JOHN ZORN'S FLATLANDS
About This Event
John Zorn's Flatlands appears at National Sawdust, presenting music that places composed structures and open improvisation in the same concert-hall frame. The ensemble, assembled according to Zorn’s habit of writing for specific players and reconfiguring groups, applies contemporary classical technique while accommodating the quick turns of jazz and other vernacular sources, privileging precision and collective responsiveness.
About Flatlands
Tdorante10
John Zorn’s *Flatlands* arrives at National Sawdust as a chamber-scaled project that treats composition and improvisation as adjacent languages. Built for shifting lineups, the music moves through notated structures and abrupt ruptures, with traces of downtown jazz, amplified rock timbres, Jewish modal inflections, and film-score logic. In a city where Zorn has long shaped the post-1970s “downtown” tradition, *Flatlands* reads as both document and continuation. Its real subject is control: how quickly a written plan can be rerouted by human choice.
About the Artists
JOHN ZORN'S FLATLANDS
JOHN ZORN'S FLATLANDS is a John Zorn project framed for the concert hall, where composed structures and open improvisation share the same space. Presented in New York City at National Sawdust, the ensemble reflects Zorn’s long practice of writing for specific players and reconfiguring groups as the music demands.
John Zorn
John Zorn is a New York-based composer, saxophonist, conductor, and producer whose work moves between contemporary classical writing and experimental improvisation. He is known for assembling shifting ensembles and using abrupt stylistic contrasts, drawing on jazz, rock, Jewish music, and film-rooted atmospheres without settling into a single idiom.