Michael Bell posted this on the Grateful Dead Hour mailing list; I repost it here with his permission.
I listen to a fair bit of classical music and have studied music. I just got the Dead Symphony CD a few days ago and have listened to it twice now. As noted, most other orchestral versions of rock music can be pretty bad, but this one is actually quite good.
First of all, it sounds like Lee Johnson put a good deal of effort into this and that makes a big difference. He wasn’t afraid to take liberties with the music. The Dead’s music of course is very pliable and more open to a variety of interpretations as compared to most pop/rock music. I find the most successful parts of Dead Symphony are where he takes the most liberties with the songs. Related to this, much of the Dead repertoire works very well as instrumental music as we have seen with the various jazz versions of it, and of course the Dead’s own jamming. A lot of pop/rock stuff just doesn’t make it once stripped of the vocal parts.
The renditions of Here Comes Sunshine, To Lay Me Down, Stella Blue and China Doll are really beautiful. Johnson takes a fair bit of liberty with these, and Here Comes Sunshine is almost unrecognizable. That might bother some people, but I think it is a good thing. The “Just a little nervous from the fall” part of China Doll is really effective. Parts of these pieces sounded a bit to me like English composers of the early to mid 20th Century such as Ralph Vaughn Williams.
St. Stephen is dominated by brass and really well done, although I might have liked some more edge to it.
Blues for Allah sounds a little like it might have been written by Arnold Schoenberg, bookended by what sounds like a bit of inspiration from Darius Milhaud. Very fascinating overall.
The woodwind dominated arrangement of Sugar Magnolia is very charming, but I think I might have liked something more rocking and maybe a little more uptempo. It is still very nice though.
My main quibble with Dead Symphony is so much of it is at a slow tempo and the other parts don’t really get beyond a mid tempo. I love the slow parts, they are very beautiful, but a section or two at breakneck speed and some edge would have been really cool and added some contrast. Maybe something based on the Other One.
Anyway, if you are open to hearing different treatments of Grateful Dead music, such as the jazz versions that are out there, then I think you might like this.
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