When I was a student, spending most of my time behind a piano, composition assignments, and various studios across campus, I had this thing the London Symphony Orchestra offered called the “Bottomless Pass.” Weighing in around fifty bucks, this magic card grants (poor) students access to every single concert of the Orchestra season. While I had the card, I indulged in the LSO’s “red hot” series, a handful of “integrated” hybrid concerts that explored the cultural boundaries between “pop” and “high art” by integrating the two on the same stage, including Orchestra x ACDC, Orchestra x Bachman Turner Overdrive, KISS, etc. The ultimate goal was to see what interesting stuff the collaborations could turn up while attracting a youthful audience that just might discover a love for the orchestra once they get there.
What strikes me as perhaps similar in intent–although maybe it’s more of the heart given they are hovering over a mountain of Pabst Blue Ribbon in the above photo– is this rendition of Kanye’s “All Of The Lights” by the Portland Cello Project. Kanye already provided the scoring framework with the instrumental interlude to the track, but the PCP has stretched the symphonic palette out over five minutes of the entire song with flutes, timpanies, and trumpets all in.
You can check out the video after the skip, and head over to the PCP’s website to check out some of their other interesting projects and accompanying puppeteer videos.