Cobra (Zorn)

Cobra is an unpublished but recorded and frequently performed musical composition by John Zorn that was conceived as a system with very detailed rules but with no pre-conceived sequence of events, or game piece, for a group of musical improvisors and a prompter.^[1][2][3] Zorn completed Cobra on October 9, 1984. The composition consists of a set of cues notated on cards, and rules corresponding to the cues that direct the players what to do. The number of players, instrumentation, and length of the piece is indeterminate. Because there is no traditional musical notation and the players improvise, the piece may sound radically different from performance to performance.

As was commented upon in some length in a 2004 interview, Zorn has, with his own words, "deliberately chosen not to publish (or even write down) the rules" to his game pieces, being concerned with the importance of personal instruction.^[4] Despite this, photocopies circulate among musicians internationally, and there is even a clean printing of all the cue categories in a CD booklet (see recordings).

Sources

2 photocopied pages with cue categories and explanation of form. First page signed John Zorn (C) Oct 9 NYC. Second page titled "IMPROVISATION. John Zorn - "COBRA", annotated by SB".

Notes

1. ^ Kozinn, A John Zorn and 'Cobra' NY Times, September 3, 1989
2. ^ Ross, A Music and Plenty of It: 12 Hours' Worth In Fact NY Times March 15, 1993
3. ^ Ratliff, B Stretching the Boundaries of the Things Musicians Do NY Times, August 5, 1996
4. ^ Zorn, John (2004), "The Game Pieces", in C. Cox, D. Warner, Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music, New York: Continuum, pp. p196f 

Recordings

• Radio City Studios, NYC (1986) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1985), released as a double CD entitled "John Zorn - Cobra" on the Hatology Label of Basel, Switzerland (2nd ed, 2002)
• Cobra (1987)- includes a large table of the cues in color.
• John Zorn's Cobra: Live at the Knitting Factory (1992)
• John Zorn's Cobra: Tokyo Operations '94 (1994)
• Cobra: John Zorn's Game Pieces Volume 2 (2002) — includes a copy of the cues

External links

• audio interview with Trevor Dunn and Kenny Wollesen(Jekyll and Hyde, Israel)
• "Zorn biography and discography". by Scott Maykrantz. http://www.scottmaykrantz.com/zorn01.html. Retrieved 2006-05-12.