Oreo Jones — the moniker of Indianapolis rapper, songwriter and Chreece founder Sean Michael Smith — is a devoted fan of The Notorious B.I.G.
So he jumped at the chance to audition as hip-hop soloist in the role of the late rapper for the Resurrection Mixtape — which mashes up the songs of The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur with the Resurrection Symphony by Gustav Mahler.
If you go
The Resurrection Mixtape
🗓️ 7:30 p.m. Jan. 14
📍 Hilbert Circle Theatre, 45 Monument Circle
🎟️ $15-64.80
The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra will perform Resurrection Mixtape under conductor Steve Hackman’s baton at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 14.
Hackman, who also composed and arranged the Mixtape, has gained renown by fusing different styles of music together (Tchaikovsky and Drake, Brahms and Radiohead, Beethoven and Beyonce). He has led performances at major orchestras such as those in San Francisco and Philadelphia, and the Boston Pops.
He premiered Resurrection Mixtape with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in 2022, as the debut of the symphony’s Uncharted series. (Upcoming in this series is Taylor Swift, the Symphony Era on June 3.)
Jones, 38, is embracing the challenge. He has performed with local ensembles before, but this will be his first time performing as a soloist with an orchestra.
“My aggressive, intensive preparation started a few days ago,” he said. “I’m listening to Biggie in my sleep. I’m diving in head first. Anything I do artistically, I give 150%.”
He said he feels something of a kinship with The Notorious B.I.G., aka Biggie Smalls, who — like Tupac Shakur — was gunned down in his mid-twenties. (Biggie was killed in a drive-by shooting on March 9, 1997, in Los Angeles, and Tupac Shakur was killed in Las Vegas the previous year.)
But for Jones, the music of The Notorious B.I.G. transcends his death.
“I feel like that was something that really resonated with me, just his style and his flow, and me just being a big dude and finding more out about hip-hop culture and his contribution and his style and his story,” said Jones. “I remember being like a kid and watching the “Sky’s the Limit” video, one of my favorite videos. It’s just something that is super beautiful to me,” he said.
Resurrection Mixtape will be the first time Jones performs other people’s material, but he’s up for it.
“Biggie was so lyrical, and having to just learn that material and those cadences and rhythms has been a cool challenge,” he said. “Sometimes there’s no drums at all. So you’re going to the rhythm and the cadence of just the strings. It’s just like looking at the art form in a different way.”
Bringing classical music to a contemporary audience
Steve Hackman, now 44, became a conductor at the age of 24. While he loved the classical repertoire that is still the main course for many contemporary orchestras, something was missing.
“I was looking out at the audiences, and I wasn’t seeing anybody my age,” he said. “I wasn’t seeing audiences that were reflective of the communities that we were playing in, and I didn’t feel like I was participating in a performing practice that felt relevant to today.”
He was searching for the shock of the new — what Mahler’s Second Symphony (aka the Resurrection) might have felt like at its premiere, or what Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring felt like in 1913. (Notably, the premiere of Stravinsky’s work caused a riot.)
He wanted the music to comment on the world as it is now, rather than how it was 200 years ago.
“I grew up listening to all kinds of music. No one was imposing any judgment on me of what musical form was superior to the other, and so I just loved it all,” Hackman said. “The closer I got to the elite level of classical music … the more distant I felt that the classical music world was becoming from the popular music world.”
So, he resolved to do something about that.
The remix logic of orchestral fusions
Unlike most symphonic conductors, Hackman has a working familiarity with hip-hop production techniques — how, for example, Jay-Z used “It’s the Hard Knock Life” from the musical “Annie” as a sample for “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem).”
Hackman draws on that remix logic in his own work, using similar principles to fuse rap and classical music.
“That’s what I love so much about hip-hop and rap, and why I think it continues to be one of the most innovative genres. Because they are completely agnostic when it comes to the music they are sampling,” Hackman said. “If it has the right feel, if it has the right soul, if it has the right vibe, if it’s intriguing in the right way, then they’ll sample it and use it.”
Then, there’s the matter of the orchestra players Hackman conducts. They are highly specialized in the classical repertoire, but maybe not so hip on what Kendrick Lamar or Drake have released lately. Your typical orchestra player also might not be aware, say, that Tupac Shakur rapped about more than gang lifestyle.
“In ‘I Wonder if Heaven Got a Ghetto,’ Tupac speaks so poignantly on the social justice issues in America,” Hackman noted.
He said his first orchestral fusions with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in 2022 were tough.
“But over time, I think orchestras have understood more and more what the mission of this work is,” Hackman said. “They’ve seen that I’m doing it with respect and with good intentions, and it’s now joyful to play with Indianapolis, whereas in the beginning it was hard.”
Orchestra rehearsal is like a potluck
Louisville-based Jecorey Arthur, 32, who is the soloist voicing the part of Tupac Shakur, also finds joy in marrying classical with hip-hop — and in the intensive rehearsal sessions.
“It’s like a potluck,” he said. “Everybody brings their best, and the result is community. Instead of our stomachs being full, our hearts are full.”
Arthur is a musician, community activist and veteran of many performances under Hackman’s baton, including previous performances of the Resurrection Mixtape at the ISO.
He said it feels special to combine the music of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls with the Resurrection symphony — which centers the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
“It sounds like you’re moving through time and space and bringing what they went through to today’s times,” he said. “When you hear the lyrics, you know this sounds like something that could have been written yesterday.”
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Dan Grossman is a Mirror Indy freelance contributor. You can reach him at dan@indycorrespondent.org.
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