Postcards from the Edge: Where new classical works, dance music and alt-rock merge

By Greg Sandow
The Wall Street Journal
October 7, 2006

New York -- I'M ABOUT TO TALK about something that might seem highly unlikely -- the confluence of new classical music with dance music and alternative rock. But join me in two brief meditations.
First: Not many younger people go to classical concerts. In part, that's because classical music doesn't feel very current. So if smart younger people care about dance music and alternative rock . . . well, you can end that sentence by yourself.

Second: New classical music still doesn't get much traction. Classical concerts still feature all those comfortable masterworks by composers who are safely dead. And surely that's because new classical music often sounds too edgy for the classical audience. So if dance music and alternative rock often sound edgy, too . . .

That's enough theory. How about putting it in practice? The leader here, as far as I know, is the London Sinfonietta, a terrific orchestra devoted to new classical work, which since 2003 has been putting on concerts in collaboration with Warp Records, a British label that records electronic dance music. I've talked to people from the London Sinfonietta about this, and they're just about over the moon with delight at how well it works. A thousand younger people, they say, end up cheering music by advanced classical composers like...oh, just for an extreme example, Iannis Xenakis, whose heyday might have been 40 years ago, but whose work still sounds to mainstream classical listeners like an assault of baffling noise.
And now these collaborations have been brought to the wider world on a two-CD release from Warp, titled "Warp Works and Contemporary Masters." In one way, it's disappointing. The pop side of the conjunction is represented, with one small exception, by arrangements (for orchestral instruments) of tracks by Squarepusher and Aphex Twin, dance masters whose work is sharp and intricate, surprising, sometimes gorgeous, and just a little bratty. Or, in other words, what we hear is mostly not Squarepusher and Aphex Twin's original work.

I completely get the point of this; the people at the concerts wouldn't need to hear things that many of them already knew from downloads or CDs, or had heard in clubs. But the instrumental arrangements -- though they're brilliantly inventive -- lose all the flavor of the originals. Suddenly we're hearing fancy classical music, which maybe proves that Squarepusher and Aphex Twin really can create all the fine detail we'd expect from classical composers. But we don't learn how they manage that while still remaining pop. (We also lose all their staggering variety of sounds.)

So what we get, in the end, is a sampler of edgy classical music. This is wonderfully worth hearing, ranging from old (but still unstoppably fresh) metallic works by John Cage, rhythmic webs from Steve Reich, absorbing twitters from Gyoergi Ligeti, and (maybe my favorite track on the album) some evocative and beautifully built electronic work from Karlheinz Stockhausen, who once was classical music's leading avant-gardist, but vanished from the spotlight. These are live performances, of course, and the screams and whoops at the end of every piece show that this music really did find a new audience.
Cut to America. Ronen Givony, who works at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, wondered why "chamber music" -- defined as music for small ensembles -- couldn't include some of what he hears at clubs. And so he started a series called "Wordless Music," which debuted Sept. 18 at a church near Lincoln Center.

And it was packed! One big attraction was two members of Wilco, an alt-rock band whose songs are etched with the kind of striking noise new classical composers pioneered. Both these musicians -- guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Glenn Kotche -- have also built reputations as improvisers in the avant world of free jazz, and improvisation was what the evening featured.
But here there were two problems, at least for me. The improvisations went on too long, and two classy musicians from the classical world -- the witty, imaginative guitarist Elliott Sharp, and pianist Jenny Lin -- were more compelling than Messrs. Cline and Kotche, for many of the same reasons Frank Sinatra is more compelling than Vic Damone. They just do more with their music. Mr. Kotche, especially, in some eager solo pieces, tended to sink into full-tilt drumming, no matter how complex his initial premises as set forth in program notes.

Ms. Lin played (with fine attention) straight classical pieces by Shostakovich and Ligeti. I'd have loved more of that, if only because the contrast with the noise-improvisation was so bracing. But these are only my opinions. What matters more was that the concert was a raging success -- it even made a profit -- and that merging the advance edges of the pop and classical worlds really works.

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Mr. Sandow, a composer, critic and consultant, is writing a book on the future of classical music.