John Zorn: Masada - Live at Tonic

Masada - Live at Tonic 1999

Personnel: John Zorn, Dave Douglas, Greg Cohen, Joey Baron.

The little concert snapshot at the already legendary Tonic in NYC starts with Zorn fixing his sax with a rubber band. A kind of appropriate intro, as Zorn is pretty much a seat of the pants, held-together with rubber-bands and duct tape kind of guy. He assembles a busy backline to provide the skittering shuffle and crash for he and trumpeter Dave Douglas to go bonkers over; compact bebop fast runs, powerful drones, and sharp melodic twists abound. The opening track (Hath-Arob) is noisy, fast and stop start, followed by a blues cum klezmer affair in Sippur , warm and melodic. Then back to frenetic. Then a rather tribal vamp is set up by Cohen and Baron (playing his snare like a hand drum) with what sits in a Middle Eastern martial cadence meets dusk at the bazaar. Many tracks involved strong work by Baron, who appears to be the best showman of the bunch. Cohen is very competant, but otherwise largely incognito. The faster numbers will definately be a problem for the Ken Burn's set, but the more subdued numbers fit well with people who enjoy the Klezmer outings of Don Byron or the flowing North African tunefulness of Anouar Brahem.