Switched on Pop - The Scandalous Sounds of Bridgerton (w Kris Bowers)

Episode Date: February 9, 2021

The Netflix series Bridgerton has hooked audiences with its bodice-ripping sex scenes, a colorblind approach period drama casting, and a soundtrack featuring recreations of modern bangers from pop stars like Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish arranged in the style of a classical string quartet. By bringing modern melodies into the proper world of Regency England, the show reminds us that classical music wasn’t always so stuffy and solemn. In its time, it trafficked in the same scandal as modern pop. Alongside these classical-pop mashups, Bridgerton serves up its own ravishing score from composer Kris Bowers, who joins to break down how he made the past pop. Songs Discussed: Vitamin String Quartet - Thank U, Next, Bad Guy, In My Blood Kris Bowers - When You Are Alone, Flawless My Dear, Strange Maurice Ravel - Tombeau de Couperin, Prelude Clara Schumann - Der Mond Kommt Still Gegangen Johannes Brahms - Symphony No 3 in F Major Op 90, Mvt 3 (for Four Hand Piano) More Read Maria Popova on the letters of Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann and Adrian Daub on Four Handed Monsters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Euforia of Calvin Klein, the new collection elixir, three new elixires perfume intense, solar, magnetic, ball. Pulsa in the banner, do the quiz, and discover your fragrance euphoria. Welcome to Switch Don Pop.

I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm a songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie, this week, we have to talk about the Netflix series, Bridgeton. Do we? We do. This show is taking the world by storm

for a number of reasons. Okay. I was told I wasn't supposed to watch it. I think my wife just wanted to watch it by herself. I think there's a few things that have made people obsessed with the show. One is for the aforementioned, its sexy take on the aristocratic culture of Regency England. Two, it's progressive approach to casting. Unlike a lot of historical dramas who claim authenticity is the reason that they have an all-white cast. Yeah. Bridgeton has a really diverse set of actors playing the roles of these 19th century British aristocrats. And it's really refreshing to see. Yep.

Third, and this is the one that really matters to us, is the score of this show. And by score, you mean music, not the risque nature of the show, people scoring. Oh. I get it. That's funny. Oh, thanks. Yes, the music in Bridgeton has. gone viral and it's helped make classical music fun again. Okay, this is neat. I assume you have

been going on a real deep dive into the classical score of Bridgeton then. Indeed, I have, Charlie. I've had to watch certain scenes over and over and over again just to make sure I've really got the musical quality of them, right? And I did watch at least the beginning of the show. And I was definitely compelled and the music did bring me in as well. You're going to be binging the rest of it as soon as this conversation is over. Some of the music you get is kind of what you would expect. It's like classical greats, Mozart, Shostakovich, the big wigs. Some of the music is original compositions by the composer Chris Bowers.

And I actually speak to him in the second half of our program. Get a deep conversation with him. Okay, cool. And then Bridgeton also features classical style arrangements of pop hits by Sean Mendez, Maroon 5 and Billy Elish That's good I can see if I have a smile on your face that you're feeling this I love that this is really small and intimate

I think it's a string quartet I'm just that's what I'm hearing and Oh yeah But it's done in a great chamber hall So it has the expansive quality It feels like a really fun way of adapting Pop songs which can maybe be over the top This is a great way of content

dancing them and making them feel approachable from an 18th century point of view? Are we in the 18th century? Where are we? 19th century. Early, early 19th century. 19th century. Okay. Yeah, and you're not alone. The vitamin string quartet who made these string quartet arrangements that we're listening to have seen their streaming numbers jump by 350% since Bridgeton came out. So clearly this classical pop music is resonating with people. It's connecting, yeah.

And I for one, love it because it reminds us that classical music, which I think we think of as maybe kind of stuffy and solemn now, was the pop music of its day. Yeah, right. It was sexy. It was scandalous. It was entertaining. Like, take an early scene in Bridgeton. It's where the show's two main characters first meet. Of course, that's Daphne Bridgeton and Simon, the Duke of Hastings. I don't need to tell you that, Charlie. They're in a grand ballroom.

Everyone is dressed to the nines in the height of Regency fashion. There's bright, glittering chandeliers shining overhead. And the music? Well, let's have a listen. Do you recognize that one, Chuck? Yeah, for sure. This is Thank you, Next, my Rana Grande. And it's a good choice for a cover,

especially with an artist like Arandi, who has updated old works and made them new with my favorite things. So this is kind of like taking something very of the moment and then bringing it nicely into the past. It's such a fun moment in the show, I think, because you might not register at first that you're listening to a cover of this Ariana Grande hit. You're just so deeply in the world, this historical world,

and then all of a sudden your brain goes, wait a minute. I know that song. And I think of all the arrangements, this one might work the best. So I thought we could listen to the original Ariana Grande song and then think about how it's being adapted for string quartet in a way that really takes advantage of the instrumental capabilities of this specific ensemble. So why don't we play the very beginning of the original Ariana Grande recording?

What are you hearing there? Sort of lo-fi, electric piano. know it's got this digital hissy, bit crushy thing that's happening to it. So many of the sounds of contemporary pop music are electronic. That's right. Or they're manipulated by electronics in some way. Absolutely. So how do you take this purely acoustic form like the string quartet and capture that electronic hiss?

You use the noisy bow sounds of a violin to create additional texture. over just the individual pitches. That's what I would do. And that's exactly what the vitamin string quartet does. They bust out something called a harmonic. Very eerie, a little delicate. At the very beginning, that almost ghostly high tone we're hearing, it almost sounds a little electronic even.

Because it has this, like, glitchiness in it. Yeah, exactly. That's produced by putting your hand down on the string of the violin, like you're going to play any normal note. But then you lightly touch the string with your other finger, which kind of interrupts the tone. It sends it up into this super high register. Technically, you're actually changing the sine wave of the note and muting the fundamental tone. So you just hear the higher, softer overtones.

What it does is create this effect that is kind of otherworldly and seems to bridge the very old world of the string quartet in the very new world of Ariana Grande. It also reminds me a little bit of Ariana's voice because she's known for being able to pull off a whistle tone, the highest, highest, highest register. And it feels like it's almost a nod to her vocal abilities as well. I love that. Let's move into the first verse of the original.

Thank you next. I thought I'd end up with Sean, but he wasn't a match, but some songs about Ricky. Now I listen and laugh Even almost got married And for beat I'm so thankful I'm like, wait How do you recreate a beat drop

With a string quartet? Yeah, you have this muted drumming in the background And then this very gliding 808 That's kind of going All over the place I don't know how you do that with a quartet Let's see what the VSQ does this is really cool you have the highest string playing the melody makes sense and then on the right side there is this lower string which is doing the rhythm of the drums in this kind of like action string like sequence and then where the 808 big gliding thing would come in instead we have another even lower string on my left side which is playing this rhythm which is in

contrast to the drum rhythm and it creates this sort of dance-like quality, which is appropriate because we're in a ballroom in Bridgeton at a dance. Totally. Yeah. We don't have an 808, but we have a cello. Yeah. Oh, why not? And this is like the joy of the string quartet is you have these four voices, like you were saying, that having a dance with each other, like having a conversation. Let's get to know these instruments for a second.

Let's go from high to low. We have two violins. They're the highest instruments. Then we have the viola. That's a little bit lower than the violin. And then we have the cello. This is the one you play. It stands up.

You put your legs around it. Talk about erotic. I mean, what's so clever about the string quartet arrangement of Thank You Next is the way it cycles through all these different instrumental voices. Like in that first verse, we're listening to the violin, the highest instrument. playing Ariana Grande's vocal melody. But then when we move into the pre-chorus of the song, that melody gets past to the next lowest instrument, the viola.

It's kind of a subtle shift, but you can hear that a new instrument has taken up that vocal melody. It's appropriate, a little throatier kind of sound. Ariana Grande's got a huge vocal register, so why not bring her melody down into that viola range? Cool. And while the viola is playing, we get more kind of electrical. electronic effects. We get these plucked accompaniments from the other instruments. The pizicado. Pitsicado, yeah, exactly. It almost, it sounds like a drum machine a little bit.

Like a cheap drum machine. Yeah, I like that. Then we get to the chorus of Thank You Next, and this is a moment where every instrument is playing together in this contrapuntal dialogue. It's so sparse, but there's yet so much action happening at the same time. Surprisingly, it really lends itself to the kind of 19th century dances that you would be doing in Regency England. Are you for real? Yeah. All of the sudden, whereas the original thank you next is really good for like getting down on the dance floor. Like just popping and locking, dropping it, jukeying, freaking, doing the spank, doing the bump, you know, whatever, whatever.

Whatever suits you fancy. This string quartet, all of the sudden, you can picture everyone doing la boulon. Like the most trendy dance of Regency England. This couple's dance where you carefully go around in a circle and pass off partners. All we needed to do was just change the instrumentation a little bit. That's all we've done. We haven't really altered the melody of the song fundamentally. And all of a sudden, we're in 19th century England doing this couple's dance.

It's kind of like as the voices in the quartet get passed from instrument to instrument, the dancer has also passed from person to person. Exactly. And there's one more instrument that hasn't really taken to the fore yet. And that's the cello. Chello. And the cello gets the second verse of this song.

You know, I feel like I can hear the lights dim low, focusing on one dancer. They're spinning around. The music is sort of both hyper-focused, but really dizzying at the same time because all of those plucky strings are moving and dancing all around your head. It's a smart way to navigate,

I think the biggest challenge when you're arranging a pop song for a classical ensemble. Repetition. Exactly. Yeah. Something that is a value in popular music. You groove. You want to hear the same thing over and over again.

Yeah. And classical music doesn't, you're going to get a little bored if it's just a violin playing that melody from beginning to end. I mean, I see what you're saying here because the melody is pretty reduced. In the verse, it's pretty simple.

And it's a phrase which gets repeated again and again. and oftentimes what gives it life is the changing lyrics. Here we just get very similar notes. Someone like, I don't know, a Beethoven is going to take those little motifs and constantly stretch and change them and mutate them

so that each individual moment that you hear those, you're going to get something unique and you don't do that in pop music. Right. The melodic motifs generally stay pretty close and similar to the platonic ideal of that melody. Like you said, this arrangement works really well

in this scene. I think that's because all the things we've been discussing, but also something larger. You know, in this repressed British society, music is the place where you can sublimate your inner emotions and some of your more illicit feelings, some of your more your sexual feelings, frankly. And there's a really striking scene in Bridgeton where our protagonist, Daphne, explores her sexuality through the piano. which at the time was this instrument that was supposed to be very delicate. It was one of the few instruments that women were allowed to play, actually, because it wasn't very physical and it was thought to be very proper. But she turns it into this vehicle of sexual self-exploration,

touching the keys of the piano as she learns to touch herself and composing this melody, which sort of embodies her own loss of innocence. Wow. It's a piece by the show's composed. Chris Bowers, aptly titled When You Are Alone. I like how the music has shifted from a sort of classical language to a much more romantic-era language. You could see Clara Schumann playing this on piano. It is big, it is rich, it is emotive.

It doesn't have that restrained, limited quality that the earlier string quartet might have. Yeah, it's a reminder of how erotic classical music. could be how scandalous it could be one of the key plot points in Bridgeton is that there's this gossip monger named lady whistle down she publishes these gossip columns and she creates a stir because she names names in her pieces which is just like Ariana Grande did right and thank you next right Ariana and her co-writers weren't sure if they should be this brazen including the names of her famous exes in this song, Big Sean, Pete Davidson, Mac Miller.

Right. But she did. And she created a stir just like Lady Whistledown, if you will. Oh, the parallels. And just like Ariana Grande had relationship drama and put it into her music, so did these 19th century romantic composers. And you just mentioned Clara Schumann. She is one of the most incredible.

composers from this period. And she's really good at capturing this feeling of love that is denied. Unrequited love. Love that isn't fulfilled. She has a song called The Moon Rises Silently.

And check out the final stanza, Charlie. It goes, Down in the valley, the window's sparkle of my beloved's house, but I, in the darkness, gaze silently out into the world. that is dark.

I feel like that could be a lord lyric on melodrama or something. Totally. Total lord lyric. Yikes. Every time you think it's going to finally resolve, instead it takes this left turn. Like this relationship's not going to happen. Well, Clara had good reason to be in her feelings because her husband, Robert Schumann, the famous composer and pianist. he ended up in a mental institution.

He had a nervous breakdown brought on probably by the symptoms of syphilis. Oh, boy. And all of the sudden, Clara is a single mother of multiple children, and she's the sole breadwinner. She's supporting her family through concerts and publications. It's amazing. And then a young composer comes into her life. It's Johannes Brahms. Wait, I didn't know this.

This is one of the... Are you sure this is not a Shonda Rhymes original? No, this is one of the great love triangles of the annals of classical music. And no one really knows exactly how it went down. Brahms was an ardent admirer of both Clara and Robert. And when Robert was put in an institution, Brahms helped Clara. He supported them. He was there.

He was there emotionally. And even after Robert died shortly thereafter, he and Clara continue this relationship that verges right between friendship and love. And no one really knows the exact nature of it. Oh, man. You're saying there's no, like, perfect archive of a journal or a letter or anything that reveals the truth? There's lots of letters. There's a great article by Maria Popova in her brainpicking's blog where she, She excerpts some of them, and they are very ardent.

Yeah. But I'm guessing this is a period in history in which divorce and remarriage didn't really... It was not a thing in Western Europe. It was definitely uncommon, and we might not have access to the inner lives of these people, but we do have the music they left. Ah, yes. And, you know, once again, the piano is a really important site of... exploring love and lust.

Particularly this genre called forehand piano. Two players on one piano? Two players on one piano, exactly. And you can already imagine the erotic possibilities of this arrangement. And the author, Adrian Dobb, has a whole book about the erotic politics of four-handed piano in the 19th century. It's called forehanded monsters, and it's really fun. And he writes about this arrangement that Brahms does of his third symphony for four-handed piano. Here's the original symphony.

So he takes his symphony and writes a version of it for four-handed piano. And what's really interesting is the way that this piece starts. Because there's two pianists sitting next to each other. And the pianist on the left, it's their left hand. and then the pianist on the right, it's their left hand, and then the pianist on the left, it's their right hand, and then the pianist on the right is their right hand. So their hands are kind of interlaced as you begin this piece.

Ooh. So if I was sitting next to you, if I was on the right, I would be tucking my left hand kind of beneath and betwixt your right hand in order to play this thing. I don't even know if this is necessary. but it sounds enticing. Sounds kind of like the original version of two singers up on one microphone really close. And you're like, oh, that's dangerously close.

It's dangerously close, and it doesn't end there. As this piece continues, sometimes he has you crossing hands with your partner. Sometimes you're even playing the same note as your partner, the same key. And sometimes he brings the hand so close together that it seems like they're almost going to touch. And then they scurry back away from each other. It's like the whole arrangement is this lover's dance, this back and forth. And you would never really know unless you were playing it. And then all of a sudden it has this whole other level of meaning.

I could just imagine that it feels almost voyeuristic to see this performed in a concert hall. It's much more than just playing the piano. Oh, totally. Yeah, you would be fanning yourself. and clutching your pearls watching this. And I think it's another great example of how Richardson makes us realize that classical music isn't just this somber

and stuffy historical footnote. It's got all of the drama, all of the scandal, all of the sexual tension of modern pop music. In order to hear it sometimes, you just have to listen a little deeper. And hopefully that's, way Bridgetton is going to cause people to do.

Now, this is all well and good, but if you're the composer for Bridgeton, you have a tough task ahead of you, right? You have to thread the needle between these classical string arrangements and the actual classical grates between Mozart and Maroon 5, right? How do you do that? I don't know. So in the second half, I talk to the show's composer, Chris Bowers, to find out. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. first step as a podcaster. Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving

greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay. Ready? Ready? Do not sugarcoat something for me. No, no. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. We're back and for the second half of our episode, I'm so excited to be able to speak with the composer of the score for Bridgeton. Chris Bowers, welcome to Switch John Pop.

Nate, thanks so much for having me. So maybe we can just go to the very beginning. Like, you get this Richardson gig. How do the creators of the show describe this series to you? I think this is something like it's not your mother's regency television show, essentially. And so they wanted to find a way to nod to that era or make something that felt somewhat appropriate to that era, but had like a bit more of an edge or a bit more of modernity to it. Speaking of modernity, something we've been talking about,

is the use of classical covers of pop songs in the Bridgerton score. When you started composing, were those already part of the conversation, these Ariana Grande and Billy Ilish covers? Not when I first started, actually it wasn't until we got to the first spotting session that I heard one of those in one of the cues. I think it was like in episode one,

the first time we did the spotting session for that, I heard the Ariana Grande cover. And it was really a big shift for me as far as the way I thought about approaching the score as well. I mean, I had written a few sketches early on, and I had to write Daphne and Simon's theme for her to play piano to as a pre-record. And so I had started to get a little bit into the sound

and had a few of the themes and things were kind of starting to click. But once I heard that approach to these modern pop songs, I was like, oh, that's a really interesting thing to kind of think more about rhythms and feels and melodies as more modern. elements and then orchestrated in the more traditional way. Now, it's just something else you mentioned that struck me is, I didn't think about this,

but the main character, Daphne Bridgerton, is playing piano like many young women of the English aristocracy would. But of course, she's not just playing some classical piece, and she's not playing something that the actress is improvising, she's playing something you wrote. So how do you think about creating a melody that's going to be. played by a character in the actual scene. Yeah, well, you know, with that one, it was, one, trying to think of something that could feel complex enough

that it would feel nice musically, because some of the references that Chris had were these Ravel piano pieces and Ravel's piano pieces are, like, deceptively difficult, where you'll hear this, it sounds like really soft and beautiful, and then you look at it, and the left hand is doing this crazy arpeggio the entire time, and keeping that really soft and beautiful is incredibly difficult. But I kind of did something similar here, but wanted the melody to be really simple and clear and have something that she might be able to play. And they really did an incredible job.

I'm not sure how they did it. I wasn't a part of the actual shooting of it. But she's really playing the right notes when you look at the images, which is really awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a lot. That's a lot to think about for that brief. You have to connect a lot of dots.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm thinking of Ravel like a piece like Tombo de Couperon. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Which is just sounds like this shimmering, you know, just lovely texture. But when you look at it, you're like, oh, this is really, really hard to play. Yeah, exactly. And then this theme that Daphne introduces, that gets carried throughout the entirety of the show. Yeah.

How do you think about transforming a theme like that? that over the course of a season of television? Yeah, I think it's a real joy to be able to do that, especially so overtly. I feel like there are a lot of modern shows that don't really want score that's saying too much, and usually a theme is like saying too much, especially a melodic theme that's like really, really stating itself. It's fun to be able to have something that's just a really strong melody

so that then that melody can be reharmonized in whatever way. And I feel like for me, especially with my jazz background, that's something that we used to do all the time for fun is like reharmonizing some sort of standard melody and finding the most interesting way. For me, I was always, like my favorite teacher has always talked about how important the melody was because the melody is tied to a lyric.

So it's not like you can just change the melody however you want to fit a cool chord. It's making sure that the chords you're playing are serving the melody. as best as possible. And so I always had fun trying to find different ways to color a song based on the reharmonization. And so it's kind of the same thing with this where the sequence where Daphne and Simon are not speaking for a while and she's finally realized the truth of what he's doing. And their theme happens, but it's much more unsure and trepidacious. And it's not really

sad or happy, but it's definitely like bittersweet. And so just trying to find ways to do that with harmony while keeping the melody really clear is a lot of fun for me. I mean, like me, I imagine this is going to inspire a lot of people to go back and re-watch Bridgeton and try and say, oh, yeah, oh, there's the, there's Daphne's theme. Oh, it's in a minorke. Something's wrong. Yeah. Something's wrong, yeah.

Something's so cool about the music in the show is, like we were talking about, the way it straddles the ultra-modern and the historic time period of the show. What was that challenge? like as a composer to kind of thread the needle between the very new and the very old and try and capture the sound of both of those worlds. It's all about finding a groove and then all of a sudden things start to click a little bit easier. And I'm not really sure what all goes into it. I mean, when I think about it in relation to like playing piano, for example, when you learn how to improvise over a different genre of music, there's, or even a different era of music,

There are all these things that you maybe do or don't do within that era or genre. And if you break those rules, it's very obvious to anyone that knows that you're playing it a bit differently. But once you kind of get into that box, you know, for not in a limiting way, but I mean, sometimes actually those limits are really helpful. Because once you have those parameters, then it's like, oh, now I can just play within this space. And I feel like it's the same thing with this show is that, you know, at first we tried something really, really, really, where I was taking the classical elements and almost making them sound like they've been chopped and screwed and like they were pop productions essentially. And that was too modern.

And then I tried something that was really traditional that was much more inspired by like Beethoven and that kind of stuff. And that felt a little bit too traditional and dry. And I think once we found some of those themes and I started playing with like like French composers like Ravel or Debussy, like that kind of more impressionistic sound. and also a more modern rhythmic approach, and then sometimes even a more like pop-like, harmonic and rhythmic approach,

thinking of some of the dance sequences and things like that. Once we kind of found those sounds, then it became really easy to kind of just like stay within that groove. It's such a specific challenge, and I wonder if that was also something that came up when you were orchestrating the song Strange by Celeste for inclusion. in the score. How did you think about taking this beautiful pop song and turning it into an instrumental melody?

Yeah, well, I mean, one thing is definitely looking at the bottom string quartet stuff as like a reference for doing that within the context of our show. And then, you know, the biggest thing was really Hillary Smith, the cellist that's playing it. You know, we transcribed the melody pretty much verbatim the way that Celeste sings it. And some of those things don't necessarily translate when you're playing it on an instrument because it's not the same as an actual voice. And so it really is down to the player to figure out how to play that and make it still sing in the right way and make sure the phrasing is like, you know, going back to what I was saying earlier about the melody is tied to lyrics. And so if you learn the melody based on what it looks like on the page, it might not flow the same way that

somebody would actually sing those words. And so it really takes like playing that probably with the original track itself and all of that. And so really we wanted to try to make the arrangement as simple as possible and still as like lush and full as far as the string arrangement behind it. And then try to make sure that Hillary could shine as much as possible. And that was also really fun for me because we actually went to high school together. So we've known each other for like over 10 years. And now she's been playing on a lot of these scores and stuff.

So it was really cool to feature her on this. that is something that classical and pop have in common. You know, it's as much about what the performer brings to their interpretation, even if they're not the songwriter, which is often the case with a lot of pop music. Totally, totally. So the voices of instrumentalists like Hillary and her cello performance on Strange were obviously really key to the identity of this score. what was it like to create these recordings during a global pandemic?

Yeah, it was pretty interesting. I think that it's like the best word I can say. I mean, you know, part of me wants to say tough, but it didn't feel that tough for me. I think that, you know, there were parts of it that were, like, difficult as far as writing that much music and that short amount of time and all of that. But thinking about these musicians that are also recording it at home,

so we had to record every inch, every musician separate. in their home and then we kind of piece it all together at the at the back end of it but also most of these musicians had to layer themselves a few times so that it could sound like a full orchestra you know usually we have a three-hour session where everybody comes in and they just set up their instruments and play and then they can leave and with this they have to be their own engineer they have to send the files they have to make sure that all of the tech and administrative side of the recording process is taking care of as well, which is very new for a lot of them. Also doing that during a pandemic with, you know, whatever else might be happening in their

lives or in their families and all of that. I was really just thankful primarily that, you know, we had a team to be able to facilitate all of that and all of that stuff. So we kind of work out the kinks before we get into it. And then we would send them all of the music. And, you know, my job is making sure that all of that stuff is as clear as possible for them so that they can play it all separately and we can easily put it back together. And then we give them a couple of days to do it so that based on whatever they have going on, they can kind of do it at their leisure. I'm just kind of stunned by the amount of coordination that goes into that. And it's blowing my mind to think when I'm watching that show and I'm hearing these lush, full orchestral arrangements that

they're made up of people scattered, I don't know, all over the country maybe, performing in their living rooms and sending it to you. That's just, that's just wild. Yeah, yeah, pretty crazy. You know, I might be making a stretch here, but one of the things that Bridgeton has been really recognized for is the progressive casting choices. Probably specifically as opposed to shows like, say, Downton Abbey or something, where shows like that, I think have sort of defended their all-white cast by saying, well, it was, it's authentic to the time period. That these were, you know, very segregated spaces in 18th century England. And thus, we're being authentic and recreating that.

Yeah. Whereas Bridgeton kind of doesn't care about authenticity in that same way. And it's really refreshing and innovative to see this diverse cast. And for the most part, no one's really commenting on it. It's just there. Yeah. It's very striking. Is it possible to make a kind of parallel to that all-white world of authenticity in TV shows

and the whiteness of the space of classical music? Yeah, it's one of those things like you said where the history of it looks a certain way and so you kind of assume that that's what it's supposed to look like. With classical music, I guess it's a bit different because it's something that's still evolving or there still are new classical artists or different things like that. Like, you know, with a show like this, we're recreating something. And with classical music, you're hopefully bringing something new to, even if you're playing an older piece, you want to try to bring some sort of fresh approach to it.

You know, and I think that the lack of diversity in that space is something that has to do more with, like, education and, like, again, like visibility. And, you know, everything about with my own education, as a mostly a jazz pianist. I mean, I studied classical as well, but I feel like most of my real time was in, like, the jazz spaces in education, but I was still one of the few black kids in, like, the jazz spaces.

And I think that has more to do with, you know, the access to great music education than anything else, but then that kind of creates something where you don't have that many people of color that are, like, you know, getting to higher levels or at least, like, to higher level institutions or different things like that. Yeah, so yeah, it's definitely an interesting issue for sure.

But I feel like it's exciting to see how much it's shifting even like, you know, me being the composer on a project like this or thinking of, you know, many of the other composers of color that I know that are like doing really awesome work right now. Right on. Chris, thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, thank you, Nate. Really appreciate it. Switch on Pop is produced by Nate Sloan, Bridget Armstrong, and me, Charlie Harding.

We're mixed edited and engineered by Brandon McFarland and this week, Bill Lance. Our artwork is done by Iris Gottlieb, and Abby Barr is on the digital keys with the social media stuff. Our executive producers are Nashat Kurwa and Hana Rosen, and we're a production of Vulture and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Reach out at Switchedon Pop on Instagram and Twitter to tell us your favorite Bridgeton classical pop mashup. And tune in next week every Tuesday. We're dropping new episodes. You can find them anywhere you listen to podcasts or at our website, Switchedonpop.com. Nate, I got to say this was a lot of fun.

I'm definitely going to be thinking about Frigerton and classical music very differently. Thank you for this. And we'll be back again next week, another episode on Tuesday. And until then, thanks for listening.