When Blair Jackson first heard that the Georgia-based composer Lee Johnson had written a suite for symphony orchestra based on 10 songs by the Grateful Dead, he was unimpressed.
"There is a long and ignoble tradition of butchering rock songs by rearranging them in lame and unimaginative 'classical' settings. If you've ever heard some of the patently mediocre symphonic tributes to bands such as Pink Floyd, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, you know exactly what I'm talking about," fumed the biographer of the Grateful Dead's frontman, Jerry Garcia, in a fan-site article.
But upon hearing the Russian National Orchestra's recording of the piece on CD in 2007, Jackson's cynicism faded. Calling Johnson's Dead Symphony no. 6 "a work of great passion, depth, subtlety and imagination," the writer praised the composer for using such Dead favorites as "Mountains of the Moon," "Stella Blue" and "Sugar Magnolia" as jumping-off points for an original musical riff on the band's sound rather than slavishly arranging the famous tunes in the classical idiom.
On Sunday, classical music lovers and Deadheads will unite when conductor Marin Alsop leads the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra in the fourth live performance of Dead Symphony no. 6, the cornerstone of a concert commemorating the 14th anniversary of Garcia's death. The 12-movement work, which features improvisation and in-jokes such as a reference to the Dead's favorite warm-up song, the Italian ditty "Funiculi, Funicula," will be performed alongside Australian composer Matthew Hindson's techno music-inspired Rave-Elation (Schindowski Mix). The concert will be followed by a discussion with Johnson, longtime Dead publicist and biographer Dennis McNally and David Gans, host of the nationally syndicated "Grateful Dead Hour" radio show.
Over four decades, the Dead garnered a vast global following for its unorthodox approach to music. The group wove rock, folk, blues, reggae, gospel, bluegrass, psychedelic rock, jazz and country elements together and laced its concerts -- which it freely allowed fans to record -- with spiraling improvisations. Owing to its popularity, range and experimentalism, the Dead has spawned a thriving cover industry, with tribute albums existing in myriad genres including jazz ("Dark Star," "Swingin' "), a cappella ("Might as Well . . . The Persuasions Sing Grateful Dead") and reggae ("Fire on the Mountain: Reggae Celebrates the Grateful Dead").
