Electro Goes Orchestral

Contemporary metal, R&B, and country have all done it: blending old and new music via symphonic rearrangements and backings. S&M, Metallica’s 1999 live album with the San Francisco Symphony, went platinum five times. John Legend teamed up with the KIPP Academy Orchestra a few years ago at the Teach for America Summit. But an electro-orchestral collaboration? That’s the future, beat freaks. This Friday, the New World Center will transform into a nightclub-like setting for Pulse: Late Night at the New World Symphony, a four-hour electro-classical hybrid conducted by Benjamin Shwartz and his Mercury Soul cohorts DJ Mason Bates and designer Anne Patterson. Together with the New World Symphony, Mercury Soul integrates contemporary classical music with electronica. Bates spins electro at 15-to-20-minute intervals before the music transitions to performances by New World Symphony fellows. The format repeats five times throughout the evening. New World’s vice president of communications, Craig Hall, says the event attracts “an interesting crowd” of young professionals and museum-type audiences who are culturally curious and eager to experience a new twist on classical music.
Fri., Jan. 20, 9:30 p.m., 2012