Song:Beeroth
Album:Live In Savilla 2000
Sax player John Zorn is probably the most prolific musician in history. He records a lot. One of his more significant projects was Masada. The music is a mix of jazz and klezmer music. The idea was to modernize klezmer. Oh, you don't know what klezmer is? I guess the best way to describe it is Jewish jazz. It was brought to North America by Eastern European Jewish musicians. My uncle was one of those musicians and my cousin Morris based much of his film compositions on klezmer. Of course as a Jew, Zorn grew up listening to klezmer. His parents were European immigrants. Klezmer is the music of our past. Zorn started Masada to bring it into the present. Masada recorded ten albums from 1994-97 on the Japanese label DIW. The band is Zorn on alto sax, Dave Douglas on trumpet, Greg Cohen on bass and Joey Baron on drums. You'll notice there is no piano. This was deliberate because Zorn wanted the structure of Masada to be similar to Ornette Coleman's pioneering free jazz band of the late 50s. Beeroth is from the 1995 album Hei which is the fifth album in the series. That album is out of print. But Beeroth appears on the CD Live In Sevilla 2000 which is on Zorn's own label Tzadik. And you'll notice in the video that Joey Baron is the featured soloist. After the original Masada albums, Zorn recorded several live albums and spinoff groups like Masada String Quartet. He disbanded Masada in 2007 but Zorn continues to record all kinds of other music. Here's Masada performing Beeroth at Warsaw Summer Jazz Days 99 in Warsaw, Poland.
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