Excursion to the Left Coast: John Zorn @ Yoshi’s San Francisco

I recently flew across the country to watch a New York musician play a series of concerts in San Francisco. If that doesn’t seem to make much sense, consider that downtown legend John Zorn, a recent recipient of the half-a-million-bucks Macarthur “Genius” grant, almost never plays live except in New York City and Europe. But last week, he did a six-night residency at Yoshi’s in San Francisco, showcasing a different band each night, all but one playing material from his Masada songbook of tunes based on traditional Jewish scales and melodies.

I caught the last three shows: Bar Kokhba, The Dreamers and Electric Masada. Last Friday was Bar Kokhba, a sextet with violin, cello and guitar doing most of the melodic work with bass, drums and percussion backing. Two sets: the early set contained material from Zorn’s Masada Book 1 – the first 200 songs he wrote in the series – while the late set contained Book 2 material, drawing from some 300 songs Zorn wrote in a more recent burst of insane creativity. On record, I find the Book 1 material incredibly compelling (particularly as represented on the 3-disc set 50th Birthday Celebration Volume 11), while the Book 2 material is much more middle-of-the-road, the kind of the stuff you could play at a dinner party without offending anyone whatsoever. Live, though, it all got flipped.

My (very lengthy) full thoughts after the jump.

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