John Zorn & Fred Frith - Late Works 2009

Provocative, at the border line between music and noise, the John Zorn/Fred Frith combination has been going un-abided for at least three decades now. Both have the characteristic to have explored countless styles of music from classical, to folk or world music via Rock and even straight ahead Be Bop not to mention trying out countless music instruments before settling for their current choice. They shared a fascination for the music of John Cage in their formative years which was a good start and John Zorn even explored the music of Thelonious Monk among a long list of experiments. After playing various string instruments, John Zorn switched to saxophone after hearing Anthony Braxton’s For Alto record (1970). Their style has been frequently described including by themselves as Post Free overkill, hyperfree or even as Steve Lacy used to call it, polyfree. However, like many others, they quickly realized that there is advantage in organizing all this freedom into compositions and the result is of course highly structured to the point that like Latin music, it is almost highly predictable. Tonight, we will survey their 2009 CD Late Works and try to understand what kind of vocabulary one can build in a polyfree context.
foetid ceremony
John Zorn - Fred Frith - late works - tzadik
mosquito slats
John Zorn - Fred Frith - late works - tzadik
movement - harried angels
John Zorn - Fred Frith - late works - tzadik
baffled hats
John Zorn - Fred Frith - late works - tzadik
fourth mind
John Zorn - Fred Frith - late works - tzadik
ankle time
John Zorn - Fred Frith - late works - tzadik
slow lattice
John Zorn - Fred Frith - late works - tzadik