John Zorn at Jazzaldia 2024 in San Sebastián

The US alto player, cultural omnivore and all-round creative force John Zorn may have been a circus ringmaster in his other life. Invited to showcase multiple projects at Jazzaldia this year, the prolific composer mustered six different combinations from eight of his associates over three shows.

Like his music, each show was tightly organised. All three were set up so that group two could begin on the heels of group one after the briefest of introductions from the composer. What might have been the second set was thus heard as an extension of the first, no matter how stark the contrast in the music. It was not explained why this was so – perhaps simply an extension of Zorn’s love of abrupt juxtaposition in his compositions – but it was certainly different.

You might call Zorn a musical chameleon were that creature’s rapid changes not for camouflage. Zorn’s determined pursuit of music where you don’t know what will happen next, but he certainly does, serves rather to hold the attention. Blink and you might miss something good.

That feeling pervaded all six items on Zorn’s Jazzaldia menu. It took hold immediately with the opening guitar duo from Julian Lage and Gyan Riley in the early evening show on Friday in San Sebastian’s state of the art concert hall – so much more comfortable than the open air Trinitate Plaza. The two guitar masters have recorded a large number of Zorn’s pieces but we heard another stunning new suite created for them, inspired by the Catholic mystic Teresa de Ávila. It was an intricately worked series of exquisite short pieces which the pair played with such skill and attention to detail they sounded like a single musician working two instruments – perhaps the most sublime music played in San Sebastian last week.

Then, an eyeblink later, the two were succeeded by the trio of Zorn regulars Brian Marsella (piano), Jorge Roeder (bass), and Ches Smith (drums) to perform Zorn’s Suite for Piano. The composer’s brief introduction suggested this collection was based on baroque dance forms. He may have omitted the word “loosely”. Much of the time, Roeder was the only player alluding to anything danceable, while the others evoked a collection of other musical flavours. Zorn writes short pieces that accumulate, and this suite, Marsella’s piano now turbulent, now placid, essaying classical lyricism one moment and Cecil Taylorish note clusters the next, was a startling showcase for a trio with an unusual range.

Add Julian Lage to the trio and you have the group that recorded Zorn’s album Incerto, using what he calls a “classic” instrumentation. They opened the proceedings the following evening in the concert hall with a set that was so full, such fun, and so packed with ideas the 35 minute span felt more like an hour. This was music of many ingredients, intense, sometimes momentarily restful – but only momentarily – and full of the humour sometimes shading near sarcasm that brings Frank Zappa to mind.

Then another lightning changeover for the three new players making up Simulacrum. The term power trio is hardly adequate for this line-up of John Medeski (organ), Matt Hollenberg (guitar), and Kenny Grohowski (drums). They are a sort of Gothic mutation of Lifetime, with heavy drums and guitar ripping into the music while the organ simmers, swirls and seethes. This intense, high volume episode was also just over the half hour mark but at the end, emerging blinking into the sunlight, it was hard to decide if one’s ears had enjoyed a workout or been worked over.

That left one more show, two more sets-with-no-interval. The first offering on Sunday evening in Trinitate Plaza, the unforgiving stone seating at least keeping one alert at festival end, was the Simulacrum-plus-one quartet that is Chaos Magick, the plus one being Brian Marsella thickening the organ-guitar-drums mix on electric piano. Again, the inspiration is literary, but the music speaks (loudly) for itself. There were quiet moments, especially from Marsella and Hollenberg, and tunes to relish, but the still complex writing mostly called for the full-on sound of the band while allowing space for some furious keyboard soloing.

And finally, Zorn’s superb New Masada Quartet, the ringmaster finally hooking on his alto to step into the ring himself, along with Lage, Roeder and Kenny Wollesen at the drums. They delivered a quite brilliant finale: an opener which featured Zorn’s alto somewhere in the area Hank Crawford might have carved out if he’d fallen under the spell of Ornette Coleman and then tried to play Klezmer; a harmolodic piece that sounded very Prime Time, to the extent that Wollesen’s drumming even took on hints of Denardo Coleman’s frantic approach to the kit; a feature for Roeder who offered perhaps the best bass solo of a festival rich in bass players, and one for the ever genial Lage that hewed close to the blues. And a weird one or two, of course, just to remind us that the man out front who somehow combined pungent contributions on sax with a constant stream of hand signals to steer the band was John Zorn.

Looking back over six sets, it is a little hard to believe that all this music came from a single composer. Hard, that is, until you review a body of work that contains so much else that wasn’t represented over these three days. Zorn is large, and contains multitudes.