Can You Hear Agnes Martin’s Serenity In John Zorn’s Frenzied Music?

There could not, on first glance or listen, be two artists more different than John Zorn and Agnes Martin.

Mr. Zorn, 63, a longtime fixture of downtown Manhattan, is known for composing frenzied, explosive music, riots of psychotically bright colors. Martin — who lived alone in the New Mexico desert for decades, died in 2004 at 92 and is currently the subject of a quietly majestic retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum — made paintings of serene subtlety.

Mr. Zorn stated the obvious question as he walked on Monday morning around the Guggenheim’s rotunda, where a series of his Martin-inspired works will be played on Thursday and Friday evenings.

“Crazy John Zorn and Agnes Martin, the spiritual, the saint,” he said. “Where does it connect?”

Read more at the New York Times.