August 27 - Karaim

John Zorn is a certified musical genius - and by that I mean that he is one of the recipients of the McArthur so-called genius grant. I first heard about him when he was doing the Naked City project, which really tested the limits of the rock band format and experimentation. I also enjoyed his FilmWorks take on Ennio Morricone, but I didn't become an outright fan of his work until I heard his Masada compositions. He has by now composed more than 500 short pieces that all are rooted in Jewish musical tradition.

So what does a short composition do in a theme of long songs? Well, this is the beauty of jazz to me. This version of Karaim was performed by the Electric Masada constellation and starts out with improvisation over the song's two chords. It starts with electric piano (Jamie Saft) and electronics (Ikue Mori), then drummers are coming in (Kenny Wollesen and Joey Baron), and they in turn are gradually joined by Cyro Baptista (percussion), Trevor Dunn (bass), Marc Ribot (guitar), and John Zorn himself on saxophone. The improvisation continues for nearly 6 minutes before the theme is introduced at 5:58. There are two sections to the theme - and after 30 seconds, the first section of the theme is repeated and at 6:46 they go back to improvisations again.

This performance of Karaim is my personal favorite - and I have been scouring his works for this specific song. It is such a powerful vehicle for improvisation - and it is all done completely in line with my personal taste. I really like Marc Ribot's solo, but I can just get lost in it. The dynamics are also great throughout, especially the drum driven crescendo that starts about 10:30 and builds along the keyboard solo until it resolves at around 11:45. The theme reappears at 14:26 and wraps up at 15:14 (although there is a soft theme resolution following it to the end of the piece just like there was one leading up to the improvisation earlier in the piece as well). In other words, in a musical number that is 16 minutes and 15 seconds long, 96 seconds is devoted to the written theme. To me, this makes for a blissful piece of music that I easily get lost in every time I hear it.