Work is the title track of Wu-Tang Clan member’s upcoming classical album
Who needs verses? ? Let the bassoons speak for themselves. The title track of RZA’s upcoming orchestral album, A Ballet Through Mud, benefits from light and shade, give and take between the strings and woodwinds. It’s not classical music per se since it owes more of a debt to John Williams, John Barry, and even a little Ennio Morricone than it does to Mozart and Tchaikovsky, but the cinematic quality works in its favor. The full piece, one of 11 tracks on the album, debuted on Friday. The complete album is due out on Aug. 30.
The filmic quality of the music and its relative simplicity also speaks to its origins, since RZA – who is well known for his love of movies – first conceived of the work as a teenager growing up on Staten Island. Over the pandemic, he rediscovered notebooks he’d written as a kid and decided to reframe it all as a ballet. Conductor Christopher Dragon recorded the work with the Colorado Symphony. RZA is credited as composer and orchestrater.
“I have been composing my whole life, although I didn’t know initially that was what I was doing,” RZA said in a statement last month. “The inspiration for A Ballet Through Mud comes from my earliest creative output as a teenager, but its themes are universal — love, exploration, and adventure. I hope people use it to score their own lives, to transform a drive to the grocery store or sharing a meal with loved ones into something magical, to be inspired and let their imaginations take them into a different chamber, if only for a moment.”
The Colorado Symphony previously premiered A Ballet Through Mud last year.