John Zorn

John Zorn born September 2, 1953 is an American avantgarde composer, arranger, producer, saxophonist and multiinstrumentalist with hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, and producer across a variety of genres including jazz, rock, hardcore, classical, surf, metal, klezmer, soundtrack, ambient and improvised music. He incorporates diverse styles in his compositions which he identifies as avantgarde or experimental. Zorn was described by Down Beat as one of our most important composers.

John Zorn was born in New York City and learned piano, guitar and flute as a child. His family had diverse musical tastes his mother listened to classical and world music, his father was interested in jazz, French chansons, and country music, and his older brother collected doowop, and 1950s rock and roll records. He attended the United Nations International School from kindergarten to high school associating with school friends from many different cultures. Zorn spent his teenage years exploring classical music, film music, and, listening to The Doors and playing bass in a surf band. Zorn acquired an interest in experimental and avantgarde music after buying a record by Mauricio Kagel in 1968 at the age of fifteen. He taught himself orchestration and counterpoint by transcribing scores and studied composition under Leonardo Balada.Zorn started playing the saxophone after discovering Anthony Braxtons album For Alto 1969 when he was studying composition at Webster College now Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he attended classes taught by Oliver Lake. While still at Webster, Zorn incorporated elements of free jazz, avantgarde and experimental music, film scores, performance art and the cartoon scores of Carl Stalling into his first recordings which were later released as First Recordings 1973 1995. ........

Source: Wikipedia