If there’s one thing composer Steven Hackman wants you to know about his growing collection of “mash-up” compositions — where he joins celebrated master works from classical artists like Brahms seamlessly with works from contemporary pop culture gods like Radiohead — it’s that this is no gimmick. Rather, it’s work that flows from a fundamental part of who he is.
“I think when people view my work, at least these mash-ups, I think they get scared because they think it’s a substitute for presenting a regular classical concert,” Hackman says. “Nowhere am I trying to say you should never listen to Brahms’ first symphony just how it is, or the Bartók Concerto for Orchestra — I’m hoping that people want to go listen to it from hearing my piece. I certainly hope these pieces are effective in gaining new audiences, that maybe they can be what a music class in second grade was to somebody or what Hooked on Classics was for someone else.”
Hackman has formed a career of making classical music appealing to a new generation, primarily through the significant hand he’s played in developing a new musical landscape forged from the integration of classical and popular repertoire. He showcases his genre-blending style as the creative director of the FUSE series at the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and has worked extensively with fellow mash-up aficionados Time for Three.
Hackman is also the music director of the Colorado Music Festival’s Music Mash-Up Series. He will lead the CMF Orchestra for the third summer in a row as they kick off the Mash-Up Series on July 7 with an original Hackman composition fusing Bela Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra with select works from Icelandic pop icon Björk’s first three albums.
And while Hackman’s fusions have never pulled from what anyone would call simplistic source materials, he says this particular work was especially challenging.
“The source material is the most complicated and dense and challenging from the start — just the Bartók Concerto for Orchestra, any orchestral player or conductor or musicologist will tell you that’s an incredibly difficult piece to analyze, to execute, to understand. It’s his masterpiece,” Hackman says. “Björk of course… these are no traditional pop songs. Her music is extremely intricate, rhythmically and modally complex. The productions are dense. I knew that going in, but when it’s day one and you open up the score, it’s pretty daunting.”
Hackman chose to work with material from Björk’s first three major label studio albums: 1993’s Debut; 1995’s Post, which featured the now-classic songs “Army of Me,” “It’s Oh So Quiet” and the critically acclaimed “Hyperballad”; and 1997’s Homogenic, which many who came of age in the ’90s might remember for its surreal Michel Gondry-directed video for “Bachelorette.”
It may seem at first blush that the works from Icelandic-born Björk (born in 1965) and Hungarian native Bartók (who died in 1945) are quite different — perhaps too different to fuse. But for Hackman the similarities between the two artists were unmistakable.
“I think Björk and Bartók explore very extreme ranges of emotion in their music, ranging from sublime to terrifying. Their palette of colors and tambour is also extreme, and just so avant garde and so creative,” Hackman says. “You think of Björk’s albums and there’s one that’s almost all vocal, now she’s got a brass choir. Any sound you can think of, I feel like she’s willing to interface with that sound. Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, as you could gather from that title, he’s looking to showcase what the instruments of the orchestra are capable of, not only as soloists and individual entities, but collectively. I thought the colorfulness and kind of that brilliant avant-garde nature of these artists made them right for this.”
Indeed, both artists are known for their eclectic, exploratory musical styles. Bartók is famous for his use of Eastern European folk songs in his original compositions (and as such, is a founder of modern ethnomusicology), while Björk’s music might aptly be described as genre agnostic, exploring electronic, rock, hip-hop and even classical styles in her catalog.
During the Bartók and Björk mash-up, singers Malia Civetz, Carla Kihlstedt and Kristin Slipp will join the CMF Orchestra. And while it was tricky finding vocalists for the program, Hackman says his intent wasn’t to find singers who could emulate Björk’s singular vocal style.
“My key is finding someone who is an artist in their own right, has their own individual sound, has the musicianship to handle this kind of complex repertoire,” Hackman says.
When the CMF Orchestra takes the stage at Chautauqua Auditorium on July 7 for the Bartók Björk show, it might be hard to believe the orchestra has had only two days to rehearse as a group — a total of five hours on the mornings of July 5 and July 7.
“It’s pretty intense,” Hackman says. “And it’s crazy for a premiere like this. You need time to put the Bartók Concerto together by itself, and then you’ve got all these twists and turns.”
For the other two concerts of the Mash-Up Series, Hackman will lead an updated version of his Copland and Bon Iver mash-up, which will feature Fort Collins-based band SHEL, and finish the series with musician Storm Large and her show “The Crazy Arc of Love.”
“This is my third summer with these musicians and each summer they’ve gained more understanding of where I’m coming from,” Hackman says. “I’m really glad we’ve got kind of a relationship going on now. I just think it’s going to be an adventure. It already has been with the writing but now putting this together, it’s going to be really fun.”
