News on a new publication from Hips Road/Tzadik. From the web site artbook.com:

Arcana II: Musicians on Music

Edited by John Zorn. Texts by Yamataka Eye, J. G. Thirlwell, Butch Morris, Evan Parker, Marina Rosenfeld, Ned Rothenberg, Sylvie Courvoisier, Steve Coleman, Dave Douglas, Annie Gosfield, Jim O’Rourke, Milford Graves, Zeena Parkins, Bill Laswell and Uri Caine, et. al.

In his preface to the first Arcana: Musicians on Music (2000), avant-garde composer and saxophone player John Zorn wrote: “This book exists to correct an unfortunate injustice, the incredible lack of insightful critical writing about a significant generation of the best and most important work of the past two decades.” That the injustice was repaired by that collection was happily affirmed by its subsequent success. The range of writing–from the technical to the aphoristic/diaristic–demonstrated that sometimes critical writing on music can inspire as much as it can explicate. As Zorn acknowledged, though, Arcana was also a first step. Now Arcana II, also edited by Zorn, extends the scope of its predecessor, compiling further essential writing by luminaries of contemporary improvisation and composition such as Butch Morris, Evan Parker, Marina Rosenfeld, Ned Rothenberg, Sylvie Courvoisier, Steve Coleman, Dave Douglas, Annie Gosfield, Jim O’Rourke, Milford Graves, Zeena Parkins, Bill Laswell and Uri Caine.

I contributed a short essay on the music of Booker Little. The first Arcana book is definitely worth checking out — both of these publications should also be available at Downtown Music Gallery.