A composer/artist who might deserve consideration for using the vernacular effectively in classical music is Edgar Meyer. I think he illustrates the difference between what Steve is talking about and the smarmy crossover stuff that most of us disdain. I've been listening to his String Quintet. It is clearly classical in constrcution. Yet the strains of Appalachia are never far from the language. In fact, based on something I learned last week from Mimi, it represents a circle being closed neatly. According to her, the Appalachian fiddle sound with which we are familiar as a vernacular voice derived from Scotch Irish immigrants trying to simulate the folk music of their native lands on inadequate stringed instruments. Now we get Meyer reintegrating that sound into a classical form we associate with Europe. I think that much of third stream jazz-classical fusion tries too hard and ends up sounding neither like good jazz nor good classical music. However, increasingly one hears young musicians who don't worry as much about label and in their work provide comfortable blends of vernacular language into constructions that merit consideration as serious are music. One recent example that comes to my mind is the collaboration of pianist Kenny Barron and violinist Regina Carter. She is classically trained. Their composition Freefall on the eponymously named CD seems to me to belong on the same shelf as my Bartok sonatas. By the way, two other American composers I would nominate for using the vernacular in their classical compositions (though both also composed popular music as well) are Merideth Wilson and Robert Russell Bennett. Ed