By Gary Chapin

John Zorn’s work is considerable and constantly good, usually nice. It’s
reliably intriguing and interesting. Generally I really feel as if I’m repeating
myself in these critiques (take a look at

this Zorn evaluate, and

this one, and

this one, and inform me if I’m mendacity), however the music isn’t repeating itself,
both as a result of there are new constructions, new companions, new substances into
the combination, or new improvisations by previous companions.

John Zorn – 444 (Tzadik 2023)

Brian Marsella (electrical piano), John Medeski (organ), Matt Hollenberg
(electrical guitar), and Kenny Grohowski (drums and percussion) type a group
for the ages. The electrical piano at all times sends me again to

Bitches Brew

—and you would possibly take into account {that a} limitation for me—however its capability to drift
between shimmering elegy and wild abandon is unmatched. You are able to do issues
on the electrical piano you’ll be able to’t do wherever else (as Solar Ra taught us), and
Marsella does so lots of these issues on 444.

I highlight Marsella as a result of his voice drew my consideration first. The 4
musicians are the quartet Chaos Magic, which began as Marsella+Simulacrum
(a “heavy metallic organ trio”). They’re certain by the expectations of heavy
metallic or organ trios. “In Sulphur and in Flame” is a thrashy pace fest
with the guitar sounding like an ax counting time. “Astral Projection”
sounds prefer it may reside behind a montage of Audrey Hepburn and a
bombed-out metropolis in France, simply because the crops are beginning to develop again.
Shifting time signatures and bounce scares are par for the course, as are
evocations of magnificence. The electrical piano arpeggios that open “Tayy al-Ard,”
with the shimmering cymbals beneath, are poetically highly effective, pensive and
crammed with curiosity. The guitar and organ are available to put a area, however the
tune depends on persistence and repetition to say what it must say.

John Zorn – The Fourth Approach (Tzadik 2023)

 Brian Marsella returns with Ches Smith (drums) and Jorge Roeder (bass) for
a extra conventionally jazz sounding piano trio. They are based mostly in a lyrical
area, and nonetheless one imbued with the sound of shock. The
compositions—based mostly within the concepts of Gurdjieff, in response to Zorn—take us
by means of shifting scenes, however extra complimentary than at odds. It’s like
having one mise e n scène after one other. Themes comply with
themes—motifs, meters, moods change—however all throughout the piano trio milieu.
Marsella, Smith, and Roeder are given nice materials, and like every jazz
participant introduced with a chart, they create it vibrantly into life.