Strange Bedfellows

Recent months have seen some unusual couplings. Punks have been sighted playing cellos, and Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" is on the bill at an upcoming pop fest. Some major orchestras have performed music from video games and Middle Earth, while another has been taking a page from the stadium-rockers' playbook.

In San Francisco, the Punk Rock Orchestra is reviving the classics. You know: Iggy Pop, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Sex Pistols, Circle Jerks, Fear, Suicidal Tendencies. The 40+ members of the new string orchestra are classically trained and have experience with some of the region's best symphonies and ensembles. (And in some cases, rock groups as well.)

Maximum Rock and Roll, called "the New York Times of punk," called the orchestra "Shocking". The San Francisco Bay Guardian called their work "...low brow music on high brow instruments," and Charles Osgood of CBS Radio declared "Now you've heard everything.“

A punk ballet, and their first recording, are in the works.

Listen to a feature on NPR or visit the PRO's own site

The ENO set will consist of Act Three of "The Valkyries," perhaps the best-known part of Wagner's 15-hour long Ring cycle. (Think of "the smell of napalm in the morning"…)

The opera's chief executive and artistic director, Sean Doran, told the BBC that he would like to take opera on a "populist path… This is the audience we should be reaching out to. When Wagner wrote the Ring, he wanted a festival context for it - he wanted to reach as many people as possible, to take it to the masses."

Masses indeed - the Festival is completely sold out.

Read more from the BBC or visit the Festival site

According to WIRED magazine, over 1,000 fans of the video game Final Fantasy packed the Walt Disney Concert Hall for the first American concert of music from the game series. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, accompanied by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, performed pieces from every game in the Final Fantasy series, which debuted in 1987, as well as pieces from an upcoming Final Fantasy movie.

Composer Nobuo Uematsu's soundtracks are "credited as being the heart and soul of Final Fantasy." The audience gave Uematsu a two-minute standing ovation as he entered the auditorium before the show.  After the show, he thanked his American fans for making the concert possible. According to WIRED, "he also said he was amazed at how music can so effortlessly cross cultural and language boundaries."

Meanwhile, on June 3-5, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and ASO Chorus performed the Lord of the Rings Symphony, composed and conducted by Howard Shore, who wrote the score for the award-winning movie trilogy. Shore adapted the major musical themes of the score into a six movement, symphonic form.

The Symphony has also been performed in Phoenix, and it scheduled to appear in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Hollywood, and other cities across the US later in 2004.

Read more about the Final Fantasy concert from WIRED magazine or WIRED news

Visit a Uematsu fan site

Listen to Shore discuss his new LOTR Symphony on KBAQ radio, or visit the ASO site

Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that the Philharmonic has tried using giant video projections behind the orchestra, projecting close-ups of conductor Lorin Maazel and musicians onto a 15 foot by 20 foot screen.

Traditional classical music organizations are under pressure to find new audiences (and keep their aging ones engaged). Although 2700-seat Avery Fisher Hall is much smaller than the sports stadiums for which rock bands developed the giant projection approach, it is a long hall, and the video did permit the audience a more intimate view of the proceedings.

Other organizations are experimenting with projections. The Times reports that the Vancouver Symphony used such projections for 15 of its 140 dates this season. On the other hand, the Pittsburgh has tried such screens and found the technology unworkable, while the Atlanta has heard from its test audiences that it was "too jarring."

Read the New York Times article, "Symphony goes MTV"

Visit the New York Philharmonic