Cobra

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.

Four decades ago, Zorn completed Cobra, one of the great musical games, challenges, and adventures of our time. Named for a war game, Cobra is a set of demands, suggestions, and directions for an indeterminate number of improvisers onstage, communicated by a prompter through a series of lettered and numbered flashcards and emphatic hand gestures. As the small army of musicians responds to the commands, they also offer input about who else on the stage they want to play with and how they might want to play. The prompter—at Big Ears, Zorn himself, likely dressed in a T-shirt and camouflage pants, like some renegade arts commando—is also an interlocutor, watching for their signals and linking the appropriate people onstage. The sounds swing wildly between hardcore tumult and jazz swing, cacophonous skronk and wistful melodies, based upon what the players want to deliver and with whom they want to deliver it. Cobra is a game of power, and witnessing it live is one of the most powerful and joyous musical experiences one can have. At Big Ears 2026, the players will be top-tier—Wendy Eisenberg, Celine Kang, Brian Marsella, John Medeski, Jay Campbell, Jorge Roeder, Simon Hanes, Ikue Mori, Sae Hashimoto, Ches Smith, Dave Lombardo, William Winant, Kenny Wollesen—and the game fierce. “What I basically create,” Zorn once said, “is a small society, and everybody kind of finds their own position in that society. It really becomes like a psychodrama.”

Ensemble:

Wendy Eisenberg

Celine Kang

Brian Marsella

John Medeski

Jay Campbell

Jorge Roeder

Simon Hanes

Ikue Mori

Sae Hashimoto

Ches Smith

Dave Lombardo

William Winant

Kenny Wollesen

John Zorn