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Home
Authors
John Zorn
American
Composer
About the author
I have wit in my work and a sense of humor, but I do not use irony in any way.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#Work
#Sense
#Humor
#Wit
#Irony
Like you have seven people with their hands up. I gotta make a choice. Y'know, that's tough. Sometimes I gotta go with someone that has an idea and make several calls in a row, because they got an idea.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#People
#Idea
#Choice
And I try to be as diplomatic as I can, but it always ends up being a psychodrama up there on stage.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#Being
As soon as you get a certain amount of attention, then everybody kinda wants to start taking pot shots at you. All your old friends that supported you don't support you any more.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#Support
#Friends
#Old
#Attention
Eye was a great discovery. He is one of the great vocalists of all time.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#Time
#Eye
#Discovery
For about seven years. I really like it there. There are a lot of great musicians. The scene is very open. A lot of stuff going on. People's ears are really open, they are not closed. A lot of scenes here, people just get tunnel vision and are into one thing.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#People
#Years
#Vision
#Open
#Musicians
Great musicians accept everything that they hear and find something good. They take what they like and they throw away what they don't like.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#Musicians
I don't control it at all. It's all up to the musicians in the group. They control it. They make all the cues, and they tell me what they want, and then I act like a mirroring device so that everyone can see what the cues are.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#Want
#Act
#Control
#Musicians
I have about two or three people, we don't have an office, we don't even have a dedicated phone line. We do it out of our own homes, and we make it work.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#People
#Work
#Office
I put together the influences of my life in as clear a way as I possibly can, in the same way that Beethoven or Schoenberg or Bach put their influences together.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#Life
I see myself and many artists like me as the torchbearers through these dark ages.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#Artists
I'm getting ready to write a piece now, and it's been six months thinking about it, changing the instrumentation, changing the name, doing more reading.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#Now
#Thinking
#Reading
#Name
#Months
It breaks even. We lose ten, twenty grand every year. But then the people who are working say, Look, I'll kick this back in, I don't need to take this profit share. It's very cooperative.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#People
#Profit
I run around, I listen to a lot of music, go to a lot of concerts. And when I see someone that gases me, I try to go out of my way to involve them somehow in what I'm doing or get involved in what they're doing.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#Music
It's a matter of keeping people on a spontaneous edge.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#People
One of the reasons I started Tzadik, which is my own label, is to keep things in print. I got tired of labels dropping things out of print when they don't sell.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
That is a lot of the reason I do what I do, to really spread the word and spread information and turn people onto different things they may not be, y'know, aware of. That is what Naked City is certainly about.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#People
#Reason
#May
#Information
#Word
That was my challenge as a composer. Like with anything, to keep yourself interested in doing what you do, you set yourself challenges. So I said, Okay, I'll try to write a hundred tunes in a year.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#Challenge
That's where I began to ask questions that maybe don't have one specific answer. And the more people you get answers from, the richer the environment becomes.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#People
#Questions
#Environment
#Answers
The idealists will always be in society, and we will survive.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#Will
#Society
Well, in Japan, I have got a group of musicians that I have worked with a lot, that concentrate just on the hardcore stuff, say, that Naked City has been working on. We have like a repertoire of sixty songs now.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#Songs
#Now
#Musicians
When I'm writing, sometimes it gets to that place where I feel like the piece is writing itself and I'm trying not to get in the way.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#Writing
#Trying
You can't be idealistic in this world and not be crazy.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#World
You know, when we were kids, we had to go to a theater to see a movie. And then television came in and you had to wait until midnight to see the one you wanted to see. Now, all you've got to do is go to a store and buy it and you can watch it whenever you want!
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#Now
#Kids
#Television
#Theater
#Midnight
It's a blast to watch. It's a lot more interesting live than it is on record. I mean, it really is a theatrical event. It's a sporting event! Cause you never know what's gonna happen.
John Zorn,
American
Composer
#Cause