Cobra: John Zorn's Game Pieces Volume 2 | ||||
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Studio album by John Zorn | ||||
Released | March 26, 2002 | |||
Studio | Avatar, New York City | |||
Genre | Avant-garde jazz | |||
Length | 70:44 | |||
Label | Tzadik | |||
Producer | John Zorn | |||
John Zorn chronology | ||||
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Cobra: John Zorn's Game Pieces Volume 2 is an album by John Zorn that includes his game piece, Cobra . [1] The piece was recorded in previous versions by the labels HatHut ( Cobra in 1985), Knitting Factory ( Live at the Knitting Factory in 1992), and Avant ( Tokyo Operations '94 in 1994) but this was the first time by Zorn's label Tzadik.
John Zorn is an American composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist, and multi-instrumentalist with hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, and producer across a variety of genres including jazz, rock, hardcore, classical, surf, metal, soundtrack, ambient, and improvised music. He incorporates diverse styles in his compositions, which he identifies as avant-garde or experimental. Zorn was described by Down Beat as "one of our most important composers".
Game piece is a concept of experimental music having its roots with composers Iannis Xenakis, Christian Wolff, John Zorn and Mathius Shadow-Sky. Game pieces may be considered controlled improvisation. An essential characteristic is that there is no pre-arranged sequence of events. They unfold freely according to certain rules, like in a sports game. Therefore, game pieces have elements of improvisation. A number of methods can be used to determine the direction and evolution of the music, including hand gestures and shuffled cards, as in his file-card compositions. Zorn's game piece "Cobra", which has been recorded several times for various labels, uses a combination of cards and gestures and can be performed by an ensemble of any size and composition. Zorn's game pieces, written in the late 1970s and mid-1980s, include Cobra, Hockey, Lacrosse, and Xu Feng. His file-card compositions include Spillane and Godard.
Cobra is an unpublished but recorded and frequently performed musical composition by John Zorn. Cobra was conceived as a system with very detailed rules but with no pre-conceived sequence of events for a group of musical improvisors and a prompter. Zorn completed Cobra on October 9, 1984. The composition consists of a set of cues notated on cards, and rules corresponding to the cues that direct the players what to do in response to the cards. The number of players, instrumentation, and length of the piece is indeterminate, but a "prompter" is essential to the piece, holding the cards at his or her discretion and issuing other cues. Because there is no traditional musical notation and the players improvise, the piece may sound radically different from performance to performance. The title was inspired by a table-top war game published by TSR.
The Allmusic review by Steve Loewy awarded the album four stars, stating, "Cobra is a fun-filled, mystical, blindfolded ride down a dark alley that circles back every few yards... Almost like a Talmudic tapestry, the intricate complexities are in full flower here, with constantly changing snippets, twisted sounds, swirls of ornate and not-so-ornate clusters, and shimmering beauty." [2]
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Allmusic |
Josh Roseman is an American jazz trombonist. His nickname is "Mr. Bone". He studied in Newton North High School.
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The Big Gundown is an album by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn. It comprises radically reworked covers of tracks by the Italian film composer Ennio Morricone.
Lacrosse is a double album by John Zorn. It is made up of different takes of his early game piece, "Lacrosse". The first disc is from WKCR in June 1978 where Mark Abbott, Polly Bradfield, Eugene Chadbourne, and LaDonna Smith and Zorn recorded six different takes. Takes 3, 4 and 6 were originally released on the Parachute Records double LP School (1978). The second disc is the original recording of "Lacrosse" which was made by Eugene Chadbourne, Henry Kaiser, Bruce Ackley, and Zorn in San Francisco, California in June 1977.
Naked City Live is a live album recorded by Naked City in 1989 and released on John Zorn's Tzadik label in 2002. All of the songs, with the exception of "Erotico", "The Way I Feel" and "Skate Key", were later recorded in the studio for the band's debut album. To date it is the only official live release by the band.
The Circle Maker is a double album by John Zorn featuring Zorn's Masada compositions performed by the Masada String Trio and the Bar Kokhba Sextet which was released in 1998 on the Tzadik label.
John Zorn's Cobra: Live at the Knitting Factory is a performance of John Zorn's improvisational game piece, Cobra, performed at the Knitting Factory in 1992. The album resembles the missing link between John Zorn's work with Masada and Naked City. It also had a major impact on the electronic scene of New York.
Taboo & Exile is an album by John Zorn which synthetizes exotica, hardcore punk, classical, jazz, surf and world narration. It is the second album to appear in Zorn's Music Romance Series following Music for Children (1998).
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Filmworks XI: Secret Lives features a score for film by John Zorn performed by the Masada String Trio with guest appearances from Vanessa Saft on vocals and Jamie Saft on piano. The album was released on Zorn's own label, Tzadik Records, in 2002 and contains music that Zorn wrote and recorded for Secret Lives: Hidden Children and Their Rescuers During WWII, a documentary on Jewish children hidden during the Second World War directed by Aviva Slesin. The documentary was originally to be titled Under the Wing and several sources still refer to the soundtrack under this name.
Filmworks XII: Three Documentaries is an album containing three scores by John Zorn for documentary films released on Zorn's own label, Tzadik Records, in 2002. It features music that Zorn wrote and recorded for Homecoming (2002), a tribute documentary about the dance program at Performance Space 122 in New York by Charles Dennis, Shaolin Ulysses (2002) a film by Mei-Juin Chen and Martha Burr that follows Shaolin monks living and training in the United States, and Family Found (2002), a portrait of outsider artist Morton Bartlett which was directed by Emily Harris.
Filmworks XVIII: The Treatment features a score for film by John Zorn. The album was released on Zorn's own label, Tzadik Records, in 2006 and contains music that Zorn wrote and recorded for the romantic comedy, The Treatment (2006), directed by Oren Rudavsky.
Live in Middelheim 1999 is a live album by John Zorn's Masada recorded in Antwerp, Belgium.
First Live 1993 is a live album by John Zorn's Masada documenting their premier live appearance at the Knitting Factory in September, 1993.
Masada Anniversary Edition Vol. 4: Masada Recital is the fourth album in a series of five releases celebrating the 10th anniversary of John Zorn's Masada songbook project. It features 12 Masada songs performed by Sylvie Courvoisier on piano and Mark Feldman on violin. It was released in 2004 on Zorn's Tzadik Records as part of the Radical Jewish Culture Series.
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Cobra is a double album featuring a live and studio performance of John Zorn's improvisational game piece, Cobra recorded in 1985 and 1986 and released on the Hathut label in 1987. Subsequent recordings of the piece were released on Knitting Factory, Avant and Zorn's own label Tzadik Records, ) in 2002.
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