Kennedy has always been looked down upon by the classical music community, and I daresay Jaz Coleman doesn't even register on the snob radar. But this disc isn't about marrying silly class divisions, or even about mixing classical with rock and roll. It's about free creative reinterpretation of another artist's music. Kennedy and Coleman have taken these songs and made them all quite beautiful. Doors fans *should* admire it, Kennedy fans should like it (it's better than his Hendrix disc, which incidentally I did get to see him performing live a few years back), and heck, even Killing Joke fans should be impressed by Coleman's talent with classical arrangement which is very good, really very good indeed. The playing is tight and clean, so kudos must also go to the conductor Peter Scholes.

One more mention for the stunning "The Unknown Soldier" here - one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've heard in recent years.

Bottom line: if you're a Doors die-hard, you might want to listen to the samples first. Coleman and Kennedy take great liberties with the music, but as I said THAT'S what it's about - creative reinterpretation, not literal translation.


Riders on Rock   October 29, 2000
 6 out of 7 found this review helpful

Crossover efforts have recently captured a lot of attention, some deserved praise and some dismissal. Philip Glass's "Low" Symphony, the Finnish group, Apocalyptica, covering Metallica songs, and others have had some real success. It's not a new thing--Charles Ives famously incorporated popular melodies into his symphonies and other "classical" works, as did a number of European composers with their national musical traditions (Bartok, Kodaly, Mahler, Bruckner, etc.). Jaz Coleman attempts something like that with nine songs by the Doors, and for me, at least, he succeeds with about 7 of the 9. I am not convinced the name "concerto" is appropriate, but I bet he wanted to stay away from the more appropriate "suite," which would have sounded much too light. No question that Coleman is fortunate to have Kennedy and the Prague orchestra in his camp--the sheer brilliance of Kennedy's solos, coupled with the excellent orchestral playing, make even the weakest links of this music sound good. "Light My Fire," "Strange Days," "The End," and the title section are all smashing demonstrations of Kennedy's ability to send that music home. The weaker moments keep me from giving this a 5, but that should not dissuade anyone from getting this album--it's worth hearing, worth owning.


Soulless Whitebread Distilled from Nihilistic Rock   January 27, 2001
 4 out of 10 found this review helpful

You must be a child of the sixties if you know the Doors song Riders On the Storm. If Kennedy's performance of it sounds rather different than when you first heard it, then congratulations, you made it through that era with the vast majority of your brain cells intact. But if you couldn't recognize the sample provided by Amazon, don't worry--there's not much of the original in this short extract at all. Yes, producer/arranger Jaz Coleman (no relation to your reviewer) and bad-boy violinist Kennedy (formerly known as Nigel Kennedy) have taken the rebellious, rough and drug-addled rock of Jim Morrison and laundered it with the bleach of crossover. There may be some of us from that generation who find this process a sort of reconciliation, seeing the anger, frustration, and alienation dissipated with time. Coleman himself, who is undoubtedly sincere, refers to the project, in which nine Doors songs are re-arranged for violin and orchestra, as a reconciliation and dedicates the CD to all those who fought in Vietnam. But I'm afraid I can't help feeling a wild incongruity between what the original songs were and this pale imitation. Don't get me wrong, it isn't that the idea of crossover itself is bad, although it does seem to be one of the more crowded of aesthetic graveyards, churning out undead horrors with regularity. Certainly classical composers have turned to popular and folk music for inspiration since the medieval period, and popular music has drawn from the classics with sucess. But the conditions for this kind of thing to work require an enormous talent on the behalf of the interpreters, a real understanding of the original and an ability to make the transformation totally convincing. It is not enough that the original is presented in new clothes, but the original must be seen as appropriate in some way to that attire. T-shirt-and-jeans rock is usually entirely out of place in tuxedo and bow-tie classical wear. It seems to me that all that made this originally worth listening to has been smoothed away. The Doors weren't known for their instrumental prowess, their melodic or harmonic writing, or for Jim Morrison's singing voice. Instead their fame came from the way their music and particularly their lyrics captured the emotion of the time. All this is missing from the bland instrumental Kennedy/Coleman renditions. Jim Morrison, the Lizard King, must be turning over in his grave! This was a guy who would rather risk career meltdown and snub Ed Sullivan than change a single word on "Light My Fire". Although the liner notes tell us that the three surviving band members gave their blessing to the project, I can only imagine that this reaction is financially motivated, as they will get paid for every radio performance and CD sale. After all, these are the guys who sold "Light My Fire" for commercials behind Morrison's back. And as far as artistic integrity goes, even Nigel Kennedy is suspect. When interviewed about his work performing Jimi Hendrix tunes, he decried the Kronos Quartet as making "the capital error in that they overlooked the rhythm of 'Purple Haze'." Certainly the Doors' rhythm is missing from many, even most, of these arrangements. And of the idea of rock with an orchestra, and crossover in general, I quote Kennedy from the same interview "...sometimes it gets self-conscious...hopefully he [Hendrix] would have steered himself away from thinking, 'Oh, gotta have a symphony orchestra here to make it better' or something... He was talking about all this orchestral stuff but sometimes I think it can be a bit sorry when musicians start trying to 'get' classical or start trying to 'get' jazz. It can be a little bit of a mistake." In my opinion, Kennedy was right, and it is a shame that he didn't listen to himself. I certainly understand wanting to reach out to perform music that you haven't done before, and I applaud Kennedy's openmindedness. But when I played this CD for my family, it seemed so inappropriate that my wife burst out in laughter when she recognized the tunes. Not knowing the originals, my children wondered if it was a soundtrack, and indeed the arrangements are very slick and Hollywood. Certainly a lot of people have nostalgic feelings for the 60s, but surely listening to a reissue of the original LPs is a better way to recapture the memories than listening to this artificially sweetened, flavourless remake. Listen to the sample of "Light My Fire"--it's a joke. As you listen, ask yourself if anyone's fire could ever be lit this way.