John Zorn

In Search of the Miraculous

Tzadik

2010

John Zorn's compositions revel in a rare blend of allusion and mystery. His albums often exist both on a self-contained level as individual works of art, yet are simultaneously layered with tokens and tributes to the many artists who have shaped his unusually eclectic aesthetic. While the first album of his Alhambra Legacy compositional project consisted of a collection of light and airy melodies for piano trio, the second, In Search of the Miraculous, draws overtly for inspiration on Georges Gurdjieff, the 1920s Greek-Armenian mystic and composer.

Gurdjieff as a composer drew off the musical forms of Eastern Europe and Asia, including Armenia, Turkey and the Greek Orthodox Church. Similarly, Zorn's fascination with mysticism has appeared in a variety of forms throughout his work, both through his classical explorations of occult themes and in his probing experimentations with Jewish music. Much like Gurdjieff, Zorn here bases his compositions on a set of Eastern modes, using undulating waves of repeated figures to create a trancelike, minimalist sound.

The Alhambra Trio's 2009 debut played Zorn's latest compositions in a style that has become particularly interesting to him—brief pearls of melody that, in the vein of much of his work, defy genre. On this disc, however, he weaves together a much more mystical sound. Melding together elements of his file card composition process, which involves the cutting together of disparate musical ideas much as a director edits the scenes of a movie, Zorn has done something truly original with this quintet. The pairing of