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Though hip hop has a habit of sampling strings for an added dose of cinematic sound, it’s not every day that audiences get to see a full orchestra playing Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West. Alex Stallings \u2013 a.k.a Stallitix of Patterns of Chaos<\/a> \u2013 is looking to change that. In partnership with Cincinnati youth outreach program Elementz<\/a>, Stallings co-composed and executive produced the first-ever live-streamed production of THRIVE’s Hip Hop Orchestra, and he hopes the project will live on as a series. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe wanted to do something cool that brings people who don\u2019t go see hip hop to a show, and people who don\u2019t come see classical music to a show,\u201d Stallings tells Audiofemme. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to mesh those different worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meshing the likes of Ye\u2019s \u201cDiamonds from Sierra Leone\u201d (which samples Shirley Bassey\u2019s \u201cDiamonds Are Forever\u201d) and Kendrick\u2019s \u201cLUST\u201d (from 2017 LP DAMN.<\/em>) into classical music is about breaking down each individual sound, says Stallings. \u201cHip hop itself sounds simple, but there\u2019s a lot of things you can add,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt\u2019s the process of finding what sounds like the [hip hop] sound. If the song has an ambient sound, let\u2019s see if violins can recreate that. Or, if you have a very low bass sound, let\u2019s get a synth player to replace that. It adds flavor to it. It\u2019s a very experimental process, finding that right sound and the right range for what sounds cool.\u201d The performance took place December 17 at Cincinnati’s Music Hall and is still streaming via THRIVE Cincy’s Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The performance was also co-composed by Preston Charles III and featured musicians from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and beyond \u2013 several of whom played steadily in the city before the pandemic.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful thing, bringing different people together to create something we\u2019re all equally passionate about,\u201d says Stallings. \u201cWe have a lot of diverse musicians: white, Black, women, men, people who identify as nonbinary. We have a palette of different people with different stories about why they like hip hop. They all come from different backgrounds. One person, their whole family plays classical music, and they just love hip hop. Another, their father was a rock musician in China, and they like hip hop\u2026 I think it\u2019s a beautiful thing; we\u2019re creating a conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stallings, who leads Elementz\u2019s THRIVE Cincy, first approached the hip hop-centric arts center with the idea not only to bridge fans between the two genres, but also to put the city’s musicians back in the spotlight. \u201cIt was very hard at the beginning of the pandemic, but we took the initiative,\u201d says Stallings. Elementz, which offers music and other classes and serves as a home-away-from-home for many Cincinnati kids, has taken their courses and outreach mostly online amidst COVID-19. \u201cI think this [performance] is one of the biggest buzzes we\u2019ve had, especially for Elementz online. I think everyone should be impressed; this will definitely lead to something bigger \u2013 maybe a program or a series that goes on for months at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Instagram<\/a>, Stallings has used THRIVE Cincy to support hip hop artists in the city while performances have been scarce. \u201cSince summer, we\u2019ve been putting out videos from different artists, playing their music and interviews with artists,\u201d he says. \u201cNext year, we\u2019re moving into a different direction, where we\u2019ll do one music video per artist and spotlight that. During the pandemic, there\u2019s been no places to perform, so this helps them out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for his own musical ventures, Stallings says fans can expect a new album from Patterns of Chaos \u2013 fronted by himself and Jay Hill<\/a> \u2013 next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s gonna be different than Freedom<\/a><\/em>,\u201d their 2018 EP, he says. “It\u2019s gonna be fun and it\u2019s gonna address some deeper issues like race, self and gender. It\u2019s gonna be very experimental; you couldn\u2019t really put us in a category, and that\u2019s what we want.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Follow Alex Stallings on Instagram<\/a> and THRIVE Cincy on Facebook<\/a> for ongoing updates.<\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Listen to orchestral versions of Kendrick Lamar’s “LUST,” Kanye West’s “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” and more by Cincinnati musicans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":39244,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8237],"tags":[11522,8270,5484,11520,840,8271,11523,11521],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/HOS-144-e1608582304393.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39241"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39241"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39481,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39241\/revisions\/39481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/HOS-53.jpg\")