Pat Metheny & John Zorn. Distinctive languages

'The New York Times'At first glance , Pat Metheny and John Zorn might seem to come from different planets. Metheny, 58, is a guitarist whose music has resonated broadly throughout jazz and instrumental pop, a dazzling virtuoso with a warm human touch. Zorn, 59, is a saxophonist of firm avant-garde conviction, a natural polarizer and provocateur.

Yet the two have some fundamental things in common, starting with their prolific output as composers. Both have defied the rules of genre since the beginning of their solo careers.

They cite some of the same influences - each has recorded an album of Ornette Coleman's music - and have become pillars of influence themselves. And they share a spirit of enterprise : Metheny recently invested his own resources into the creation of a one-man electromechanical orchestra, the Orchestrion, while Zorn is the proprietor of both a thriving record label, Tzadik, and a bustling performance space, the Stone.

They had barely met in person before Metheny expressed an interest in recording some of Zorn's music. The audacious result is "Tap: The Book of Angels, Vol. 20," an album of six compositions culled from Zorn's Jewish klezmer-influenced Masada oeuvre - and performed almost entirely by Metheny, on various guitars, keyboards and other instruments, including the Orchestrion.

An impressive feat of imagination, and a strikingly clear distillation of both artists' distinctive languages, the album strongly suggests an artistic dialogue. And it seemed to beg for an actual dialogue, which Metheny and Zorn had previously conducted mainly over email.

Their first joint interview - which they both referred to as a "lovefest" - took place in May in the New York offices of Nonesuch Records, which is releasing "Tap", in coordination with Tzadik. Here are excerpts from the conversation.

___ Your careers have unfolded over a similar span of time, and you've each developed a devout and open-minded audience. Do those affinities register for you?

___ (Metheny) We're about the same age, and we've carried out our research in parallel. It's interesting that we had few opportunities to meet until now. I've been a fan of John's since I first heard him, right around the time I started playing myself, in the late '70s.

___ John, when did you became aware of Pat?

___ (Zorn): That goes back to the early ECM records, when everybody was listening to that music. And it was just mind-blowing , the passion and the command. But also the ability to transcend the language of a music that actually never excited me that much. You mentioned open-mindedness, which I think is very critical to hearing this record. If someone is a straight jazzhead, or a straight metalhead, or straight classical, they have a very narrow range of what they allow into their lives. But the people who listen to what we put out into the world have to be open-minded. Because we're so pluralist.

___ My impression of the Book of Angels is that it involved a feverish and solitary period of composition, followed by a kind of release into the world.

___ (Zorn) Creating the second "Book," I describe it as a flow. Because the first "Book" was carved out of rock. The first "Book" took years, because a new language was created. And then I played those pieces for 10 years, and became proficient in that language, and it started to flow. But there's a craft involved in addition to pure inspiration, and that's something also I really admire about Pat, is his sense of craft.

___ (Metheny) I'm always inspired when there's a robustness to the material in front of me. I took John's notes and they inspired me to do a million things. Some of which was on the page, some of which was improvised, some of which I don't know exactly what it is. What I look for in musicians is a sense of infinity. Within this world, you could go forever.

___ A track like "Tharsis" feels like a good example of that, because it has a discrete scrap of melody that builds into a complex larger structure...

___ (Zorn) Yes. A Gothic cathedral.

___ ... while keeping that initial melody somehow intact.

___ (Zorn) One of Pat's incredible abilities is how to get inside a musician's head. The thing that really blew my mind is the last tune on the record, which in the Masada parlance we call "events tunes" - where the composition is a series of distorted or seemingly unrelated phrases. That's some of the most radical material that I've done. Pat got into that head space absolutely 100 percent.

___ (Metheny) What I wanted to do was take the basic kernel of each idea and extrapolate it into another level of development, rather than just improvise on it. Another thing I love is hearing musicians who develop context for themselves. And of the many things I admire about John, that might be right near the top. He's a master of coming up with opportunities for music to exist. It could be an opera, it could be a string quartet.

___ (Zorn) It could be the Stone. Could be the record label.

___ (Metheny) Right, or the artwork you use. To me this sort of ecumenical view of music is something I think we really share. But to me, the achievement is actually the way it all goes together. The headline is the whole thing, not the individual parts. In your case, just the sheer amount of it is astonishing. But the way you develop a set of music that then has a sort of context is really impressive to me. And the "Book of Angels," this series, is a testament to that. Because you have so many different people playing it.

___ The timing is interesting too, as far as the development of your arsenal, with all these guitars and synthesizers as well as the Orchestrion.

___ (Metheny)There are musicians who go through their lives sort of shedding their skins. For me, I've always felt backward-compatible to Version 1.0. I could go out tonight and play all the tunes from "Bright Sized Life," and it would be just as viable for me now.

___ (Zorn) I think we're both additives. We don't strip things away . We add, add, add.