Steve Martin pushes one of my buttons:

>Does crossover do more harm then good? If it were not for crossover, I
>would not have heard what fine jazz I have heard.

Insofar as it can get people to listen to, enjoy, and explore types of
music they otherwise might not have appreciated, it's a thoroughly Good
Thing.

Insofar as it may limit people's understanding of an unfamiliar field (e.g.
Steve's example of the "Titanic" music being identified as CM), it's in
danger of being a Bad Thing.

On its own merits, crossover music between any two genres is sometimes
interesting but usually a failure, necessarily being neither one thing nor
the other.  A rare exception (IMO) is the collaboration between saxophonist
Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble.  This produced the CD "Officium"
which works wonderfully well.  Neither fish nor fowl, but something
distinctive and new.  OTOH, I haven't felt moved to listen to it for years,
and their second effort - which includes the Hilliards improvising - didn't
come off anything like as well.

Steve mentioned Wynton Marsalis, often quoted by people on the CM side of
the fence as the prime example of a crossover artist.  But if you spend any
time on jazz mailing lists, you'll find that one of the topics that comes
round again and again is having a go at Marsalis' jazz and crossover work.
He's not too highly regarded from that side, partly because of his very
traditionalist attitudes to about the last fifty years of jazz history.

My top 3 nominations for great crossover artists:

Jan Garbarek
Trilok Gurtu (CM unfortunately not included, but his jazz / Indian work is
often superb)
Jaques Loussier (often under-rated, but if not for him I probably wouldn't
have discovered Bach back in the 60's. For that, I owe him a lot)

and for outright crossover disasters:
Any classically trained singer trying to perform pop or rock or jazz or
musicals or show tunes (with a possible exception for Dawn Upshaw)
Yehudi Menuhin with Stephane Grapelli
Yehudi Menuhin with Ravi Shankar

Ian Crisp
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