UCLA ethnomusicology graduate student Ben Harbert is featured today in the Daily Bruin. Ben is draws from the inspiration of classical composers and manifests it through his eight-piece electric guitar ensemble, Los Angeles Electric 8. Here is the first part of the article by Colleen Koestner.

Los Angeles Electric 8 strikes a new chord
Ethnomusicology student seeks to challenge customs and modernize the classical music genre

* Colleen Koestner (Contact)
* Published: Wednesday, January 23, 2008

The idea of Eddie Van Halen sharing a stage with Dmitri Shostakovich may be enough to ruffle the feathers of any blue-blooded classical music aficionado. Ben Harbert sure hopes so.

Harbert, a UCLA graduate student in the department of ethnomusicology, finds plenty of opportunities to challenge preconceived notions about music. As director of the band Los Angeles Electric 8, he reinvigorates the genre of classical music by reworking classical arrangements to be played by an octet of electric guitars.

“If (audience members) have a real conservative view of what a proper classical ensemble is, I think we shake that. I think we really start the conversation,” Harbert said.

The classical musician discovered the electric guitar’s versatility after he began to develop symptoms similar to those of carpal tunnel syndrome. Following the advice of Professor Peter Yates, Harbert gave his hand a rest by switching out his classical guitar for the electric.

“I (recovered) being able to practice and play this music on the electric guitar and really enjoyed the sound of it,” Harbert said.

“There’s a musicality to the electric guitar that the classical guitar can’t achieve.”

Harbert arranges a variety of pieces originally written for organs, string instruments and Indonesian gamelans, and the band’s repertoire ranges from Felix Mendelssohn to Nathaniel Braddock.

The unconventional combination of the music’s two genres has not succeeded in striking a chord with every audience member.

“We just performed a concert where some people left five minutes into our set,” said fellow bandmate and UCLA classical guitar performance grad student Chelsea Green. “I think they didn’t want to hear Mendelssohn played through a distortion pedal. I think our music might actually offend some people.”

Harbert is no stranger to creating music that offends his listeners. As a founding member of a band entitled OX…

[Photo courtesy of Ben Harbert]