Since he began playing cello in public as a teenager in 1966, Fred Sherry has worked with the A-to-Z of new-music luminaries: Milton Babbitt, Lucio Berio, Earle Brown, Elliott Carter, Lukas Foss, Stephen Mackey, Olivier Messiaen, Toru Takemitsu, and Charles Wuorinen, to tick off a few.

He’s also labored anonymously in Broadway orchestra pits, toured with the jazz pianist Chick Corea, and engaged in full-tilt improvisational games in Lower East Side nightclubs.

“It was so open back in those days,” Mr. Sherry said recently, reflecting on his five decades as a performer in Manhattan. “The work scene in New York was much less closed up. You could float through the orchestra jobs and play esoteric new music.”

Mr. Sherry, who will turn 60 this year, still embraces the latter, wholeheartedly. And the composers embrace him, as evidenced by a three-part tribute to the musician that begins Sunday at the Guggenheim Museum and continues throughout the year. The first program, which will be repeated on Monday, features three pieces by John Zorn, the 2006 MacArthur Fellow who is known for his prolific writing, recording, and performing across a wide range of genres — notoriously as a galvanizing figure on the downtown jazz and improv scene. The pieces include the world premiere of “777,” for Mr. Sherry and two other cellists (Erik Friedlander and Mike Nicolas), and two selections from the 2001 chamber music album “Madness, Love and Mysticism” (Tzadik) — “Amour Fou” and “Untitled,” the latter a solo cello piece dedicated to Joseph Cornell.

“I used to hear ‘John Zorn this’ and ‘John Zorn that,’ and one day I ran into [the violist] Lois Martin, and she told me, ‘He’s so fun, so imaginative, and he has this wonderful flair. He’s not like anyone else you’ll ever play for,'” Mr. Sherry said, chatting from a hotel room in Portland, Ore., where he was performing last weekend. “So we got to be friendly.”

Mr. Sherry, whose enthusiasm for the topic of music was undiminished by a long-distance cell phone connection, grew more animated as he described “777,” which he called “a virtuoso tour-de-force.” “It’s played flat-out, very hard,” he said. “John’s thought a great deal about the texture of what the three musicians are doing. We often play in different registers — high-low — and there is a trading off of roles, a lot of moving around. The music is like a very active sculpture, like something blowing around all over the place. But it’s a planned chaos, and suddenly we’ll all be doing the same thing.”

The aggressive style won’t be surprising to fans of Mr. Zorn, who inscribed his score for “777” with a credo from William S. Burroughs: “Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.” When his 15-year-old jazz quartet, Masada, made its unlikely Jazz at Lincoln Center debut a year ago at Rose Hall, the saxophonist wore his signature combat fatigues and played with a verve that was at once ferocious and gleeful. The energy is not diffused when he writes for strings, or appears in uptown classical music venues, where he finds more appreciation than in the mainstream jazz world (or from comedians such as Jon Stewart, who mocked Mr. Zorn’s MacArthur prize on “The Daily Show”).

“I try to follow my own ideas,” Mr. Sherry said. “Everybody’s got something bad to say about somebody. When I first started playing, someone said to me, ‘I can’t believe you played that [garbage].’ I said, ‘I like it! And you’re insulting me!’ I try never to listen to people who are too anti-. You know, we don’t have to sort it all out. Future generations will decide what was good or wasn’t good.”

Indeed, it seems that Mr. Sherry’s job is to play as much of everything as he can. “He could have been a Yo-Yo Ma-type conventional soloist if he had not been so passionately devoted to new music,” Mr. Wuorinen, the musician’s friend and colleague for the past 40 years, said. “He’s one of the finest cellists who ever existed, and one of the most acute and comprehensive minds.” The composer will moderate a conversation between Messrs. Sherry and Zorn to accompany the concerts.

Audience members can anticipate some fresh and colorful insights from Mr. Sherry, who concluded our own conversation with a pair of contrasting statements about music from two very different sources. “Schoenberg said that the best performance is the one from which you can take dictation,” the cellist said, adding that he used to disagree, but later came to understand what the composer meant. It has to do with presenting the wholeness of the music, “not just one side of it. Or, there’s this great line from a Bruce Lee movie, where he says, ‘You kicked me in anger, no wonder you weren’t successful.’ Because you need to bring all your emotions. You have to get all those elements.”

Mr. Sherry performs Sunday and Monday at the Guggenheim Museum (1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th Street, 212-423-3500).