Last night, the New York City Opera held John Zorn’s Masada Marathon - The Book of Angels at the David H. Koch Theater. Seventeen albums - to today’s date - represent Masada Book Two, or The Book of Angels, which are each arranged by a different musician or group after being given lines of music written by John Zorn. Twelve performances, each playing about three or four songs, took to the stage - including: the Masada Quartet; Malphas (Mark Feldman and Sylvie Courvoisier); Cyro Baptista’s Banquet of the Spirits; Mycale; Medeski, Martin and Dunn; Bar Kokhba; Secret Chiefs 3; Erik Friedlander; The Dreamers; Uri Caine; Masada String Trio; and Electric Masada with special guest Mike Patton.
The marathon in its entirety continually offered the theater its most masterful musicianship. It appeared that everybody performed with their instrument way beyond its physical capacity. And while non-stop string shredding, piano hypnosis, and wild percussions could eventually become too much, the organization of the acts took advantage of their variety so that nothing ever went on for too long. Sure, some Zorn fan’s date shook her head in disbelief when, yes, this act was also going to make cartoonish noise with their instruments for a few minutes - but even then, though it might not always be fun to listen to noise, one can tell how fun it is to play and receive pleasure from that - and for many, the nosier moments were also just pleasurable in themselves.
One of the early mind-blowers of the Masada Marathon was easily Mark Feldman and Sylvie Courvoisier performing “Labariel” from Malphas. That mixture of violin and piano nearly melted the stage. The a cappella group of Mycale - Basya Schechter, Ayelet Rose Gottlieb, Malika Zarra, and Sofia Rei - made the most out of their vocals alone and, for a moment, people may have been able to imagine the magical lure of the sirens - but without evil and the danger of drowning, naturally. Another amazing moment came from Erik Friedlander’s solo cello performance of Volac, specifically the song “Yeruel,” proving that The Book of Angels is certainly worthy of the angels. But the true moment of music came at the very end, when Mr. Bungle’s Mike Patton joined John Zorn, Trevor Dunn (also from Mr. Bungle), and the rest of Electric Masada for a shrieking, screaming, and extremely loud climax that ended the Masada Marathon in the best way possible.
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