THE iPOD PHILHARMONIC

For Jason Lippman, a 32-year-old cellist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the choice to become a classical musician wasn't a career decision. It was simply inevitable, an impulse as natural to the Cincinnati native and self-described sports fanatic as the urge to watch his beloved Bengals hit the gridiron. Lippman began music lessons at 3 and recalls his parents "immersing" him and his brother in the works of Tchaikovsky and Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms to the exclusion of any pop culture stimuli. "We'd go to school and the kids would be talking about this or that song on the radio," Lippman said, "and we had no idea what they were talking about."

Were it not for his certainty at an early musical crossroads, however, Lippman might now be performing for screaming hordes on MTV's "Total Request Live" rather than wielding his bow in Walt Disney Concert Hall. In high school, Lippman's brother Jonathan and best friend, Drew Lachey, started a singing group called 98 Degrees -- a boy band that eventually went on to sell more than 10 million albums, rivaling 'N Sync for the hearts and hormones of teen girls. "At one point, my brother asked me to join," Lippman recalled. "But I knew it wasn't my thing. I had decided to be a cellist."

Of course, rare is the player who must choose between pop superstardom and a spot on the orchestra dais, even if it's for the L.A. Phil, called by New Yorker magazine "the most contemporary-minded orchestra in America." But for a generation of classical musicians that grew up navigating the Information Age's BitTorrent stream -- for whom MySpace.com and "American Idol" are as fundamental parts of daily life as roiling timpani -- orchestral music and popular culture are anything but mutually exclusive.

Symphony players have long held a reputation for being musical omnivores, but efforts to bridge the high-low cultural divide are especially conspicuous here in Los Angeles, beneath the torqued prows of Disney Hall and under the stewardship of conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, who has helped usher in an era of emphatically modern programming featuring contemporary composers.

In that light, consider an interesting young cross-section of the L.A. Phil -- Lippman, Ben Hong, Dana Hansen, Ariana Ghez, Johnny Lee -- whose various extracurricular interests include (but aren't limited to) improvisational jazz, gangsta rap, African drumming, celebrity trivia, Dodgers games and motorcycle riding. (Anyone wanting to meet them in person can do so from January through May at Casual Fridays, a concert series programmed with classical music neophytes in mind. Orchestra members perform sans tuxedos, and the concerts are followed by informal receptions at which orchestra and audience members can mingle over cocktails.)