The best first buy
George Grella | Brooklyn | 05/12/2000
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Never heard Zorn before, never heard his film music, and curious? This is the one best CD to buy. The music is great and it displays his strengths as a musician. He has a great ear for styles and can produce music in all of them, yet it's more than just mimicry, it's well made music with a strong core and a fine expression. He's an excellent alto player with great hard-bop chops and a nice, biting sound that comes right out of Jackie McLean. He also assembles great ensembles of musicians who have their own distinctive voices that benefit all the work. The music ranges from jazz to rock and beyond, never missing a beat, absolutey assured in everyway, constantly inventive and just great to listen to."
Damn good.
Steve D | Connecticut | 08/29/2004
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This was my first Zorn album. It is amazing. So many styles throughout the album. It really shows his strength as a musician and the deversity of his works. It is a lot easier to get into than some of his other works and I would recommend it to someone interested in checking him out. You get a little bit of everything, metal, jazz, country,classical and world music. Wonderful cd."
Diverse, fleshed-out parts add up to another quintessential
IRate | 12/08/2007
(4 out of 5 stars)
"A strong, diverse first entry into his gigantic Film Works series finds the always-eclectic composer offering up an ultra diverse sampler from three of some of Zorn's earliest independent movie scorings. A few tracks are rough around the edges, but when that is not working in any piece's favor, the seemingly unlimited wealth of talented players always working with our warped maestro still usually demands attention. Even if we are listening to a tired blues theme or a standard jazz progression, the variations on these themes remain interesting for the most part still to this day. Hitting a masterful stride with the horn-heavy third act, Zorn proves once again why he is one of the most versatile, edgy, and equipped composers working today."