Born in New York City on September 2, 1953, John Zorn is an American composer, conductor, producer, arranger, and saxophonist who has deliberately resisted easy categorization throughout his career. Largely self-taught, he emerged as a central figure in the downtown music movement of lower Manhattan beginning in the mid-1970s, eventually becoming one of contemporary music's most prolific voices, with over one hundred recordings and compositions to his name.

Zorn's early training bridged seemingly disparate worlds. As a child attending the United Nations International School in Manhattan, he studied with Leonardo Balada, an Argentinian tangoist and classical composer. Later, at Webster College in St. Louis, he absorbed influences from both the European classical tradition and the city's influential Black Artists Group—a formative exposure that would shape his lifelong commitment to cultural synthesis in music.

For much of his early career, Zorn did not actively engage with his Jewish heritage. That changed dramatically in the early 1990s. His composition Kristallnacht (1992), inspired by the orchestrated pogrom throughout Nazi Germany on November 9–10, 1938, marked a watershed moment. In composing this Holocaust-related work, Zorn employed the Phrygian dominant and Ukrainian Dorian scales common to klezmer music—a musical choice that would define much of his subsequent work.

This initial exploration opened a floodgate. Zorn committed himself to extensive study of Jewish musical traditions, creating improvisational chamber pieces like Bar Kokhba and Issachar, which echo prewar Eastern European Jewish life while drawing surprising parallels between jazz and instrumental Jewish folk music.

In 1994, Zorn founded Masada, a four-piece ensemble named after the fortress plateau above the Dead Sea in Israel—the historical site where Jewish zealots staged their final resistance against Rome. What began as a jazz band evolved into an ambitious songbook project. Zorn composed over one hundred "Masada tunes" initially, eventually expanding this catalog to more than two hundred compositions.

By the mid-1990s and beyond, Masada had become more than a band; it was a sprawling songbook and performance world that turned Zorn’s ideas about Jewish identity into a living musical language. The original set of tunes grew from an initial goal of 100 pieces into more than 200 compositions for the first book, and the project later expanded even further through additional Masada volumes and related ensembles. Around that core, Zorn built Tzadik Records and a wide network of projects that gave space to experimental jazz, chamber music, rock, film music, and other hard-to-label forms, making him one of the most restless and influential figures in modern music. His career has been defined by curiosity, speed, and range, but also by a clear artistic purpose: to keep opening new paths for music that is bold, searching, and deeply personal.