Awakening Ground
Ft. Dave Lombardo, John Medeski, and John Zorn
In the last 50 years, very few artists have been as boundless as John Zorn, from his ideas to his energy to his organization. After first emerging in the experimental Wild West of New York’s downtown scene in the ’70s, the span and scale of Zorn’s work have only seemed to increase over the intervening decades. From his breakthrough reinterpretations of Ennio Morricone and ground-breaking musical “games” like Cobra to his splenetic art-grindcore with Naked City, from his jazz-reorienting in Masada to his compositional gauntlets like Moonchild and Incerto, Zorn has packed several lifetimes of music-making into 72 years. He seems to have only grown more active and tireless of late. Zorn has also been a crucial catalyst for the development of experimental music, whether establishing his great Tzadik label or his New York space The Stone, or convening brilliant bands that otherwise might not have come into existence. After making his Big Ears debut in 2022 and celebrating his 70th birthday here in 2023, Zorn returns to Big Ears with a staggering cast of collaborators for two days at the Bijou Theatre.
In August 2023, at one of several celebrations of his 70th birthday, Zorn unveiled a new power trio, Awakening Ground, that proved age does not mean any loss of edge. He linked with longtime collaborator John Medeski of the great jazz-jam band that took his name and Dave Lombardo, the Slayer drummer who helped define the sound of heavy metal and worked with Zorn around the turn of the century. Their debut at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall was all explosion, from a sax-and-drums outburst that overran an opening Medeski organ drone to subsequent whirling organ runs that seemed to spin Zorn and Lombardo into an instrumental tizzy. A defining feature of Zorn’s work during his dauntless decades is the magic that can happen when great players are goaded into unexpected contexts—Awakening Ground is a testament to that idea, to letting three instrumental greats tear into a few loose pieces and one another for an hour. They bring that beautiful racket to Knoxville for a very rare appearance.
Ensemble:
John Zorn
Dave Lombardo
John Medeski