“He Made the World Bigger”: John Zorn’s Musical Universe

<p><strong>John Zorn</strong>’s musical world resists any sort of tidy summation. A constellation of projects that refuse genre’s pull, a deeply-embedded philosophy of artistic risk, and an appetite for assembling untested combinations. </p><p>Recorded during Big Ears 2026, this panel of Zorn collaborators assembled by journalist <strong>Hank Shteamer</strong>, on the 10 year anniversary of an article he published in Rolling Stone exploring Zorn’s explorations into metal and heavy rock. In that article, vocalist and Mr. Bungle/Fantomas founder <strong>Mike Patton</strong> says Zorn “made the world bigger,” through endless curiosity and a constant desire to expand his own musical world, while also expanding the musical horizons of his collaborators and the audience. </p><p>Classical soprano <strong>Barbara Hannigan</strong> recalls a lunch in New York after which a forbiddingly difficult score landed in her inbox, a test that reshaped her craft over several years. Former Slayer drummer <strong>Dave Lombardo</strong> remembers meeting Zorn at Slim’s and being coaxed from metal’s strictures into the wild freedoms of Cobra and Xu Fang. <strong>John Medeski </strong>tells of an early ’90s organ‑trio experiment that began with curiosity and, after years away, turned into a sustained collaboration. And bassist <strong>Jorge Roeder </strong>describes a meeting in a Thai restaurant that led to an ongoing series of projects in which he found himself handpicked for myriad sonic constellations.<br>Listening to each of these musician’s stories, one begins to appreciate the care John Zorn takes in shaping his world as a laboratory for experimentation. Where music serves as an ongoing experiment in attention, courage, and the ever‑expanding possibility of sound.</p>