[kj] Jaz in today's paper

[nicholas fitzpatrick]

Hello all


A photo of Jaz appears in today's Daily Telegraph alongside an article about 
crossover musicians.

N




>>>Kings of crossover

Elvis Costello

Going through a classical phase in the early '90s, Elvis Costello fell in 
love with the Brodsky Quartet, self-proclaimed mavericks who favour Issey 
Miyake outfits over the stiffer black-tie garb with which we normally 
associate classical musicians.

Determined to work with the Brodskys, Costello, a self-taught musician, 
learnt how to read and write music. The result was The Juliet Letters, a set 
of "chamber pop" songs inspired by the letters written by an eccentric 
academic who had taken it upon himself to reply to those addressed to Juliet 
- of Romeo and Juliet - and sent to Verona. The cycle met with considerable 
success, it became Costello's highest-selling commercial record at the time.

Paul McCartney

In the most prestigious of pop/ classical crossovers, Paul McCartney was 
invited in 1991 by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra to compose an 
oratorio celebrating its 150th anniversary. Carl Davis conducted, soloists 
included Kiri Te Kanawa, and it premiered at Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral 
to a five-minute standing ovation. Another self-taught musician, Macca had 
to get Davis to help with the orchestration, and the result, Liverpool 
Oratorio, a 90-minute meditation on the life of a Liverpudlian named Shanty, 
was not to everyone's taste. Classical music pundits greeted it with 
derision.

Steve Hackett

Ex-Genesis guitarist

Steve Hackett turned to Evelyn Glennie, the world's only superstar 
percussionist, to give him classical credibility for a composition they 
performed together at 2002's percussion and drumming festival at the Royal 
Festival Hall. The

City in the Sea was described by one reviewer as "improvised belligerence 
and mournful doodling", and involved wailing sounds and an organ impression 
coming from Hackett's guitar, while Glennie played various homemade 
instruments, a drum kit and an air raid siren. His other classical offering 
is the more melodic A Midsummer Night's Dream, a 1997 recording of 
instrumental music in the English pastoral tradition. A coherent if 
un-ambitious piece of writing, it yet suggests the gulf between pop and 
classical is bridgeable.

Tony Banks

Solo success has persistently eluded Tony Banks, sometime Genesis 
keyboardist, and Seven looks unlikely to rock that boat. It was released in 
February on Naxos, a label usually considered a model of good, classical 
taste, and consists of seven suites, performed by the London Philharmonic. 
Banks, like McCartney, discovered he did not actually know how to write for 
an orchestra, so he had to get someone else to orchestrate, which lays his 
work open to instant criticism from the purists and accounts for something 
of its bland arrangement. Seven is at best serviceable film music.

Jaz Coleman

Killing Joke lead singer Jaz Coleman is a workaholic polymath responsible 
for a positive ecstasy of classical/pop hybrid called Riders on the Storm: 
The Doors Concerto, an arrangement of Doors music for symphony orchestra 
recorded in 2000 with violinist Nigel Kennedy performing (on his violin) as 
the voice of Jim Morrison. Reasonably effective, it came as Coleman's solo 
follow-up to a similar treatment he'd given songs by the Who and the Stones. 
Despite one reviewer's describing Coleman as "our new Mahler", it is likely 
that history will reflect on his frequent collaborations with Sarah 
Brightman before recording such an effusive judgement on his classical 
prowess in general, although there's hope yet for a man who bought his first 
record, Russian Orchestral Masterpieces, at the age of six.

LOAD-DATE: April 27, 2004

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