Tzadik
2001
Filmworks X
About This Album
This project, a soundtrack for the documentary film In the Mirror of Maya Deren by Martina Kudlácek, after the legendary avant-garde director, is perhaps Zorn's most accessible work for film. According to Zorn's liner notes, most of the film's music was comprised of pieces by Deren's companion, Teiji Ito, which were scored for her film and interspersed by field recordings of voodoo rituals. Zorn was persuaded to create an entire score for this picture. How much of it made the final cut is unclear, though it hardly matters since listeners have this aural document. As conductor and keyboardist, Zorn employs a score built on repetitious patterns, spare, softly accented figures, and lilting, skeletal melodies that take into consideration the revolutionary compositions of Teiji Ito, Deren's love of the percussion that accompanied voodoo ritual, and the ancestral music of her native Kiev. Zorn's collaborating musicians -- Jamie Saft, Cyro Baptista, and Erik Friedlander -- have taken into account the particular dynamics of making music for a documentary about a director whose films were all soundtrack-less until after she died. Zorn covers material with the same attention to detail he gave the Masada chamber group's.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,8,10 and 13)

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