Here's an article I stumbled across on USA Today that addresses the issues
surrounding the merging of classical and popular forms with balance and a
refreshing lack of sophistry.  That web site changes virtually every hour,
so I'm including the article below.

   When pop meets classical
   By David Patrick Stearns, USA TODAY

   Any music lover emerging from a decade on a desert island could safely
   assume the world is turning upside down.

   Major pop and classical artists are switching places in ways few
   would have guessed in the recent past.  Samuel Barber's Adagio for
   Strings is a British top-five hit in a dance-mix arrangement by
   Madonna collaborator William Orbit.  Pop artist Joe Jackson and jazz
   pianist Chick Corea are writing concert works that are sizable and
   laudable.  Both the Berlin Philharmonic's Simon Rattle and the Chicago
   Symphony Orchestra's Daniel Barenboim are recording Duke Ellington.

   It's like a Leonard Bernstein fantasy come true.  He always said the
   gulf between high and low art is artificial; people should be able
   to write a Top 40 hit one year, a symphony the next - as he did.

   That makes perfect sense to Michael Kamen, the composer/arranger
   who collaborated with Metallica on the hard-rock band's teaming with
   the San Francisco Symphony last year but now is composing in a more
   traditional mold.  His first symphony, The New Moon in the Old Moon's
   Arms, is being premiered and recorded Thursday through Saturday by
   Washington's National Symphony Orchestra.  Says Kamen, "It's the same
   12 notes.  Everything else is fashion and style."

   However attractive the concept, it's hardly so simple.

   Jackson's Symphony No. 1 (recorded on the Sony Classical label)
   initially doesn't sound like a departure: The instrumentation is full
   of reeds, Jackson's typical electronic keyboards, and pop rhythms
   and harmonies. But its form dates to Beethoven.

   Paul McCartney's two huge pieces, Liverpool Oratorio and Standing
   Stone, are a departure.  Written with musical secretaries because
   McCartney doesn't read music, those works sound little like the pop
   that made him famous.

   In between are Billy Joel, whose charming, not-yet-recorded piano
   solo works are a refinement of his songs and return to his classical
   upbringing, and Elvis Costello, whose brainy rock 'n' roll easily
   mutates into art songs for his latest singer of choice, Swedish opera
   star Anne Sofie von Otter, and the more formal works heard on his
   album The Juliet Letters.  Who knows where Orbit's album Pieces in
   a Modern Style will fit; the Feb.  8 release features dance arrangements
   of less-than-foot-tapping works such as Beethoven's String Quartet
   Op. 132 and John Cage's In a Landscape.

   Kamen's case is what golfers would call a "chip shot." Thanks to a
   versatility that allowed him to collaborate with Metallica (resulting
   in the best-selling recording S&M) and score the film Mr. Holland's
   Opus, Kamen's symphony was just another expression of the golden rule
   he learned in his student years: "Every phrase is the inevitable
   thing out of what came before."

   And having known Kamen while both were students at the Juilliard
   School of Music, National Symphony Orchestra music director Leonard
   Slatkin was enthusiastic about commissioning him.  "When you have
   a gift, you should have as many outlets as possible," Slatkin says.
   "And here you have a classically trained composer who has a lot to
   say."

   Musical crossovers in the other direction can look just as easy
   but be twice as hard, as shown by singer Luciano Pavarotti's failed
   attempts to sing pop. Therefore, Rattle made a point of working with
   original Ellington band members, including Lena Horne, on his
   forthcoming release to avoid any jazz-under-glass sterility.

   That's also why Barenboim breathes an extra sigh of relief when
   complimented on his new disc, Tribute to Ellington.  Though his
   interest in jazz grew out of a familiarity with tango in his native
   Argentina, Barenboim really doesn't improvise: "I'm not a jazz
   pianist.  I don't pretend to be one.  I play it in a way that I can
   make a tribute to Ellington."

   Both directions in this musical crisscrossing are driven by a
   common factor: classical recording operations.  While classical
   standard-repertoire sales have fallen off, classical artists maintain
   visibility by challenging their boundaries.  Rattle recently recorded
   the Bernstein Broadway show Wonderful Town.  Russian violinist Gidon
   Kremer has become a major exponent of tango.

   The labels also welcome more ambitious projects by pop artists, who
   are relieved not to contend with the higher sales expectations and
   pressure for a hit single exerted by pop labels.  And if they want
   an orchestra, classical labels know right where to find one.  Jackson
   couldn't be happier with Sony Classical: "I don't care if it's called
   Sony Bluegrass - if they're the people who want to work with me,
   that's who I want to be with."

   At the same time that today's pop-to-classical crossover artists
   are evidencing more ambition than the rock bands of days past (Moody
   Blues, Procol Harum, Deep Purple) that used an orchestra as a mere
   backdrop, the idea of classical music itself is being revised.  It
   can be newer, more immediate and punchier, which is the philosophy
   of Sony Classical president Peter Gelb, the unofficial godfather of
   this movement.

   Gelb, who has urged Titanic film composer James Horner to write
   concert works, also persuaded concert composer John Corigliano to
   write film music for The Red Violin, which is nominated for a Grammy.
   "We're not only putting interesting combinations of artists together,"
   Gelb says, "but we get music written and composed."

   EMI doesn't just encourage McCartney's classical efforts - it
   commissions them.  "That Paul moves from songs into larger forms is
   not so different from what songwriters did in the past," says EMI-Angel
   general manager Gilbert Hetherwick.  "At this point in his life, he
   keeps pushing himself forward."

   But all manner of artistic adjustments must be made.  In writing
   his symphony, Kamen missed the abandon of rock 'n' roll, which he
   experienced in his student days as founder of the New York Rock 'n'
   Roll Ensemble.  He also had to clear his schedule: The symphony took
   an entire year.  That kind of time commitment is why jazz/classical
   crossover figure Bobby McFerrin opted not to write a full-length work
   for the San Francisco Opera, even though he was offered librettos by
   Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner.

   Better that than overstepping artistic bounds.  Both Romulus Hunt,
   a children's opera by Carly Simon, and Holy Blood and Crescent Moon
   by Stewart Copeland, former drummer for The Police, were widely
   regarded as major embarrassments.

   Jackson was painfully aware of that potential in writing his symphony;
   his decision to write it came slowly: "It has a lot to do with not
   comparing myself to anyone else.  If there's a reason it took so long
   to do it, I was scared to be in competition with the giants of music.
   At some point, I said to myself that I'm entitled."

   With such genre-blurring comes marketing problems.  The audience
   crosses many age, economic and geographic boundaries; finding it can
   require advertising budgets that devour profits.  That's why Hetherwick
   has become leery of one-off projects by label-hopping artists; those
   who create a body of work can create long-term momentum.

   The other problem is that stores refuse to stock a given release in
   more places than one.  Does Barenboim's Ellington belong in the jazz
   section, where prospective buyers know Ellington but not Barenboim?
   Will Kamen's symphony, which will be released on Decca, go in the
   film-soundtrack section, where people know his name?

   Both discs are more likely to be found in the classical section,
   which could limit their discovery by a fringe, impulse-buying audience.
   Internet buying helps solve such problems, Gelb says.  But Kamen,
   for instance, still will have to settle for a fraction of his usual
   exposure.

   He isn't overly perturbed: "It may be that Bach only reached 100
   people in the church where he first played his cantatas, but every
   day I play a little bit of Bach on piano, and hundreds of thousands
   of others have had pleasure from those works.  There's a longer shelf
   life in making compositions that aren't songs."

   A cross section of crossover hits

   Here's a guide to recent genre-jumping works, encompassing
   pop-to-classical, classical-to-jazz and jazz-to-classical crossovers:

   Daniel Barenboim, Tribute to Ellington: Jazz musicians express their
   personalities by the notes they play; classical musicians do so by
   how they play them.  Here, Ellington is treated to the glistening
   tone and considered phrasing of concert pianist Barenboim, which may
   seem a bit slick to Ellington fans but might provide a route into
   this world for classical types.

   Chick Corea, corea.concerto: Inspired by Mozart, Corea's Piano
   Concerto No. 1 is full of elegant musical gestures within a happily
   circumscribed range of expression, though it still sounds jazzy and
   full of Corea's trademark effervescence.  Spain for Sextet and
   Orchestra is a colorful, captivating, engagingly sophisticated fantasy
   on Corea's best-known composition, Spain.

   Joe Jackson, Symphony No. 1: Though not as melodically attractive as
   his best pop work, this is a genuine symphony wearing pop/jazz-orchestra
   clothes, full of witty references to Beethoven and well-sustained
   musical spans.

   Paul McCartney, Working Classical: Though blessedly devoid of the
   bombast of his past classical efforts, this series of miniatures
   (some of which are instrumental transcriptions of his songs) has a
   sameness that makes it fade into background music. Pleasant but
   innocuous.

   By David Patrick Stearns
   (c) COPYRIGHT 2000 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

FYI, David Patrick Stearns is the claisscal music critic for USA Today, and
his most recent reviews can be read at:

   http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/classic.htm

Dave
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http://www.classical.net/