Rock on

Can Classical Music and Rock really come together? The efforts that have been made from both sides over the past 30 years have not exactly been encouraging: Too many "art" projects have suffered from the fact that they were out to evangelise young listeners and simply didn't have a clue what Rock was all about. And too many bands were simply out to have a full-sized orchestra play their tunes and make them seem more "serious" and "important".

This has not kept Youth & Classic, a Swiss Concert organisor, from trying again. Their basic premiss was to forget about Cross-Over and keep the two worlds strictly seperated (not a bad idea to begin with). They approached young and aspiring rock band elfish as well as young and aspiring pianist Salome Scheidegger (see the feature on her wonderful first CD on these pages) and convinced them to play together at Miller's Studio in Zürich. Now, five-piece elfish will be rocking the house with their slightly unconventional, emotional and suprising songs and then make way for Salome, who will enter the stage for Schubert, Mozart, Gerschwin and Chopin. Both sides have been really excited about the project. Says Scheidegger: "I want to perform a "pure" classical concert program, so that this new audience can get an insight into this world." The idea was not to feature two full-length concerts but rather to "loosen up" the performance of Elfish afterwards."

It all sounds like something that makes perfect sense: Everyone involved is about the same age, there's a lot of open-mindedness and the musical program presents each world from a great angle. So if you can, head over to Zürich on September 29th - the concert starts at 20:00.

Homepage: Salome Scheidegger
Homepage: elfish
Homepage: Millers Studio
Homepage: Youth & Classic