Five Musicians in a Room with Zorn's Book
A quintet built on composer's sensibility and improvised solos, echoing the great ensembles of the 1950s.
The Masada Quintet came together to document John Zorn's Masada Book Two, material that demanded a particular kind of listening. Joe Lovano led the session as the group's saxophonist, stepping into a lineup assembled specifically for this project. What emerged was music that felt anchored in ensemble tradition — the kind of disciplined group interplay you hear in the classic quintet records of the 1950s, where a composer or leader sets a mood and lets the musicians find their way inside it. AllMusic reviewer George Kanzler heard it that way immediately, noting that the quintet shared DNA with Miles Davis, Shorty Rogers, Horace Silver, and the Clifford Brown/Max Roach groups. The comparison holds because of how the material is constructed: each composition establishes a particular temperature through tempo and rhythm, then opens up for improvised conversation among the five players.
This was the Masada Quintet's first recording, which means everything here was freshly worked out, without the safety of having played these pieces a hundred times before. That rawness matters. The quintet wasn't trying to perfect Zorn's writing so much as inhabit it, find its logic, and then push against it. Lovano's tenor saxophone cuts through clearly — he's not the focus of every moment, but his presence anchors the band. The material itself works hard: these aren't vehicles for extended soloing in the fusion sense, but compact compositions that require the musicians to stay engaged with their surroundings rather than pursue individual statements.
For listeners coming to Lovano's work, this sits early in his recording presence, before his Blue Note years. It's worth knowing that the Masada records became a significant part of Zorn's output, a way of exploring jazz and religious music simultaneously. Stolas is one entry into that conversation, valuable for how a strong ensemble executes compositional ideas with respect but without reverence.
Who's playing
Greg Cohenbass
Uri Cainepiano
Joe Lovanotenor saxophone
John Zornalto saxophone
Dave Douglastrumpet
Joey Barondrums
Where next?
The musicians on this record
Their own records, close in time
