For the first time in its history, the entire Jazz em Agosto programme is organised around a single musician. And the choice could hardly fall on a more striking name – both for the history of the festival and for the fundamental course of music that we have been able to hear in the last decades. This musician is John Zorn, with a highly personal style, whose activity is as prolific as it is varied, so essential as a soundtrack for this time that he has become an unquestionable symbol not only of New York’s artistic avant-garde, as a creator, but also as an explorer for new territories and as someone who draws together a community that revolves around him.
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For the first time in its history, the entire Jazz em Agosto programme is organised around a single musician. And the choice could hardly fall on a more striking name – both for the history of the festival and for the fundamental course of music that we have been able to hear in the last decades. This musician is John Zorn, with a highly personal style, whose activity is as prolific as it is varied, so essential as a soundtrack for this time that he has become an unquestionable symbol not only of New York’s artistic avant-garde, as a creator, but also as an explorer for new territories and as someone who draws together a community that revolves around him.
Given his natural creative characteristics, John Zorn is a musician who brings with him many other musicians with whom he shares a deep closeness and a myriad of styles and approaches to his vast body of work, his presence in this Jazz em Agosto also brings the opportunity to hear people as talented as Milford Graves, Marc Ribot, Mary Halvorson, Thurston Moore, Dave Douglas, Kris Davis, Craig Taborn, Ikue Mori, Trevor Dunn, Barbara Hannigan and many other names that feature regularly in releases on his own label, Tzadik. It also involves a film cycle, the programming of which is directly linked to him, and the graphic image of the festival by the designer Heung-Heung Chin, who is responsible for the strong visual impact of so many of his albums.
The novelty, however, is not only to do with Jazz em Agosto. It’s also John Zorn, who has organised, on certain special occasions, concentrated shows of his music, particularly featuring the interpretation by various ensembles of his Book of Bagatelles (300 short pieces composed in 2015). Never before has there been such an exhaustive, exclusive performance of his work. This is why this Jazz em Agosto is an event of special importance for all those involved and with a relevance that, in line with the festival’s growing appeal across borders, undoubtedly spreads to a broad international context.
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