A John Zorn-led (IIRC) experiment in musicality. The premise goes as follows: virtuoso musicians who are all specialists (that is, skilled only in their instrument of choice) are led into the recording studio, handed an instrument they don't know how to play and the corresponding sheet music to that instrument's part of various pieces of famous classical music.

They practice as best they can on the unfamiliar instrument (frequently of an entirely different musical family - violinists playing trumpets and clarinetists assigned the piano - that sorta thing) all afternoon and at the end of the day what they've come up with is recorded.

The strange thing is, they don't sound much worse than any given high school band. The coup de grace is the application of a harsh and utterly inattentive robot drum beat over all the tunes in a very "Hooked on Classics" twist.

Fun and postmodern. Perhaps not so fun to listen to (textually) if you don't know what's going on, but a marvel to hear if you have that context.

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