John Zorn - Femina, 2009
Lineup:
Jennifer Choi - violin
Sylvie Courvoisier - piano
Carol Emanuel - harp
Okkyung Lee - cello
Ikue Mori - electronics
Shayna Dunkelman - percussion
Laurie Anderson - narration
It brings me a subtle joy that
John Zorn can put to better use his implements of ultra scarce musique concrete and game piece composition, somewhere where they can add depth to a track instead of hopelessly trying to exist as the added depth itself and sounding generally uncool.
With
Femina,
Zorn acts strictly as a producer and writer, leaving the performance to a formidable lineup of females. While overall it's still much a classical/chamber work, you can hear many tidbits of the
Hermetic Organ, but here it's just way more satisfying. Allmusic puts it pretty well so I'm going to plagiarize them.
Quote:
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It still consists of the juxtaposition of brief, sometimes jarringly disjunct musical ideas that has been a characteristic of much of his work, but while there are still some grindingly dissonant sections, the tone is predominantly lyrical...
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It might be hard to discern but
Femina is a tribute to the creativity of females. And they're on to something here.
Ikue Mori is back in action with her noble electronic molestations. Trembling strings is also the name of the game, we've got
Jennifer Choi and
Okkyung Lee here after all,but layered upon the general indeterminacy of
Zorn's compositional prowess. There's some really great passages here in the way of both the concrete and the classical, scampering off into minimal chamber grooves that can be heard on a significant amount of the
Zornography's modern composition and easy listening branches.
It's not too huge and not so much a standout but nonetheless there's greatness to excavate.