Classical and contemporary pop music don’t usually go together. But they will on Tuesday, in “Rock Symphonic - A Frost Student Cross-Collaboration,” a first-of-its-kind music event created, produced and performed by Frost School of Music students. Taking place at Gusman Concert Hall, “Rock Symphonic” is an audacious, ambitious partnership of singer-songwriters and their bands with a 32-piece classical orchestra. Call it School of Rock meets Leonard Bernstein.
The project is the brainchild of Frost School sophomores Winston Thayer, a Media Scoring and Production major, and Dawson Fuss, a singer-songwriter in the Modern Artist Development and Entrepreneurship (M.A.D.E.) program. They came up with the idea last spring, after Thayer saw a YouTube video of R&B artist Raye performing at Royal Albert Hall with a full orchestra.
“It was so cool,” says Thayer. “The scale and sound and quality of the musicianship were so massive. I thought ‘we have so many songwriters, so many orchestral musicians. We could 100% pull off a concert like this’.”
The pair thought that pairing contemporary and classical musicians on original music fit perfectly with their school’s ethos of collaboration, entrepreneurship, and cross-genre innovation. “Frost is so deep into collaboration and having students learn about everything,” says Fuss. “We thought it was a great way for Frost to show those capabilities.”
They put together a proposal and last fall began asking administration officials to sanction the production. Initially they were met by doubt. “We kept getting ‘this is a really big endeavor’,” says Fuss. Then the pair approached Dean Shelly A. Berg at a February screening of the hit film “Mean Girls,” hosted by the Frost School to celebrate the appearance of an actor in a Frost sweatshirt. A few days later, Dawson and Thayer were pitching their project in Berg’s office. The dean loved the idea, and not only said yes, but suggested they hold “Rock Symphonic” at Gusman instead of the smaller Clarke Recital Hall, enabling them to make the project even bigger.
“Rock Symphonic” features three M.A.D.E. singer-songwriters: Fuss, Brayton Russell, and their headliner, Nep, a third-year engineering student who has toured and had her music streamed millions of times), each performing a half hour set of original songs and backed by their own ensemble of drum, bass and guitar players. A 32-piece orchestra with strings, brass, woodwinds and percussion plays behind each singer and band. Everyone joins together in the finale to play Fuss’s song “I Cry Every Time.”
Fellow students quickly signed up to perform, write musical charts, organize rehearsals (and buy pizza for those rehearsals), and promote the show. Fuss designed a poster. The orchestra includes senior and graduate students from the Henry Mancini Institute and the Stamps Scholars Program, among the Frost School’s most accomplished classical musicians. They were recruited largely by sophomore violin major Georgia Burtt, the event’s orchestra master. Thayer and fellow media production student Jennifer Phan took on the complex task of writing orchestrations – re-arranging songs to incorporate the orchestra.
“All the artists just let us loose [on the arrangements],” said Thayer. “Jennifer took a two-minute song and made it four minutes, and added a whole middle section with orchestra.”
“A lot of student instrumentalists said this is so unique, I want to be part of it,” says Fuss.
Although Dan Strange, assistant professor and chair of the M.A.D.E. department, is officially the faculty mentor for “Rock Symphonic,” he’s been happy to be hands off.
“It’s all the students’ work,” Strange says. “I’m so proud of that.” He says Thayer, Fuss, and everyone in “Rock Symphonic” embody the entrepreneurial spirit and boundary-crossing musical originality nurtured at M.A.D.E. and the Frost School. “Our students are graduating into a world where they are creating new and exciting ways to present themselves as artists,” Strange says. “You want to foster more of these kinds of events.”
Fuss and Thayer are thrilled and grateful their school has enabled them to bring their idea to life.
“It’s very exciting,” says Thayer. “I’m so happy we have a music community that’s able to do something like this.”
Rock Symphonic takes place at 7:30pm Tuesday, April 30 at Gusman Concert Hall at the Frost School of Music. For more info and to reserve your free tickets go here.
