THE BIG GUNDOWN john zorn plays the music of ennio morricone (15th Anniversary Edition)

Release type:What's this?
studio album
First released:
1986

Overview Edit

The Big Gundown is an album by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn. It comprises radically reworked covers of tracks by the Italian film composer Ennio Morricone.

The album is named after a 1966 spaghetti western of the same name, directed by Sergio Sollima, starring Lee Van Cleef, and scored by Morricone. The album was first released in 1985 on the Nonesuch/Icon label. In 2000 a remastered 15th Anniversary Edition with additional tracks was released on CD on Zorn's Tzadik Records label.

In 1985 Zorn had been working in New York City's experimental music scene for almost a decade (the album was originally to be called "Once Upon a Time in the Lower East Side"), but The Big Gundown launched him to wider prominence. In the notes for the 2000 reissued CD, Zorn describes The Big Gundown as representing a creative breakthrough as well for being the first time he worked extensively with multi-track recording, overdubbing and ornate orchestration. Though his main instrument is alto sax, Zorn did not play that instrument on the original version of the album -- Tim Berne plays the scorching sax solo on "Peur Sur La Ville," and Zorn did not play on most tracks, adding only a few touches of piano, harpsichord or musical saw.

The Overview appearing in this section is attributed to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Gundown_(album). Portions of this Overview may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Additional terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.

This particular version Edit

Version description:
15th Anniversary Edition
Record label:
Catalog number:
TZ 7328
Release dates:
  • Aug 22 2000

Genres

Avant-Garde, Free Jazz, Instrumental. Vote on Genres

What do Amazon.com customers think?

5 stars Yes, better than the original
I just recently took the plunge on this reissue of the Big Gundown, comparing it to my original Nonesuch CD, and the new one is a winner. The music is obviously the same, and great it still is, but I always regretted the thickness of sound and low-level mastering of the original CD. The reissue has cleaned, brightened and polished the sound to a much higher level, it blossoms immediately in the ears and is now superb. The additional tracks are a treat too, Chi Mai is one of Morricone's greatest …
Written by George Grella "Urbane citizen"
3 stars Short of excellent, but certainly put this rampant experimenter on the map
3 1/2

Marking a noticeable evolution in this radical composer's one-of-a-kind-career, 1984's early breakthrough interpretations of the spaghetti western king proved a worthy and memorable endeavor. Through Zorn's typically cracked lens Morricone's dusty constructs are given a whole new, usually quite darkened reworking. More traditional fans of these original compositions may initially be turned off with the expansive and distorted liberties taken to resurrect these themes (as compositionally s…
Written by IRate

Track listing Edit

Other versions Edit

10 tracks format: 1 x CD
release dates: 1986 in United States
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