Flotation Device presents its 70th birthday celebration of Downtown music’s most iconic and prolific figure: John Zorn. We’re helped by his bandmates in Painkiller, Naked City and Masada, along with such diverse collaborators as Marc Ribot, George Lewis, Eugene Chadbourne and Yamantaka Eye. Join us as we probe Zorn's oeuvre for the influence of Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton, Ennio Morricone, Japanese culture in general, and mid-century American cartoon music in particular. We've got reminiscences from Wayne Horvitz and Zorn himself. And we see just how wide-ranging Zorn’s impact has been as a concert and record producer, and a bridge between the worlds of composed and improvised music.
If you couldn't attend the live Zorn@70 festivities in San Francisco, New York and elsewhere, then we're the next best thing. A two-hour retrospective of the career of radical American music’s most prodigious linchpin.
With host Michael Schell. Originally broadcast September 3, 2023.
