| Xu Feng | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by John Zorn | ||||
| Released | September 26, 2000 | |||
| Recorded | May 28, 2000 | |||
| Genre | Avant-garde | |||
| Length | 74:34 | |||
| Label | Tzadik TZ 7329 | |||
| Producer | John Zorn | |||
| John Zorn chronology | ||||
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Xu Feng: John Zorn's Game Pieces Volume 1 is an album by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn consisting of game pieces. It features improvisations performed by an ensemble of pairs of musicians using the same instruments: Chris Brown and David Slusser on electronics; Fred Frith and John Schott on guitars; and Dave Lombardo (from Slayer) and William Winant on drums and percussion. The album is titled after Xu Feng, a Taiwanese actress featured in many martial arts films who appears on the cover artwork. [1]
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
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.
