Day 20: April 6 - Cross-Transmission
Artists who cross genres between pop/hip-hop/electronic and classical, and vice-versa
Anna Meredith - Nautilus
Anna Meredith is a phenom of contemporary classical crossover. Her CV includes not just the standard Proms commissions and huge orchestras, but also pop names like James Blake and These New Puritans. Nautilus is a perfect representation of this integration of pop and classical. While it sounds like a brass band performing EDM, it’s actually really finely designed synths imitating brass band imitating EDM (a feat which is unbelievably hard to do convincingly). Also, there is a M. Night Shyamalan level twist when the Ministry-level 808 drums come in.
Gabriel Kahane/The Knights - Crane Palimpset: The Navy Yard/Oh Harp and Altar…
Gabriel Kahane is another classically-trained musician (trained briefly at NEC) turned avant-garde popper. His approach though integrates classical language into piano-songwriter ballads which are phenomenal. However, here he is playing (really) well with others. Crane Palimpsets is a setting of poet Hart Crane’s reflections on the Brooklyn Bridge. The orchestration is rich next to Kahane’s steady, softly roaming piano. As the piece develops, you get Norman-like orchestral outbursts, which are just very tasty. Played here by Gabriel Kahane and The Knights Orchestra under Eric Jacobsen.
Nas - I Can
Alright, so this is not the best infusion of genres, but it does contain both classical and a good message, which I’ll allow. Some of the verses are a bit hard and may have not aged well, but the last verse about ancient African excellence, how colonialism exploited their achievements, and how that potential to be world-leaders. The beat plays off of Beethoven’s Fur Elise (you can read that as co-opting a classic of colonial Europe), which the kids come in at the end to sing along, which is just so touching.
Thomas Ades - Asyla: III. Ecstasio
Brit Thomas Ades is the golden child of contemporary classical. Supremely talented, Ades is a phenom as a composer, conductor, and pianist. Ecstasio is the third movement of his early orchestral work, Asyla. Supposedly, it is based of an experience had when one of Ades’ friends forced him out to a rave, which he then transcribed as this movement. Ades gives fragments of EDM a sort of collage treatment: you hear the pounding bass in the percussion, descending sawtooth synths in the brass, ascending filter sweeps in the strings. These all build into a classic EDM break: soft, tense harmonic progression (scored in the high winds with low bass drums) which build into a cacophonic EDM-anthem. This is such a good transcription, it’s easy to understate. If you were to transcribe EDM as written, note-for-note, it would be the most boring thing in the world. Musically, EDM is very basic. But the timbral qualities, rhythmic interplay, and the sensations of dislocation, euphoria, and sensory overload are key to the experience. What Ades has transcribed is not necessarily the MUSIC, but instead the EXPERIENCE of the music itself. Performed here by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ades himself.
Pet Shop Boys - Go West
A little on the nose maybe, but I had to include something based off maybe the most recognizable piece of classical music, Pachelbel’s Canon in D (the melody also might refer to the Soviet anthem!). In Go West, the Pet Shop Boys (covering the Village People) take a nineteenth-century saying, “Go west, young man,” which originally referred to the promise of the frontier American for entrepreneurs, here paints ‘90s San Francisco as a haven for gay men:
(Go west) Life is peaceful there
(Go west) In the open air
(Go west) Where the skies are blue
(Go west) This is what we're gonna do
While also serving as a rallying cry for the Gay Liberation movement:
Now if we make a stand
we'll find (We'll find) our promised land
Not only bangs, but does so joyously.