John Zorn is an American composer, conductor, saxophonist, arranger and producer who "deliberately resists category". Zorn's avant-garde and experimental approaches to composition and improvisation are inclusive of jazz, rock, hardcore, classical, contemporary, surf, metal, soundtrack, ambient, and world music. In 2013, Down Beat described Zorn as "one of our most important composers" and in 2020 Rolling Stone noted "Though Zorn has operated almost entirely outside the mainstream, he's gradually asserted himself as one of the most influential musicians of our time".
A prelude is a short piece of music, the form of which may vary from piece to piece. While, during the Baroque era, for example, it may have served as an introduction to succeeding movements of a work that were usually longer and more complex, it may also have been a stand-alone piece of work during the Romantic era. It generally features a small number of rhythmic and melodic motifs that recur through the piece. Stylistically, the prelude is improvisatory in nature. The prelude also may refer to an overture, particularly to those seen in an opera or an oratorio.
Naked City was an avant-garde music group led by saxophonist and composer John Zorn. Active primarily in New York City from 1988 to 1993, Naked City was initiated by Zorn as a "composition workshop" to test the limits of composition in a traditional rock band lineup. Their music incorporated elements of jazz, surf, progressive rock, classical, heavy metal, grindcore, country, punk rock, and other genres.
Grigory Lipmanovich Sokolov is a Russian pianist. He is among the most esteemed of living pianists, his repertoire spanning composers from the Baroque period such as Bach, Couperin or Rameau up to Schoenberg and Arapov. He regularly tours Europe and resides in Italy.
Yamataka Eye is a Japanese vocalist and visual artist, best known as a member of Boredoms and Naked City. He has changed his stage name three times, from Yamatsuka Eye, to Yamantaka Eye, to Yamataka Eye, and sometimes calls himself eYe or EYヨ. He also DJs under the name DJ 光光光 or "DJ pica pica pica", and has used numerous other pseudonyms.
Robert Lrod Dorough was an American bebop and cool jazz vocalist, pianist, composer, songwriter, arranger, and producer. Dorough became famous as the composer and performer of songs in the series Schoolhouse Rock! as well as for his work with Miles Davis, Blossom Dearie, and others.
Ruth Laredo was an American classical pianist.
Weird Little Boy is a one-off album by a band of the same name, performed by John Zorn, Trey Spruance, William Winant (percussion), Mike Patton and Chris Cochrane (guitar). It was released in 1998 on the Japanese label Avant.
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.
Alexander Scriabin's Prelude, Op. 49, No. 2 is the second of his Trois Morceaux Op. 49, which were written in 1905. It is notated in F major, 3/4 measure, with a speed of 69 per quarter note, and lasts for 23 measures. It should be expressed Bruscamente irato.
Grand Guignol is the second full-length studio album released by John Zorn's band Naked City in 1992 on the Japanese Avant label. The album followed Torture Garden, which was a compilation of "hardcore miniatures" from Naked City and Grand Guignol. The album is notable for the inclusion of cover versions of pieces written by classical composers, the guest vocal of Bob Dorough, and also, like Torture Garden, a selection of "hardcore miniatures" which are intense, fast-tempo, brief compositions, which feature the wailing of Zorn's alto sax, and the screams of Yamatsuka Eye. The album is titled after the infamous Grand Guignol theater in Paris, which was open from 1897 to 1962, where performances centered around extreme violence.
Heretic is the third studio album by the band Naked City, used as a soundtrack for the underground S/M film Jeux des Dames Cruelles. The album utilises different combinations of band members in duos and trios with the entire band performing together on only one track "Fire and Ice".
Torture Garden is an album by John Zorn's Naked City with vocalist Yamatsuka Eye on vocals. The album collects the 42 "hardcore miniatures" recorded by the band. Ten of these short intense improvisations were spread across Naked City and others would feature on the next album, Grand Guignol. As Zorn explained in 1990:
Basically, this Naked City record came out, right. In the middle of it are about ten songs that are really short and hard. I said I wanted to do a record of 40 of those pieces, cause I was really interested in the compression and compactness of form that that music gets to. The guys at Nonesuch were not interested. If I wanted to do that, I better take it somewhere else. So what I managed to do was get them to bankroll the whole thing, and then I licensed it to Earache and Shimmy for basically no money and no royalties. So they are just putting this stuff out that Nonesuch bankrolled.
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.
Black Box is a compilation album by John Zorn's band Naked City featuring Yamatsuka Eye on vocals. The album is a collection of the "hardcore miniatures" from Naked City and Grand Guignol that were originally released on Torture Garden in 1990 and the extended piece Leng Tch'e which was only released in Japan in 1992. This compilation was released on Tzadik Records in 1996.
Prelapse is an album by the Boston-based band of the same name featuring John Zorn. The album was released on the Japanese Avant label in 1999 and features 10 tracks originally written by Zorn for the band Naked City. The band came to Zorn's attention after transcribing several Naked City compositions.
The Crucible is an album by John Zorn. It is the fourth album to feature the "Moonchild Trio" of Mike Patton, Joey Baron and Trevor Dunn, following Moonchild: Songs Without Words (2005), Astronome (2006) and Six Litanies for Heliogabalus (2007). It also features Marc Ribot on guitar and Zorn on alto saxophone.
Avant Records was a record label in Japan that specialized in avant-garde jazz, avant rock, and experimental music. The label released more than 80 albums between 1992 and 2004.
Alexander Scriabin's Prelude in E minor, Op. 11, No. 4, composed in Moscow in 1888, was the first of the 24 preludes, Op. 11 written by Scriabin. Intended originally as a ballade, the piece was reworked to its present form and entitled Prelude. Despite the fact that both hands have beautiful melodies indicated with tenutos in bars 1–3–9–11, and the alto voice in the 16, the one for the left hand seems to take the credit as the most beautiful between the two. Tenths arpeggiated in bars 20–23 lead to the top note of the chord to fall on the beat.
Alexander Scriabin's 24 Preludes, Op. 11 is a set of preludes composed in the course of eight years between 1888–96, being also one of Scriabin's first published works with M.P. Belaieff in 1897, in Leipzig, Germany, together with his 12 Études, Op. 8 (1894–95).
