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Stay Right Where You AreWhen can an opera singer be a folk singer? Almost never.

By Adam BaerPosted Thursday, July 12, 2001, at 3:00 AM ET

Though today's classical-music record labels take credit for the genre's conception, "crossover" music has been around since the 19^th-century birth of American popular song. Take, for instance, the blaring horns in United Airlines ads or the clarinet glissando that opens Woody Allen's Manhattan. Those riffs belong to "Rhapsody in Blue" by George Gershwin, a composer who, in the 1930s, found perhaps the most common ground between popular song, concerto form, and blues the world ever heard. "Rhapsody in Blue" is crossover at its earliest and best: It generates an uncompromising, seamless fusion of disparate idioms.

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Unfortunately, more and more of today's so-called crossover projects—violinist Joshua Bell's foray into fiddling or crooner Andrea Bocelli's take on serious opera—are driven by marketing executives looking for fast, easy ways to infuse their labels with life. This isn't real crossover, original music that blends pre-existing genres; it's "crossing over," a performance gimmick developed to sell records. These albums showcase celebrity artists famous for the mastery of one idiom attempting to cross over into a foreign one. The experiments are usually ill-advised; you get jazz artists teaming up with classical orchestras and opera singers joining forces with pop stars to play stuff they obviously haven't mastered. The results—with a few noteworthy exceptions—are embarrassing for everyone.

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Consider For the Stars, a folk/jazz song collection from the angelic-voiced opera success Anne Sofie von Otter and the yelping, ever-hip, ever-collaborating, black-plastic-frame-glassed rocker Elvis Costello. This album is bad news. Von Otter's voice, though light and bubbly in a Mozart aria, comes across as forced, casually wafting above the harmony in a wanna-be Peter-Paul-and-Mary way. "7_For the Stars," the album's namesake song, is so dumbed-down and cheesy that it couldn't make it onto Barney's latest children's video. The same goes for "8_April After All." This song's simplistic piano chords and Muzaklike melody sound like something high-school bands that loved the band Chicago in the '80s might have attempted after school on their Casio PS1s. In fact, the album sounds so silly that I feel dumb even listening to it.

A more successful stab at crossing over is Creation, an album by jazz sax player Branford Marsalis (the first insult-taker, I mean band leader, of Jay Leno's orchestra) and the renowned conductorless Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Creation features famous French classical music written for saxophone and some tunes that Marsalis transcribed for it. Marsalis, unlike von Otter, takes to his new field more naturally, even if he does overinterpret music that was written for other instruments. In his lippy phrasing, Claude Debussy's "6_Golliwogs Cakewalk" is real top-hat-twirling fun; conversely, with his attention to line, Erik Satie's "4_Gymnopedie No. 3" is one smooth, long, pensive French sentence. The problem with Marsalis' performances is that they are overmiked and therefore served up on somewhat of an audio silver platter; his saxophone jumps way in front of the orchestra in pieces that only feature it a part of the ensemble. (Click 5_La Creation du Monde to listen to Milhaud's "La Creation du Monde.") Orpheus sounds like it always does—tight and expressive. But even though he plays well, Marsalis' musical attitude is too free, too lazy, and too loud for this repertoire to evoke the feelings that its composers intended.

True, Creation is pleasant and shows Marsalis' devotion to classical music. But there are aisles of untouched CDs in record stores across the country that feature this music played correctly and, often, much better. These records don't sell because they don't feature general household names. For French music—Ravel, Debussy, Satie, Milhaud—played authentically, listen to Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony, Pierre Monteaux and the Boston Symphony, or pianists Aldo Ciccolini and Walter Gieseking. Before learning what variations can be played on a tune, it's often smart to acquaint yourself with the real thing first.

One jazz/classical musician who's somehow had no problem mastering the real thing for the better part of 50 years is André Previn. Previn, who's just released Live at the Jazz Standard, a classic collection of piano and bass arrangements, is known to classical-music fans as a famous conductor, composer, and pianist—an ex-director of both the London Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he was recently named music director of the Oslo Philharmonic and continues to perform the classics around the world. Few remember, however, that Previn began his career as a jazz pianist and has penned numerous pieces, like "3_Quiet Music/New Valley," that rival the great standards. His interpretations of jazz hits like Duke Ellington's "2_Come Sunday" or Cole Porter's "1_What is this thing called love" also continue to strike a chord with audiences for their unfaltering taste.

Previn is an artist completely at home in the spontaneity of improvisation: He effectively explores new musical ground with catchy motifs and plays so freely you would never guess he could master Mozartian form. From Previn, we learn that the fungibility of music skill is not all it's cracked up to be. Genre-specific styles are time-tested and can't be adopted overnight. This sort of well-honed confidence and purpose—which can only be a result of true care, talent, and study—is what the art of crossing over deserves.

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Adam Baer is a culture critic for the New York Sun and contributor to the New York Times Book Review, Travel + Leisure, and Slate, among other publications.

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Reader Comments From The Fray:

[Notes from the Fray Editor: Check out the checkmarks for some recommendations and some warnings--we can't resist the meanness of Oran R. Pitts "D'ja ever hear Eileen Farrell's 'I've Got A Right To Sing The Blues'? (She didn't)" and we also particularly enjoyed Cato's hilarious transition to the Napster argument, below. Gerard Winstanley had a nice summing-up: "Crossover is an unnatural disaster when it's cooked up as a deal in a board room; but it can be a treat when it's cooked up in a creative artistic mind."]

During the 1940's,just about every big band/jazz band had a repertoire of "swingin'" classical favorites. Ellington did a notable recording of "The Nutcracker" in the 50's, Glenn Miller, Les Brown, Artie Shaw, also were known for their efforts with classics. Benny Goodman's crossovers with a small group were legendary (still are). Just about all the most creative jazzmen (like the Marsalis family today) were familiar with the classical warhorses, and so was the public then (though whether it is now is debatable). Some of the ballad-like tunes by say, Rachmaninoff, became hits, and were redone over the years, a famous example being the Rach. 2nd Piano Concerto redone as "Moon Love", maybe a little goofy as a love ballad, notably done by Sinatra and Nelson Riddle, who along with Peter Nero, Henry Mancini, and… Andre Previn, made their own notable efforts at classically oriented arrangements of pre-rock hits. For the real affictionado, there is the very amusing version of Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody" done as the "Ebony Rhapsody" by the late, great Nat King Cole.

Perhaps because of rock's basic simplicity, crossover is a rarity, with 2 exceptions I can mention: I can recall a 1960's hit by the Toys girl group based on Bach (forget the song's name), and something by the Supremes based on I think the Rachmaninoff 3rd symphony. (Hard to remember titles after 30-plus years!) If anyone can think of other such hits please mention them. Also, the "Wall of Sound" designed by Phil Spector did give a lush semi-orchestral sound to some late 60's tunes (notably the Beatles' "Long and Winging Road"). Plus, remember the Moody Blues and "Art Rock" from the 60's, including say Procul Harem, among others:(say the Bach-influenced "Whiter Shade of Pale"), and Paul Simon's "American Tune" circa 1971,also based on JS Bach.

--SL Henkels

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Yes, musical skills aren't perfectly fungible; but the musicians I've known and listened to (and, since I live in Nashville and am an amateur choral singer in several genres, that's quite a few) have far less patience with genre boundaries than do critics, or for that matter marketing executives (for whom, at least in these parts, rigid genre boundaries are bread and butter). If you want to see the consequences of keeping up those genre walls, look at what's happening to classical music, even with these "contaminating" crossover projects. Isn't it better to encourage experimentation and call it a dud when it is a dud, than prejudge all attempts as doomed to failure? And, in so doing, further the ossification of a once-living musical tradition?

--David L. Carlton

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The article forgot to mention the hideous Elvis Costello album "The Juliette Letters" with the Brodsky Quartet. An avid Costello fan, I dutifully ran out to buy this monstrosity as soon as it was released. Fortunately, the School of Hard Knocks only costs about $19.95 when it comes to buying CDs. It is no wonder that the recording industry wants to slay Napster at all costs. Had I plunked down $2.00 to download a single before purchasing the album (which I would have gladly done), the company would have lost $17.95. That's all right, though. Now I listen to lots of live music, and buy practically none, having graduated from the aforementioned school. However, the recording industry cartel doesn't care. As long as they make their profits, it doesn't matter to them if the paper clip industry has greater revenues.

--Cato the Censor

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(7/13)

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