innovative American composer and instrumentalist; b. N.Y., Sept. 2, 1953. Zorn plays saxophone, keyboards, duck calls, and other semi-musical instruments in dense, loud aural canvases that have been compared to the works of Jackson Pollock (and also to an elephant trapped in barbed wire).

After a brief college stint in St. Louis and world travels, Zorn became an active contributor to the downtown music scene in N.Y. He performed with a coterie of well-reputed AVANT-GARDE and rock musicians, including guitarists Bill Frisell and Fred Frith, bassist Bill Laswell, pianists Anthony Coleman and Wayne Horvitz, drummers Bobby Previte and David Moss, vocalist Shelly Hirsch, and the Kronos Quartet.

Zorn has created separate groups for different facets of his music: Naked City (from late 1980s) and Masada (from 1994). His The Big Gundown (1987) uses the music of film composer Ennio Morricone (b. 1928) as material to be freely distorted and reworked. His major recordings include Archery (1981); Cobra (group improvisation, two volumes: 1986, 1994); A Classic Guide to Strategy (solo with overdubbing, 1987); News for Lulu, with Frisell and George Lewis, trombone (two volumes: 1987, 1989); Spillane (1988); Spy vs. Spy, playing the music of ORNETTE COLEMAN (1989), The Book of Heads, performed by guitarist Marc Ribot (1995); and Kristallnacht (1995).