John Zorn - Prolegomena (2025)

This CD is about quality not quantity - less than thirty minutes in total, but absolutely some of the most incredible music Zorn has ever composed. Dramatic, intense, mercurial, challenging, and endlessly virtuosic, Zorn’s writing for strings is amongst the most exciting ever achieved in the classical world. Here he expands the fabulous Jack Quartet to a quintet and sextet with the addition of two of the most accomplished musicians in the New York scene: Yura Lee and Michael Nicolas. Composed in 2020, during the initial months of the Covid-19 lockdown, these are two of Zorn’s greatest masterpieces, beautifully recorded at Oktaven by Ryan Streber, and passionately performed by six members of Zorn’s inner circle.

Chris Otto, violin;
Austin Wulliman, violin;
John Pickford Richards, viola;
Yura Lee, viola;
Jay Campbell, cello;
Michael Nicolas, cello