The premier ensemble of Radical Jewish Culture, Masada is one of Zorn’s most popular, personal, long-lasting, and powerful projects. Here you find the mother lode—the long-awaited Tzadik release of the original quartet’s first studio recordings. Released in Japan by DIW from 1994–1997 and previously available only as hard-to-find Japanese imports, all ten CDs are presented here in their original configurations accompanied by an 84-page booklet filled with photos, scores, and over twenty essays of appreciation by a wide variety of musicians, poets, philosophers, and musical thinkers. Including an hour of rare alternate takes, rehearsals, and inserts, this is the ultimate Masada package.

Made available to celebrate the band’s 30th anniversary, Tzadik present this important historical document of one of the great acoustic jazz ensembles of all time -John Zorn’s Masada. Essential!

Featuring John Zorn on alto sax & compositions; Dave Douglas on trumpet, Greg Cohen on contrabass and Joey Baron on drums. hard to believe that it’s been thirty goddamn years since the first Masada set at the old Knitting Factory (on Houston) in September of 1993, for John Zorn’s month long 40th birthday celebration/retrospective. 30 days in a row of John Zorn concerts: last four Naked City nights and the first appearance of the Masada Quartet! This impressive box includes all ten Masada studio CD’s, released 1994 - 1997. “Daled” / CD 4 was originally a 3 song, 30 minute EP, which Zorn fans could get for free if they sent in the OBI’s from the first three discs. Disc 4 now includes several unreleased bonus track to make a full length disc. All ten studio discs was released on DIW, a Japanese label and were expensive as import-only CD’s. All ten have been out of print for more than a decade. The original quartet were an amazing ensemble with all four members integral to their unique sound. I’ve listened to the original Masada CDs many times over the past 30 years and I still get goose bumps when I listen. I’ve all seen & heard them live dozens of times during their reign and believed that they were the best avant/jazz/klez/etc band of their time! The original band broke up years ago as Greg Cohen and Joey Baron have moved away from NY and Dave Douglas continues to have a long, ambitious solo career as well as running a label (Greenleaf) and teaching. There has been several different versions of Masada through the years (Electric Masada, Masada String Trio & the Bar Kokhba Chamber Masada), but the original quartet was special.

There are over 100 Masada songs found on this 10 CD set plus a wonderful thick booklet. There is a New Masada Quartet (with Julian Lage, Jorge Roeder & Kenny Wollesen) that started last year (2022) and now has two fabulous CD’s. The New Masada actually play many songs from the original quartet, so it is great to hear these great melodies once again! (Downtownmusic)