Pulitzer Prize winning rapper Kendrick Lamar and classical music composer Igor Stravinsky have much more in common than a shared birthday. Both musicians were born on June 17 (albeit 105 years apart), have won multiple Grammy awards and will have their music performed by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in its April 25th concert.
The program, Stavinsky X Kendrick Lamar, is a fusion of the two artists’ work composed by Steve Hackman, who will conduct the performance. The pairing might sound unconventional, but for Hackman it makes perfect sense.
“Stravinsky and Kendrick Lamar, beyond sharing a birthday, which is wild, they share this inventiveness, this explosive creativity, this virtuosity, this ability to paint with their music,” he said.
Pairing the music of two generational talents is his way of expanding the world of classical music to a wider, younger and more diverse audience.
“Great music is great music to me,” he said. “I've always listened to classical and popular music in parallel from the very beginning. Turning the corner between the two was not a radical shift for me. These two things have much more in common than we think.”
Hackman’s work creating these fusions goes back to about 2010. His dream is to close a perceived gap between classical music and contemporary pop and hip hop.
“[I want to] make the argument that artists like Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé and Radiohead are the Stravinsky and Beethoven and Brahms of today, and that their music belongs on a concert hall stage just as much as it belongs in a club or in a stadium or in your headphones or at the Super Bowl,” he said.
Early on these pairings and performances were controversial, but that’s changed over time.
“This was such a new and disruptive and seemingly appalling concept to combine Stravinsky with rap or to combine Beethoven with Beyoncé, but the world has changed since the work started and people are perhaps now a little more willing to look at concepts or artistic ideas that are outside the box of what they're used to because they realize we have to evolve,” Hackman said.
He’s changed too. Now instead of trying to change people’s minds about the music, his goal is to compose and execute these fusions at the highest level that shows his respect for the original artists and the musicians he conducts.
“Great music is great music to me. I've always listened to classical and popular music in parallel from the very beginning. Turning the corner between the two was not a radical shift for me. These two things have much more in common than we think,” Hackman said.
DETAILS: Steve Hackman conducts Stravinsky X Kendrick Lamar at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 25 at Morton H. Meyerson Hall, 2301 Flora St., Dallas. Tickets start at $68.
Got a tip? Email Marcheta Fornoff at mfornoff@kera.org.
KERA News is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider making a tax-deductible gift today. Thank you.
