John Zorn: Heaven and Earth Magick

Going beyond the score

Four musicians: two must stick very precisely to the notes, while the other two can play what they like. That is the distribution of roles in John Zorn’s quartet Heaven and Earth Magick: »Completely notated music for vibraphone and piano, over which the bass and percussion improvise«, he says. »It’s a fusion of classical elements and jazz, so it’s a kind of third-stream project. And a very successful one at that.« Zorn is referring here to a movement in jazz in the 1950s predominantly associated with the name Gunther Schuller. In the »third stream« they sought a third way between improvisation and composition, between New Music and modern jazz. Always in perfect synch, when the quartet formed by Zorn performs, the boundaries between genres, and between notation and improvisation, become blurred. Gunther Schuller is not the only one who would have liked that.