| Kristallnacht | |
| Type: | Album |
| Artist: | John Zorn |
| Cover: | Kristallnacht (album).jpg |
| Released: | 1993 |
| Recorded: | November 9 & 10, 1992 |
| Genre: | Avant-garde |
| Length: | 42:44 |
| Label: | Eva, Tzadik |
| Producer: | John Zorn |
| Prev Title: | Leng Tch'e |
| Prev Year: | 1992 |
| Next Year: | 1993 |
Kristallnacht is the seventh studio album by John Zorn first released in 1993 on the Japanese Eva label and subsequently in 1995 on Zorn's own Tzadik Records label.[1]
Zorn's compositions for the album were based around the events before, during, and following the infamous Night of Broken Glass and represented his first musical exploration of his Jewish cultural heritage.[2]
Zorn has stated:
It’s tied together with passion and research. Every Jew has to come to grips with the holocaust in some kind of way and that was my statement, that’s how I did it. I do not need to do it again (…) it meant a lot to me. It was like a whole lifetime of denying my Jewish heritage coming out in one piece -- "John Zorn on BBC Jazz File," July 2000.[3]
The AllMusic review by Joslyn Layne stated: "John Zorn has created a musical work that powerfully represents the different stages of this historical event... Zorn's forceful undertaking is realized through the expert and passionate musicianship".[4] The Penguin Guide to Jazz said "Here are the seeds of what was to be a wholesale engagement - or re-engagement - with Jewish musical culture, most clearly represented in the Masada project of future years, but retroactively evident throughout the work of the previous decade and more. A key moment, even if the man himself wasn't playing".
All compositions by John Zorn
Keyboards
Bass
Violin
Clarinet, bass clarinet
Trumpet
Guitar
Percussion