Zorn’s cutting-edge work challenges players

As cultural paradoxes go, new music and jazz legend John Zorn is masterly. The hyper-hyphenate composer-saxophonist-improviser-record label owner and all-purpose “downtown” NYC scenester has long been crazily prolific and active, although cloaked in mystery. He tends to operate outside of existing, established circles, apart from the ones he creates and nurtures.

Conspicuous by his absence from Los Angeles for 20 years, Zorn’s eagerly awaited visit to town last weekend drew an excited horde to the REDCAT, although he was here strictly as a composer rather than a performer (in which mode he possesses a charismatic gift). Saturday’s program, “The Chamber Music of John Zorn,” was persuasively realized by the CalArts New Century Players.

Fittingly for a musician allergic to typecasting, the all-Zorn evening entailed clearly distinct pieces, varied in texture, dynamics, degrees of fixed tonality, and genre candidacy. “Untitled (for Joseph Cornell),” is a mercurial workout for solo cello, beautifully handled by Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick. Bartok-ian harmony mixes with scattered sonic effects and repeated riffs, nodding to Zorn’s jazz and rock hankerings.

Zorn counts assemblage art pioneer Cornell on his list of heroes, alongside musical figures such as Charles Ives and cartoon-music maverick Carl Stalling. Like them, Zorn is a rabid collector of ideas and cultural data. Crafty assembly of parts figures heavily in Zorn’s creative process.

Percussionist William Winant, a longtime Zorn ally, lent athletic grace to “Gri-gri,” a rumbling solo procession with soft mallets dancing on low-leaning drums. “Shibboleth” is an ethereally hushed, and almost Morton Feldman-ish, colored by the clavichord’s delicate volume and a ghostly detachment in the strings. Zorn’s sense of humor and gaming remain intact, in his demands for percussionist David Johnson to include metronomes, sand on cymbals, and noisily-dealt playing cards in his sonic palette.

In the program’s centerpiece, the elaborate 1998 ensemble piece “Rituals,” two percussionists incorporated birdcalls, wind machines and a bowl of water into a score of exacting, intricate design. Here, Zorn draws on Boulez’s icily precise post-serial scoring, along with a Zorn specialty -- tightly plotted, Cubist cavalcades of sound, including Stephanie Aston’s wordless tone-floating.

Ace keyboardist Vicki Ray was on multiple duty, wheeling between different keyboards to the point where the squeaking chair wheels and Ray’s furtive motions verged on performance art. There’s always more than meets the ear in Zorn’s fascinating, defiantly individualistic handiwork.