Canada's Bob Ezrin takes unique Croatian duo 2Cellos under his wing

The first time Canadian producer Bob Ezrin saw 2Cellos perform, the conditions weren't exactly optimal for the Croatian duo.

They were opening for Elton John in Orlando, with 16,500 people on hand who — Ezrin notes — had virtually no interest in watching 2Cellos. They weren't so much inhospitable as indifferent.

"The show starts with Elton on this big screen and his disembodied voice and he says: 'There's two young musicians that I'd like to introduce you to. They come from Croatia,'" Ezrin recalled.

"And when he said the word 'Croatia,' you could hear the whole audience go: 'Zzzz,'" he added, laughingly mimicking the crowd's collective snoring. "And then they hear 'Cellos' and everyone's on their BlackBerrys. They had tuned out. 'Ladies and gentlemen, the 2Cellos!' I think four hands applauded."

But Ezrin listened, and soon, so did everyone else.

"They come out on stage, they plug in and ... it's loud, it's powerful, and it's rocking. So from the first note, they got everyone's attention."

And Ezrin's, moreso than anyone else's.

He already had 2Cellos on his radar since watching a YouTube video of the classically trained duo — the jocular Stjepan Hauser and his more stoic partner, Luka Sulic — using their cellos for a rousing, powerful cover of Michael Jackson's nimble classic "Smooth Criminal," a clip that has now been viewed nearly 8.5 million times.

Not long after taking in their performance with John, Ezrin was driving from Nashville to Evansville, Ind., to meet the pair at a "fleabag motel" and start mapping out the tracklist for their major-label debut "In2ition." Released earlier this year, the album includes an impressive array of guests — including John himself on "Oh, Well," virtuoso guitarist Steve Vai on a cover of AC/DC's "Highway to Hell," "Glee" star Naya Rivera belting out Muse's "Supermassive Black Hole" and star Chinese pianist Lang Lang on Coldplay's "Clocks" — as well as interpretations of songs across all genres.

In addition to those songs, 2Cellos also interpret Rihanna's neon-hued dance smash "We Found Love," the Police's brooding classic "Every Breath You Take" and the Prodigy's frenetic "Voodoo People."

So what did the legendary Toronto producer behind such smashes as Pink Floyd's "The Wall," Kiss's "Destroyer" and Alice Cooper's "School's Out" see in the pair? For one thing, that they had the ability to illustrate the immense possibilities of an instrument typically associated exclusively with classical music.

"They're playing everything — they go from hip hop to high classical, so to be able to share that with kids is great because it shows them that music is a very broad thing and it also in a very kind of unconscious way shows them that they can express themselves in a very broad way," Ezrin said, seated next to the duo. "They don't have to be about one thing. They don't have to use one simple language."

Hauser has been playing cello since he was eight, Sulic since he was five. They met at age 14 at a summer-music camp in Europe.

"Straight away we found a chemistry," Sulic said. "I said: 'Oh, look at that lunatic. I want to play with him.'"

They were widely considered to be rivals, given that they were two phenomenal young cellists from the same small country. But they always considered themselves "great friends."

The idea to interpret pop songs began when they linked up in London two years ago.

"We were a bit fed up with playing only one kind of music, classical music," Sulic said.

Recently, the trio visited Toronto's Regent Park School of Music — an organization dedicated to providing low-cost music education to youth-in-need — to lead a workshop. With local kids hammering away competently on the steel drums, Sulic and Hauser loudly pounded Jackson's "Billie Jean" through their amps while Ezrin patrolled and offered advice.

This, they say, is part of the inspiration behind 2Cellos: stoking an interest in classical music among those who otherwise might not give the genre a chance.

"This is like a mission for us, to introduce classical music," Sulic said. "We get many emails and feedback from people who'd never heard of cello before or classical music in general."

Sulic and Hauser both remain interested in playing classical music in the future.

Still, their experiments in pop music don't always elicit support from peers in the world they've temporarily left behind.

"Especially with my old colleagues — you know, their mindset is still very conservative and they don't really appreciate different kinds of music," Sulic said.

Added Hauser: "They're not objective. They're just like, OK, this is classical music, it's worth more than any other music, just because it's classical. There's so much rubbish in classical music. There's (also) rubbish in pop music, but there's also some really great songs that can be compared with great classical masterpieces. What matters is the message and the emotion that goes through the song."

Here, Ezrin gets the last word.

"The snobbery of the classical world is very much like the snobbery of any eclectic pursuit. And all that comes from is fear.... It's not some feverish devotion to a higher standard, it's actually a fearful clinging to the fiction that this thing is actually of any importance. Because at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is those people in those seats applauding," he said.

"My message to the classical world: who wants to hang out with uptight people? Nobody."

With these three, that doesn't seem an issue. Their easygoing chemistry is obvious, such as when Ezrin goes off-script to ask whether the pair ever pursued the same woman. Hauser shakes his head and deadpans: "His taste is horrible."

Ezrin, too, gets digs in. After Hauser raves about the "legendary" producer, Ezrin is asked when 2Cellos surfaced on his radar.

"I thought you were going to say: 'When did they get on my nerves?'" he laughed. "I could say: instantly." (Source)