Thanks for sharing that, Amos. Until recently, Mark O'Connor lived just north of us in San Diego County and did a lot of his composing here. He shared some of this approach with local popular audiences and with the local symphony and summer pops crowd as well. I think he may be onto something.

Preservation and fidelity to an original model are paramount to a lot of symphony and folk musicians and fans. Those are worthy goals. No one wants to lose musical history. But history is being written every waking moment. The great composers whose works we still hear today worked with folk themes from their times and locales. You can hear roots of Strauss waltzes in the rhythms and tempos of the "Oompah bands" of German beer halls, for example. He just tamed, manipulated and expanded a popular form in order to connect with a larger audience. There is a treasure trove of musical Americana waiting to be mined.

Two hundred years hence, if humans haven't all departed the scene, they may well be listening as raptly to O'Connor as previous generations did to Mozart.