- Last week, the Young Musicians Foundation, a nonprofit organization offering scholarships to thousands of young musicians in the Los Angeles area, announced an eye-catching free concert: “Yeethoven.” Pairing segments of Beethoven’s most readily recognizable works (his “Egmont” overture, his Fifth Symphony, and his String Quartet No. 14) with orchestrated snippets of Yeezus tracks (as arranged by composer/conductor Stephen Feigenbaum), the well-intentioned program made big promises out the gate: “As the concert progresses, music by the two will become increasingly integrated, ultimately resulting in a total mash-up of the two. If you find this concert far-fetched, we invite you to come and listen—see if you can tell where Beethoven ends and Kanye begins.” Reading this and watching the promotional video, I felt myself struggling to decide: Was this simply a bad idea, or a really, really bad idea?
I personally think these people are trying too hard, but eh, let 'em have fun. I think the worst idea is the name. Yeethoven? C'mon.
Yes, the name is atrocious. In fact, I found it very hard to believe that this wasn't farcical. This could be a Christopher Guest film.
It's not uncommon for musicians to blend genres. Enigma, for example, has an entire album that's basically a remix of Carmina Burana. A number of industrial musicians (Clint Mansell, Trent Reznor, Graeme Revell) branched out into scoring and musicians like Danny Elfman and Anne Dudley, stalwarts of motion picture scores, cut their teeth in new wave. That's not what's going on here, though. Here, someone has made the decision that Kanye West is already of a par with Beethoven in an ill-conceived attempt at hipness.
Its not a big deal, I mean it was probably a pretty fun project to put together. But making a musical connection between Kanye and Beet-thefuck-hoven is like duct taping a Prius engine to a Sherman tank and calling it a hybrid
If they release it on youtube I'll definitely listen to it a few times. There is often some really interesting stuff happening when genres mix. Lots of weird crap, but good stuff too. If you want to hear another great mix of genres, listen to the goat rodeo sessions - famous classical musicians playing bluegrass.