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I put together the influences of my life in as clear a way as I possibly can, in the same way that Beethoven or Schoenberg or Bach put their influences together.

John Zorn

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John Zorn
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: September 2
Clarinetist
Composer
Jazz Musician
Musician
Pianist
Record Producer
Saxophonist
New York City
New York
Influences
Possibly
Influence
Clear
Together
Way
Schoenberg
Life
Bach
Beethoven

More quotes by John Zorn

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As soon as you get a certain amount of attention, then everybody kinda wants to start taking pot shots at you. All your old friends that supported you don't support you any more.
John Zorn
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My solo music - I get up onstage, I improvise and it's my improvisation. When I get up onstage with Fred Frith and Mike Patton, then we're improvising together. Then it's not my music it's our music.
John Zorn
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Eye was a great discovery. He is one of the great vocalists of all time.
John Zorn
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Great musicians accept everything that they hear and find something good. They take what they like and they throw away what they don't like
John Zorn
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I'm constantly tortured, and that's why I say happiness is irrelevant. Happiness is for children and yuppies.
John Zorn
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One thing that I do ask myself when I'm in the creative process is, 'Does the world need this?'
John Zorn
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I run around, I listen to a lot of music, go to a lot of concerts. And when I see someone that gases me, I try to go out of my way to involve them somehow in what I'm doing or get involved in what they're doing.
John Zorn
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I have art. I have music. I have the history, this legacy behind me that I can look up to. This is what I believe in. If you want to call it God or spirituality, that's all up to you. Basically I believe in something that's bigger than myself, and that gives my life meaning.
John Zorn
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People are great. But there's people who you get together with and you talk and you go away feeling energized, you feel inspired. And then there's people who you talk with and you go away feeling horrible, feeling drained, feeling like you're incapable of doing anything. Those people are psychic vampires and I now stay away from them.
John Zorn
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That is a lot of the reason I do what I do, to really spread the word and spread information and turn people onto different things they may not be, y'know, aware of. That is what Naked City is certainly about
John Zorn
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Music is about people for me. It's not about sounds. It's about people it's about putting people into challenging situations. And for me, challenges are opportunities.
John Zorn
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You know, when we were kids, we had to go to a theater to see a movie. And then television came in and you had to wait until midnight to see the one you wanted to see. Now, all you've got to do is go to a store and buy it and you can watch it whenever you want!
John Zorn
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Well, in Japan, I have got a group of musicians that I have worked with a lot, that concentrate just on the hardcore stuff, say, that Naked City has been working on. We have like a repertoire of sixty songs now.
John Zorn
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I was always an outsider, proud of being an outsider. I always reveled in the outsiders.
John Zorn
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One of the reasons I started Tzadik, which is my own label, is to keep things in print. I got tired of labels dropping things out of print when they don't sell.
John Zorn
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I used to look at composing music as problem solving. But as I get older, it's not about problem solving anymore. There are no solutions, because there are no problems. You just turn the tap and it flows out.
John Zorn
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I have no doubts. I know what gets in the way and I know what encourages me to do more work.
John Zorn
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You can't be idealistic in this world and not be crazy
John Zorn
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I have not practiced saxophone since 1980. I mean, not one note. I do not pick it up in my house, and that's the end of it.
John Zorn
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Classical stuff takes a lot of rehearsal time and preparation, but with stuff that involves improvisation, you can over-rehearse it and it gets stale. You don't want it to be too comfortable. In fact, a good sound check, a good rehearsal usually means a bad performance.
John Zorn