The Necronomicon string quartet!

MUSIC REVIEW
Atmosphere at Zorn tribute is decidedly cool
By Richard Dyer
[Boston] Globe Staff
February 1, 2005

New York avant-gardist John Zorn sat down for his portrait
Sunday afternoon in the Gardner Museum, but no 90-minute
period of conversation and music could display the many
facets of this protean musical personality who has
documented his work on more than 250 CDs. Composer, jazz
saxophonist, musical game maker, Zorn is a figure whose
interests range from Webern and Varese to Carl Stalling
(composer for Bugs Bunny cartoons), from Stravinsky to
hard-core death metal, and his music reflects that diversity
of interest.

The event, produced in collaboration with the Miller Theatre
at Columbia University, launched a new series designed to
attract a young and hip audience to the museum, and
reportedly did so on Saturday night. The repeat performance
Sunday afternoon played to about one-third capacity -- and
since this was a Zorn event, it wasn't a repeat. Instead of
the piano trio "Amour Fou" from 1999, some of the musicians
wanted to play Zorn's "Walpurgisnacht" for string trio, so
they did.

George Steel from the Miller Theatre hosted the concert and
brought Zorn onstage for a preperformance chat. The composer
appeared in camouflage pants topped by a maroon athletic
jersey over an orange T-shirt. One didn't envy Steel's
efforts to pin Zorn down, and in fact he failed abjectly to
do so. On Saturday night Zorn reportedly delivered a
foul-mouthed rant; on Sunday, chastened, he hardly said
anything beyond mentioning that "Walpurgisnacht" contains
the same number of bars as the string trio by Anton von
Webern and indicating that the last piece on the program,
"Necronomicon," is for string quartet. Steel said Zorn has
produced four previous works in this genre.

Information and basic helpfulness were in short supply both
in the conversation and in the program notes, which devoted
three pages to biographies of the performers, without a word
about the music. So the whole introductory chat gave off an
uncomfortable in-group feel, exactly the opposite of the
welcoming atmosphere it was designed to create; the attitude
seemed to be, "Everyone is here because we are all so cool."

The music on the program was in fact pretty cool, and the
performers were sensational. New England Conservatory
pianist Stephen Drury, producer of many local Zorn events,
played "Le Momo" with a leading New York new-music
violinist, Jennifer Choi; they have recorded this piece and
play it with fiery authority. Liner notes will tell you this
work is "a ritual of exorcism and possession," and you can
read elsewhere that "Le Momo" was the term the French
absurdist playwright and poet Antonin Artaud gave to his
disordered body after repeated shock therapy. At the Gardner
we were on our own.

Choi, violist Richard O'Neill, and cellist Fred Sherry
played "Walpurgisnacht," a depiction of the "Witches'
Sabbath" familiar from the Faust legend and its musical
treatments. The three of them were joined by violinist Jesse
Mills for the string quartet, which deals with a magus,
conjurations, and demonology. All three works demand
high-tension virtuosity and shuttle schizophrenically
between avant-garde, nontonal extravagance and almost
hypnotically tonal sweetness.

The context in which we hear music determines some of our
response. One wondered what the reaction to this music would
have been if it had been composed by a senior composer with
impressive academic credentials, as it easily could have
been (and, after all, Zorn is 51 by now), and if the titles
had been "Chronometry and Chaocity" or "Asynchronicity VI."
But if that had been the case, this audience probably
wouldn't have been there to hear it.