One man who has been working on this frontier for decades is Rhys Chatham. He began his career as a piano tuner for La Monte Young and harpsichord tuner for Glenn Gould (WHOA). He moved on to study extensively with La Monte Young and become active as a composer and performer in that scene of minimalism. Eventually, in the late 70s, he began on what would become the focus of his life's work: guitar ensemble music. His works are influenced by rock and punk, as well as early minimalism. Often they have a vibe of process to them, as he focuses on one or two techniques or attributes to follow through to their full potential to compose a piece. He has worked with classical musicians like Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, and Pauline Oliveros, and rock musicians such as members of Sonic Youth and more. I listened to a large sample of his first evening length work, and his first work for 100-guitar ensemble: An Angel Moves Too Fast To See. Listening without video, I could easily see this as either 1) a highly effective classical composition, performed by modern chamber musicians with a great sense of groove, or 2) a very smart rock tune, in the progressive but drivingly groovy vein of Rush or Floyd. As far as I can tell upon further research, Chatham's works tend to be performed in classical concert settings, which is interesting. Are they sometimes performed in rock settings? I hope so.
I can see that I've been clearly separating these two ideas of rock-ish classical music and classical-ish rock music, as designated by performance setting. Does music NEED to be distinctly one or the other? No, but it usually is. I have no idea how one would branch this gap. One good step would be performing concert music in a rock setting or vice versa. I've definitely seen that in a few places. For instance, the prog rock percussion quartet Kraken, based in Ithaca, has been known to slip some concert music into their live shows, seamlessly with their rock tunes. At a show last August, they used Reich's Music for Pieces of Wood and merged it into their own rock tune "Mad Libs." They also used several movements of Jason Treuting's meditative work "Amid the Noise" as quieter parts of their show. On a more famous note, one group doing things like this today is Radiohead, and especially its guitarist, Jonny Greenwood. Greenwood has often been known to play Reich's Electric Counterpoint during otherwise rock concerts. Greenwood is also an avant garde composer in his own right. He is good friends with Krzysztof Penderecki, and the two have collaborated on several works together. Greenwood is also an INCREDIBLY effective film composer, having scored Paul Thomas Anderson's most recent two films (There Will Be Blood and The Master) and Lynne Ramsay's film "We Need to Talk About Kevin." But amidst all this, he is known to the world almost exclusively as the guitarist from Radiohead.
Jonny Greenwood performing Electric Counterpoint
at a rock show in Krakow, Poland, 9/11/2011
As a percussionist, I have never seen as much separation between rock music and classical music as I think many other musicians do. We percussionists play an awful lot of rock-influenced music, all the time. Plus, most of us also actually play rock music, and in a given day we will often work on both in the practice room. We all talk about both, and rarely make much separation in discussions between them. Our rep classes often include both rock--old and new--and concert music. So we try to stay connected to both the "popular" idiom and the concert idiom, and mixing them is everyday.
One up-and-coming composer who is branching these divides is percussionist/composer Ivan Trevino. Ivan is a recent graduate of the Eastman percussion studio, and he is currently EXPLODING in the percussion world. In the past 2 years, he has gone from mostly unknown, to having his music performed at MOST music schools in the country. There have been over a dozen performances of his works on IC student recitals this year alone. All of Ivan's music is very audience-accessible, it all grooves really hard, and it all is basically rock music written for percussion instruments. He is currently in the process of branching out into wind/brass and string instruments, but as of yet, all his music is for percussion. Here is his work that has received the largest exposure, due to a well-publicized performance at PASIC 2013 (Percussive Arts Society International Convention). The work is Catching Shadows, and is played here by the commissioner, the Eastman Percussion Ensemble (including several good friends of mine).
Catching Shadows (2013), Ivan Trevino
Performed by Eastman Percussion Ensemble, 11/2013
Little fun fact: the work started as a marimba duet, and I was lucky enough to perform it with its commissioner, Eastman Prof. Michael Burritt, about a week after he premiered it with Ivan.
Ivan's works are taking the percussion world by STORM right now. Why? Most people like rock music, and most percussionists love both rock and percussion music. Mixing them seems obvious, but it hasn't been done this effectively and effortlessly until now. And Ivan seems to be able to put forth these pieces unceasingly, each one as effective as the last. The world is eating up his rock/classical music.
Even Reich has ventured down the road of rock music, to an extent. His work 2x5, for the instrumentation of two rock bands (two groups each of two guitars, one electric bass, piano, and "drum set") is an incredibly beautiful and effective work. Its sound is right in line with most of his compositions of the last decade or two, with the exception that the untuned percussion (drum set) part adds a purely rhythmic element that is mostly new. It doesn't sound much like rock music, but it uses rock's timbres and palette, and takes some inspiration from it. This is much more conservatively close to classical concert music, but pretty adventurous for a composer in his late 70s.
Reich's 2x5, performed by Bang On a Can All Stars
This performance is by Bang On a Can All-Stars, which for decades has been blending large elements of rock into concert music. The ensemble, usually consisting of percussion (often drum set), guitar, bass, piano, cello, and clarinets, uses amplification, a sense of groove, and rock techniques and styles in a wide variety of compositions written for them, often by Bang On a Can founders David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Gordon. They are an INCREDIBLE joy to experience live, and I hope to see them many more times. I have several times driven many hours to see them perform, and I would do that any number of times. They're unbelievable.
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