In Sunday’s (5/17) Baltimore Sun, Tim Smith writes about a hot ticket featuring the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, music director Marin Alsop, and guest artist Trey Anastasio, guitarist and frontman of Jam-band revivalists Phish. “On Thursday, Anastasio will perform the East Coast premiere of Time Turns Elastic, a 30-minute piece that blends electric guitar and vocal solos into a rich orchestral fabric. The concert sold out three days after tickets went on sale. Anastasio joins a small but growing list of rock musicians inspired to expand their artistic reach from arenas and downtown clubs to symphony halls. But where some others—Elvis Costello, with his stylistically diverse ballet score Il sogno, for example—have attempted to write something outside their normal musical language, the Phish-erman’s ambitious work is unmistakably in his own voice, but expanded symphonically. … In addition to [Elvis] Costello, the BSO’s rocker roster includes Ben Folds and The Decemberists. … About 20 percent of those who bought BSO tickets for the first time to hear the Folds and Costello programs three years ago subsequently bought tickets to orchestral concerts—classical and pops presentations, either at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall or the outdoor Oregon Ridge venue.”
Posted May 19, 2009
