In Tuesday’s (5/18) Australian (Sydney), Ian Cuthbertson writes, “Stephen Webber has news for those who believe classical music and hip-hop could never meet. The professor from Berklee College of Music in the US has composed The Stylus Symphony, a full-length piece for turntable and orchestra. ‘The second movement is a rap—it’s a hip-hop movement,’ Webber said in Sydney yesterday. Visiting Australia for workshops about record production and ‘turntabling’—using a turntable, a stylus and a vinyl record as a musical instrument—Webber said that audiences for The Stylus Symphony have been mixed. … The composer, who won an Emmy for his 1997 soundtrack to a documentary on investigative journalism, I’m in the Truth Business, said hip-hop is important because it’s ‘urban folk music’. But he said getting turntable technique on to the curriculum at Berklee was a hard sell.”
Posted May 21, 2010
