Composer Introduces A 'Dead' Symphony

From NPR's Weekend Edition:

Next Friday, Aug. 1, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will feature the music of — or, at any rate, the music derived from — the Grateful Dead. On what would have been Jerry Garcia's 66th birthday, the BSO will perform an orchestral tribute by composer Lee Johnson. With each movement based on a Grateful Dead song, the work is titled Dead Symphony No. 6.

And

It was a 10-year process from the original commission to the recording session in Moscow with the Russian National Orchestra, as well as another two years before the premiere.

Much of that time, Johnson says, was spent combing through the Dead's massive repertoire of songs and recordings. "The list was hard to even begin with," Johnson says. "It had to be something that would be flattered by the use of the orchestra, or just fit for further exploration by a composer who had to become a Deadhead through the process of meeting the music first."

Click here to listen to the interview, as well as to hear three movements from the symphony.

Almost always when I hear about some orchestra somewhere playing pop songs for their blue haired subscriber base, I roll my eyes. It's pandering, for one thing, but what really riles me is that it sucks. Orchestral renditions of popular music give you the worst of both worlds: all grass-roots hipster sensibility associated with source material is wiped out, while at the same time, any serious highbrow cultural meat associated with the serious music world is reduced to so much baby vomit. There ought to be a restraining order keeping these two realms a thousand yards away from each other at all times.

If I'm lucky, I'll never hear an orchestra playing "Hey Jude" ever again.

But this Grateful Dead stuff is something entirely different. As mentioned in the interview, the composer takes a sort of Aaron Copeland approach, treating the Dead as a source of American folk music, taking themes and musical ideas from their songs, expanding on them, and making them entirely at home in the symphonic context. That is, these aren't orchestrated versions of Grateful Dead songs: they're orchestral works in their own right, and very American, too, culturally speaking. Some of it's also very weird, which only makes sense when you go to the Dead for your source material.

Anyway, it's good shit; go check it out.



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