As a kid, he played piano, guitar and flute. He attend college in St. Louis at Webster College (now Webster University) where he discovered free jazz, before dropping out and moving to Manhattan. There he gave concerts inside his little flat, swimming the kind of reeds, duck calls, tapes, etc; nigh anything. In the mid 1980s he signed to the Elektra-Nonesuch label. Since so, Zorn has been quite prolific, ordinarily putting out many fresh records both month. His breakthrough recording was peradventure 1985's A Large Gundown: John Zorn Plays a Music of Ennio Morricone, wherein Zorn offered a total of typically radical arrangements of Morricone's famed songs from either various movies. A Heavy Gundown was endorsed by Morricone, & incorporated elements of traditional japanese music, soul jazz, and more diverse musical genres.

Zorn is peradventure better known for his act by having Masada, (an Ornette Coleman-influenced jazz band playing the placed of compositions according to Jewish scales), Painkiller (a mix of grindcore and free jazz in which he is joined by Mick Harris of Napalm Death) and Naked City (an often aggressive mix of jazz, rock & thrash metal). He has besides worked by using musicians rather Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz, Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, Keiji Haino, Bill Laswell and Mike Patton. He has written music for television & film, which has been collected in the on-going Filmworks series of records in his Tzadik label. Occasionally one come jazz-depending, others come classical.

He has besides written many "game pieces", where performing artist come allowed to improvise when below certain structural system. These works come in the main known as fallowing sports, & include Pool, Archery & Lacrosse, too when Cobra. He is besides typically noted for his postmodern, sometimes extreme, apply of formal blocks, units which he combines and contrasts within various ways. Zorn discusses his history & a musical philosophy behind his early works in the book [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0306808935/qid=1125248739/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-1823479-7867115?v=glance&s=books Talking Music]by William Duckworth.

Last, he has be a main click behind a opening of [http://www.thestonenyc.com The Stone], an avant-garde performance space within NY's Alphabet City that supports itself solely in donations, rendering entirely door revenues directly to the performing artist.