Chimeras (album)

Chimeras
Studio album by John Zorn
Released April 22, 2003
Recorded January 3 & 4, 2003, SUNY Purchase, New York
"Postlude" recorded July 8, 2009, Jordan Hall, Boston
Genre Avant-garde, Contemporary classical music
Length 33:44
Label Tzadik TZ 7085
Producer John Zorn
John Zorn chronology
Voices in the Wilderness
(2003)		 Chimeras
(2003)		 The Unknown Masada
(2003)
2010 Reissue

Chimeras (sub-titled A Child’s Adventures in the Realms of the Unreal) is an album of contemporary classical music by American composer John Zorn featuring a 12 part piece inspired by Arnold Schoenberg's atonal composition "Pierrot Lunaire".[1] In 2010 the album was revised and re-recorded, with an additional "Postlude".[2]

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic[3]
Pitchfork Media[4]
Free Jazz Collective[5]

The Allmusic site awarded the album 3½ stars.[3] Writing for Pitchfork Media, Alexander Lloyd Linhardt stated "the piece itself is thrillingly diverse, suddenly going from luminous to lugubrious and from classical to chaotic. It's a bold, unexpected new chapter in Zorn's corpus, or it would be if we didn't expect that from him".[4] The Free Jazz Collective stated "it can be described as an absolute musical nightmare. It is dark, frightening, with light touches beaming through, like a lullaby arising out of violence, like a tiny light in the darkness giving you false hope of rescue, like friendly faces turning into gargoyles. Human warmth is present, but only as a delusion or deception... The music is as ambitious as it is pretentious, although it will not leave you indifferent".[5]

Track listing

All compositions by John Zorn

  1. "One" – 0:55
  2. "Two" – 2:42
  3. "Three" – 2:54
  4. "Four" – 2:05
  5. "Five" – 1:45
  6. "Six" – 2:08
  7. "Seven" – 4:38
  8. "Eight" – 3:19
  9. "Nine" – 2:45
  10. "Ten" – 2:53
  11. "Interlude" – 1:24 Track 4 on 2010 reissue
  12. "Eleven" – 3:18
  13. "Twelve" – 2:50
  14. "Postlude" - 0:16 Bonus track on 2010 reissue

Personnel

References

  1. ↑ Tzadik catalogue
  2. ↑ Tzadik catalogue
  3. 1 2 Allmusic Review accessed October 31, 2013.
  4. 1 2 Linhardt, A. L. Pitchfork Media review September 8, 2003
  5. 1 2 Stef, The Free Jazz Collective Review, Free Jazz Collective, April 21, 2010
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