A Stranger Here Myself

In the brief history of rock-to-classical ventures Joe Queenan penned for the NYT last week, he points out something that I think has hit quite a few artists attempting to cross the aisle, no mater which side they’re originally coming from. He identifies as a central problem the fact that often it’s “music that acts as if the 20th century never happened.” Maybe for those going classical-to-rock, the problem is only clocking in at 15 years behind the times, but still, the naiveté seems only to irk fans and alienate new ears no matter which new audience it’s making a grab for. I’m not sure if a reading room stocked with back issues of Rolling Stone and Gramophone would help alleviate the problem or not.

In this most recent case, a crash course tutorial seems not to have been necessary. Queenan was preempting a performance of “Time Turns Elastic” by Trey Anastasio (yes, of Phish) with the New York Phil at Carnegie Hall, and after sampling some previous versions of the piece, he offers Anastasio props for skirting the usual pitfalls of this equation: “Unlike other rock stars dabbling in the classical realm, Mr. Anastasio has composed something that sounds like it was actually written by Mr. Anastasio. It might be vapid. It might be meandering. It might even be ridiculous. But at least it won’t sound like the soundtrack from ‘Gladiator.’ ” As things turned out, it sounds like it was a great deal more than that indeed.

I’ve been thinking about this mix a lot lately, both because of the “indie rock band with orchestra” trend and events like the Chris Thile Mandolin Concerto coming down the pike this season. If this is the future of the orchestra, can it be wholeheartedly celebrated as both an interesting and profitable way of resuscitating the museum-like institutions quite a few of these ensembles have become? Still, will this road lead to serious symphonic innovation or merely a permanent demotion to backing band for the orchestra?

With these concepts on my mind, I was excited to hear what Ty Braxton did with the orchestra on his new album (Central Market on Warp, Sept. 15), mostly because if he gave up something boring after this…

…and after bringing this much energy to the stage over and over again…

…well, that would just be depressing. Here’s a sample of what he came up with. NewMusicBox has the back story on his approach.