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    Tzadik’s Experimental Music Is Streaming. Start Here.

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    Listen to 15 streaming highlights from the vast catalog of Tzadik, the imprint founded by John Zorn.John Zorn started the Tzadik label with Kazunori Sugiyama in 1995. Since then, this imprint has amassed a vast catalog of experimental music from the worlds of classical, jazz, rock and beyond.It has also resisted the streaming economy — that is, until last week. As Zorn was celebrating his 70th birthday with concerts, most of Tzadik’s offerings began popping up on Spotify and other platforms.The range of offerings — from over 800 releases — is astonishing. To get an idea, start with these 15 albums.Electric Masada: ‘At the Mountains of Madness’The large-group setting here offers extraordinary, maximalist power in the Jewish folk themes that Zorn wrote for his first Masada Quartet. (Later, he presented them in new arrangements that reflected his interest in chamber music and metal.)Lee Hyla: ‘My Life on the Plains’Tzadik’s Composer Series line has spotlighted artists whose works deliver a synthesis of concert music and jazz or rock energies. In “Polish Folk Songs,” Hyla combines gorgeous string writing with percussive explosions and clarinet riffs.Shelley Hirsch: ‘The Far In, Far Out Worlds of Shelley Hirsch’Excerpts from radio dramas and live shows populate this multifaceted vocalist’s album. Even during a miniature like “So Tender,” Hirsch can create drama by deploying tensile torch-song vibrato, lip smooches and born-in-Brooklyn Jewish accents.John Zorn: ‘Myth And Mythopoeia’In one of Zorn’s most ravishing classical collections, boisterous items like “Hexentarot” elicit hot playing from select members of the JACK Quartet. “Missa Sine Voces” makes dreamy then abstract use of harp and vibes, and the soprano-and-strings “Pandora’s Box” packs plenty of drama into 14 minutes.Keiji Haino & Tatsuya Yoshida: “New Rap”In the late 1990s, Tzadik was the best-distributed source for Japanese experimental rock in America. This 2006 set from its “New Japan” series is among the most unhinged, and most sublime. Credit the relentless energy of Yoshida, the Ruins drummer, as well as Haino’s textured yelping and guitar playing.Julius Hemphill: ‘One Atmosphere’This saxophonist and bandleader was also active as a chamber music composer — one to whom the classical mainstream paid scant attention, but for whom Tzadik rolled out the red carpet. On the title track, spare material alternates with jolting motivic activity, with Hemphill’s partner, Ursula Oppens, at the piano.Annie Gosfield: ‘Almost Truths and Open Deceptions’This composer’s 2012 set reflects her vast talent: Percussion, piano and cello take their at-bats during “Wild Pitch”; a sampling keyboard and Roger Kleier’s electric guitar power an excerpt from “Daughters of the Industrial Revolution”; “Phantom Shakedown” offers Cagean meditation; and the title work is a thrilling cello concerto.John Zorn: ‘Godard/Spillane’Zorn’s famed “file card” pieces advertised a quick-cutting, cinematic experience for the ears. “Godard,” a mid-1980s entry, was reissued by Tzadik in 1999. And it does evoke the French New Wave works of Jean-Luc Godard, particularly “Alphaville.” It also offers a look at a distinguished Zorn collaborator, the turntablist Christian Marclay.George E. Lewis: ‘Endless Shout’This release presents a wide-angle Lewis portrait. “North Star Boogaloo” is a kinetic work for samples and the solo percussionist Steven Schick. “Smashing Clusters” reinterprets the legacy of Harlem stride piano legends. And in “Voyager” Lewis plays trombone against orchestral backing realized by his improvising software program of the same name.Craig Taborn and Ikue Mori: ‘Highsmith’Mori’s solo-electronics sets have been important to Tzadik, but her skill as a collaborator is just as crucial. Here, she teams up with Craig Taborn, a jazz-world star, for a set of improvisations that cavort and splinter with indefatigable invention.Naked City: ‘Naked City Live Vol. 1: Knitting Factory 1989’This concert date doesn’t benefit from the wild contributions of the ensemble’s regular vocalist Yamataka Eye. Even so, Zorn’s early rock group — capable of delivering grindcore in one minute and the “Batman” TV theme the next — puts on quite the show.Wadada Leo Smith: ‘Golden Quartet’Tzadik championed Smith, reissuing his early albums and putting out new sets. There’s a great band on this one, with the composer on trumpet, Jack DeJohnette on drums and Malachi Favors Magoustous on bass, as well as Anthony Davis on piano.Derek Bailey: ‘Ballads’Bailey, a giant of the free-improvisation scene, enjoyed a fine late-career run on Tzadik, including this at-first-glance quizzical approach to jazz’s core songbook. But the precise use of extended techniques lends an idiosyncratic grace to the chords that you can barely glimpse when Bailey plays “Stella by Starlight.”Alvin Singleton: ‘Somehow We Can’This American artist was recently celebrated at the Darmstadt Summer Course in Germany. Yet he rarely receives the kind of attention he deserves at home. On Tzadik, he does: Here, there is variety, including a duo for Wadada Leo Smith and Anthony Davis, as well as the chamber orchestral highlight “Again.”John Zorn: ‘Spinoza’Simulacrum is one of Zorn’s best groups: a fine-tuned metal band and a smoking jazz-organ trio. Typically, he doesn’t play with the ensemble, but on this 2022 set, he pulls out his sax for the second suite. Both of the album’s long tracks are protean in style, yet unmistakably driven. Very Tzadik. More

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      Capturing John Zorn at 70: One Concert Is Just a Start

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      The Miller Theater at Columbia University began a series of programs to celebrate this restless and eclectic musician’s milestone year.John Zorn may have turned 70 this month, but he looks younger.He sounds younger, too — energetic and irrepressible. Recent recordings of Zorn’s music, issued on his Tzadik label, include the swinging, mystic patterns of “Homenaje a Remedios Varo” and the brightly, largely consonant chamber guitar writing of “Nothing Is as Real as Nothing.” The coming “Parrhesiastes” showcases his trademark ferocity.Zorn has been taking his stylistically varied live performances on the road to celebrate this birthday. His packed calendar includes a recent multiday festival in San Francisco, a daylong marathon at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and appearances at Roulette in Brooklyn.On Thursday, the Miller Theater at Columbia University took its turn, with the first in a series of “composer portrait” concerts that continue into November. Throughout the evening, this most hyperactive of American composers could be seen bounding with ease between the stage and his seat in the audience.With a ringleader’s zeal, Zorn introduced different groupings of musicians. During the changes between pieces, he leaped up onstage to describe his childhood interest in, say, the Dada writer Tristan Tzara, whose theatrical work “The Gas Heart” provided inspiration for Zorn’s mini-opera of the same name, performed on Thursday.Befitting his reputation, the pacing of motivic events inside that work and others tended to be fast and furious. Yet each piece also communicated joy — and a certain fellowship among the interpreters who had spent time together mastering Zorn’s rigorous, change-on-a-dime aesthetic.Here, the music featured the barreling riffs familiar from a lot of his chamber works, jazz tunes and extreme rock. But I came away from the Miller show dazzled by way in which a supple new approach to beauty has established itself in the past decade or two of his output. (Something similar has been going on with Zorn’s saxophone playing — not least in his New Masada Quartet, which has held crowds rapt at the Village Vanguard and Roulette in recent seasons.)Thursday’s concert began with a two-trumpet fanfare, “Circe” (2019), rendered with panache by Peter Evans and Sam Jones. The shortest piece on the program at a mere three minutes, it was also the most consistently hardcore. Yet its aggressive motifs were precisely coordinated — and given the independence to roam, even amid the overall feel of maelstrom. In between piercing trills, you could perceive and appreciate the way units of melody passed between the players.From left, the violinists Christopher Otto and David Fulmer, the cellists Jay Campbell and Michael Nicolas, and the violist John Pickford Richards, who formed a quintet for Zorn’s “Sigil Magick.”Rob Davidson for Miller Theatre at Columbia UniversityThe three other pieces on the program, all from 2020, focused on Zorn’s writing for strings. Each involved one or more members of the JACK Quartet. (Austin Wulliman, a violinist with the group, was not available, but David Fulmer substituted with aplomb.) And there were other guests, including the cellist Michael Nicolas in the string quintet “Sigil Magick.”In that work, listeners were offered short, droning chords, as well as polyphonic ensemble passages of whipsawing extended technique. But players within the quintet also diverged to present deliriously contrasting material: At one such juncture, while two parts held down a static pattern with a parched, brittle approach to sound production, the violinist Christopher Otto launched into sumptuously singing parlando.At the end of the concert, the violist Yura Lee joined the JACK players and Nicolas to create a sextet for — deep breath — “Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science.” At over 20 packed minutes, this struck me as one of the loveliest and most widely ranging chamber music pieces in Zorn’s considerable catalog.In addition to moments of chromatic density, the work welcomed gently strummed early music melody into its soundscape. At another point, both cellists bowed doleful yet gorgeous patterns near the top of the necks of their instruments, close to the tuning pegs, collaborating on a slightly sour intonation that seemed in line with medieval tunings. Given this range, “Prolegomena” shares something with recent Zorn string quartets, like “The Alchemist,” which JACK has recorded with his other quartets (for a planned release on Tzadik in 2024).In between the quintet and sextet came Zorn’s adaptation of “The Gas Heart.” This was Zorn in absurdist-opera mode. Here, the JACK cellist Jay Campbell and Nichols joined two percussionists — Sae Hashimoto and Ches Smith — to form the cast. Smith provided expertly swinging rhythms at a traditional kit, but also slurped water and appeared to be operating a device that played back giddy laughter; when not playing vibraphone or other pitched percussion, Hashimoto could be seen torturing a pillow with a long whip or sawing a wooden board.The cello music — often smartly, subtly amplified — was sometimes grim and gravely, and produced by bowing below the bridge. But there were also delicate moments for the strings, often positioned in contrast to some of the wildness of the percussionists. This was all funny, as intended. Every bar, though, seemed as carefully deliberate as in the more obviously “profound” string music of “Prolegomena.”And here may be a secret of Zorn’s longevity: A piece may tend comic or grave, but every moment is intensely felt.Earlier on Thursday, rumors had swirled online about the possible arrival of the Tzadik catalog on streaming services. On Friday, Zorn’s distributor, Redeye, confirmed that the move would happen, next week. This is big news, given how long Zorn has held out against streaming — and given the amount of care he takes in designing his physical releases.However you access it — on recordings or in person — Zorn’s recent catalog is worth seeking out. This fall, the Miller will host Zorn and his New Masada Quartet, on a bill with one of his great metal groups, Simulacrum. Then comes a program of his music with the star soprano Barbara Hannigan.The implicit message: One night is probably insufficient in encapsulating this artist’s range. But it could, as on Thursday, provide a riotously good start. More