What a beautiful evening in Amsterdam. In a slightly more than half-full, yet pretty excited hall, Marc Ribot made his solo appearence, playing Zorn pieces. According to the original program he was going to execute the "Book of Heads"; however, and to our great delight, he announced that he would throw in some songs from the Masada songbook. "I could probably pull through the complete "Book of Heads", but it would take me months of preparing" he commented later. "If a piece is slightly tonal, then you know its a masada tune" he clarified, hoping to avoid confusing the unprepared among us. He started off with etude#26 from BOH on electric guitar (the masada tunes that followed were mostly on acoustic) and immediately his mastering of the required skills was obvious. With use of few objects that included the anticipated baloons, (used to either play the guitar, scratch or step upon and break), he displayed his vision of how to handle these guitar pieces and improvised his way through Zorn's graphic notation. The highlights included one the execution of an etude for 3 guitars as well, as his use of two bows. It is actually very hard to describe what he did or what it sounded like; Not very different from the recordings as far as I recollect, yet sitting there in front of him made it sound much more sparkling and coherent. Later he laughed, "I am happy Zorn was not here", as he apparently had been stealing on the rules whenever he felt like. The program was quite divided between the BOH and masada pieces, which alternated making it sound less stiff and it really worked out! The familiar "sansanah", "moshav" and "tzalim" (introduced at the encore as "another piece from the "Book Of Heads") were included, as well as a few that I failed to recognize; some titles that I read on his songlist (which he wouldn't part) were "galgalim", "azekal", "shasal" (could be slightly wrong here...). Having not heard the Tzadik release of the Masada guitars, I cannot compare the live interpretations to the studio ones; To my feeling, the pieces were stripped down to their very essentials and the melodies often deconstructed. Overall, in the absence of accompanying instruments, it sounded very melancholic, often going into very quiet passages and rather unlike the somewhat groovy sound of the Masada sextet. Utterly beautiful. Tonight, "Rituals" and "Chimeras" by the Asko ensemble. And, less than a week to Naked City! manolis