Search - Masada :: 50th Birthday Celebration 7

Overwhelming and brilliant live set.

Michael Stack | North Chelmsford, MA USA | 04/22/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This set, recorded September 18, 2003 at Tonic during Zorn's extended birthday celebration, is the most recent recording of the original Masada quartet-- John Zorn on alto sax, Dave Douglas on trumpet, Greg Cohen on bass, and Joey Baron on drums.



What is there to say about this band that hasn't been said already? If you're not familiar with them, the project was Zorn's attempt at coming to terms, musically, with both his Jewish and his jazz heritage-- while parallels are rightfully drawn to Ornette Coleman's original quartet, there's a number of other influences, most thoroughly the Klezmer vibe in the pieces, that sort of Eastern European sound to the melody, vamp-like bass lines, Baron's reliance on his tom-toms, but moreso than that, there's an element of focused, simultaneous improvisation-- Zorn and Douglas often solo together as much as separately. It also many of the standard Zorn ideas-- the Pharoah Sanders/Albert Ayler speaking-in-tongues sax overblowing, the overt Carl Stalling influences, in both timber and arrangement, the sort of pseudo-theatrical nature of soundtrack music. The music is injected with brilliance, wit and humor and for any fan of jazz, is essential, even if the rest of Zorn's work is foreign or too far out of orbit. Probably the magic of this band is that all of them are the center of things, the four of them are phenomenal musicians who sound like they were born to be playing this music.



Truth to be told, given the band's massive catalog (ten studio albums and I think seven live ones, plus several albums of other groups performing Masada material), and the fact that none of the studio records stand out as particularly superb in my mind (they're all quite good), the live sets fare much better, with my own preferences being this one and the "Live at Tonic" release. The material on this set is pretty widely spread over the Masada catalog, three songs from Masada 2, two from 9, and one each from 3, 7, and "The Circle Maker" (Masada songs in a chamber setting).



Right away, you get everything they have to offer-- "Karaim" is a great mid-tempo piece with extended dual improvs between Zorn and Douglas, Zorn's fiery squeals, a great (if brief) drum solo over the bass vamp. The only thing missing is the overt cartoon music sound, with comes to the fore on the next track, "Hath-Arob"-- opening with a great trade between bass and drums, it eventually moves into its frantically stated theme with the entire ensemble using cartoon noises to great effect.



The thing that's amazing is that after twenty minutes of fire, the band keeps lighting it up throughout the album-- "Acharei Mot" features jaw dropping (yet remarkably tasteful given how extraordinary it is) drumming over which Zorn and Douglas really dig in fiercely, it maintains the intensity without drifting out of orbit of its vamp (Zorn threatens, but Cohen and Baron keep things grounded), and check Baron's soloing and the rest of the band when they trade fours towards the end-- incredible!



As this is a collective, and the virtuosity is spread throughout, Zorn leaves room for features for both his rhythm players-- bass feature "Kedushah" and drum feature "Ravayah" allow Cohen and Baron to prove just how brilliant their playing is through extended solos of remarkable creativity, innovation, and technique, and for that matter, through their sympathetic accompaniment for the other underneath the other's solos. Zorn and Douglas, for their parts, maintain full restraint of these tunes, appropriately allowing the rhythm section shine. The opposite is true on "Piram", where the front line pull out all the stops. Zorn in particular is on fire, with Baron pushing him higher and higher, and for a front-line feature, check out Cohen and Baron below Douglas during his powerful solo.



For all this excitement, there are some more layed back moments-- "Sippur" slips nicely and stays in a groove, and "Ashnah" is so tame and quiet as to almost be soporific during the theme before building-- check out some of Baron's brushwork and Cohen's sympathetic accompaniment to Zorn and Douglas' quiet lines. For all the rest that this record is, the use of space on this one is as powerful as the flurries, sympathetic playing, and countering on other pieces. And certainly Zorn and Douglas accompanying Cohen's solo on breathy sounds through their horns is nothing short of breathtaking.



If you haven't gotten the impression, I really can't say enough good things about this one, so few discs stretching 77 minutes are great the whole way through, this one is an exception. Highly recommended."