John Zorn's Masada

Fred Kaplan has a Slate piece on John Zorn's evolution over the last 10 years and the "life-soundtrack that most compels him" - Masada.

There are, counting the multiple discs, 28 Masada CDs in the bins, not including Zorn's 14-volume Filmworks series, a few of which draw on the Masada songbook. Is this too much Masada? Yes, probably (though, I must confess, I own all of them). There is a compulsion toward "compleatism" in many subcultures, particularly those that have a slightly subversive bent, and the tendency is heightened in jazz because of its improvisational core: At least when the musicians are inventive (and all of Masada's are), no two versions of a tune are alike.

But the appeal of multiple Masadas stems from more than cultish esoterica. Not many compositions—in whatever musical genre—could sustain renderings by jazz quartet, string trio, string sextet, solo guitar, and so forth. Yet these Zorn compositions do. And the different versions reveal different aspects of a tune. Playing a song called "Khebar," for instance, the Masada quartet emphasizes its rhythm. The string sextet brings out the harmonic colors. On the Voices album, the downtown rock musician Kramer treats it, wittily, as electronica. They're subtle heads, these Masada tunes, richer and more complex than they seem at first hearing.

I don't have them all yet, but I'm working on it ;)

In tribute to John Zorn's 50th birthday (i know, I'm a month late) I've made a list of my favorite Masada albums and will feature them over to the left for a bit.