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)
