Recently, I have found myself repeatedly watching YouTube videos of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s FUSE@PSO performances. The FUSE@PSO series is the brainchild of composer-conductor-producer Steve Hackman and combines Western European Classical music with contemporary popular music from a contemporary band. The first three performances in this series include Brahms + Radiohead, Beethoven + Coldplay, and Copland + Bon Iver. Each performance features three vocalists, and is comprised of a nearly hour-long concert fusing mash-up arrangements, “creating something that is at once a combination of both and wholly original” (http://www.pittsburghsymphony.org/production/46632).
The first FUSE concert video that I watched was the Brahms + Radiohead performance that combined Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 and eight songs from Radiohead’s “OK Computer”. And let me say, I was prepared to hate it. As someone who has long been interested in popular music education, and more specifically, the ways in which popular music is used in schools, I was skeptical. My initial thought was that this Fuse@PSO concert was going to be less about the music, and more about using Radiohead’s name as a ploy to try and bring in a younger audience turn the tide of dwindling attendance at orchestra concerts (see here, here, and here for more about declining sales, participation, and funding for symphonies). Helping to shape my pre-conceived ideas of how lame this FUSE@PSO concert would be was my reaction to George Mason University’s band playing a mash up cover of Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in The Name Of” and Bulls on Parade”. While many of my fiends widely share this video on their social media pages extoling how great it was, I didn’t love it. Perhaps this is because I am a huge Rage Against the Machine fan; their music was formative in my teenage years and I feel like I grew up on their music and have fond memories attending Rage concerts. It also bothered me that the marching band seemingly learned the song by reading sheet music, thus ignoring the way that popular music is created and learned, creating a “simulacrum, or a ghost of popular music…and not the thing itself” (Green, 2006).
Ok. So back to the FUSE@PSO mash-up of Radiohead and Brahms. I was ready to not like it. But then I did. I loved the harmonies, the arrangements, and the unique creation that resulted from bringing together the genius of Brahms and Thom Yorke. It was moving and, perhaps more important, it was relevant. I found myself so engaged in the performance that I didn’t really care about perceived issues of “authenticity”, or how the music was learned (standard notation vs. aurally), or any other hang up that I would usually focus on. In the words of my friend (and fellow Pop! contributor) Gareth, “I think I rather like that. I tried quite hard not to, too.”
Beyond the music itself, I also liked what the FUSE@PSO concerts represent: bringing in broader audiences, collaborations, and bringing cultural relevance to the orchestra. This relevance is often missing in ensembles that are committed to replicating music primarily from dead white men who live two hundred years ago. As Wayne Bowman put it, “It is becoming extraordinarily easy in the wake of aesthetic orthodoxy to take up music making without paying attention to social or political contradictions” (2004, p. 44). By including 8 songs from Radiohead’s Ok Computer in the mash-up, Hackman brought to the forefront themes of skepticism and dissent present in the lyrics.
And as I sat there watching the entire hour-long concert, I was inspired by the power and incredible contribution that the symphony provided to this performance of Radiohead’s music, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
For a minute there, I lost myself.
Bowman, W. D. (2004). “Pop” goes…? Taking popular music seriously. In C. X.
Rodriguez (Ed.), Bridging the gap: Popular music and music education, 29-49. Reston, VA: MENC.