New York Icon and influential jazz composer/performer John Zorn will turn 60 this September, and eight of Manhattan’s most important cultural venues—from large museums to major concert halls to intimate clubs—will celebrate with a festival of “Zorn@60” performances spanning the city leading up to September.
Starting this summer and lasting through the fall, the festival includes a wide variety of events exploring Zorn’s epic oeuvre, including classical chamber music, improvisation-based works, film scores, symphonic pieces, and vocal music. Well over 100 musicians, many of them Zorn’s longtime collaborators and all of them hand-selected by the composer, will participate in the performances.
The impressive list of participating organizations includes: Anthology Film Archives, Japan Society, (Le) Poisson Rouge, Lincoln Center Festival, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Miller Theatre at Columbia University, NYU Skirball Center, and Works & Process at the Guggenheim.
These concerts in Zorn’s hometown will be part of a worldwide celebration of the composer’s 60th that includes events this summer at London’s Barbican Centre, Paris’s Cité de la Musique, and the Netherlands’ North Sea Jazz festival.