Enjoying rock/orchestra collaborations-any suggestions

really enjoying what i have right now in rock/orchestra collaborations. like:
Metallica-S&M
Styx-One With Everything
Scorpions-MTV Unplugged in Athens
Meatloaf-Bat Out Of Hell:Live with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Sting-Live In Berlin
+others

Any other suggestions/recommendations appreciated

 

Steve Vai - Sound Therories Vol 1 & 2

Mike Keneally - The Universe Will Provide

Both of those were recorded with the Metropole Orkest.
Great stuff. Maybe a bit outside of what you're looking for, but worth checking out for sure.

 

Probably not up your alley, but these are some of my favorites:
Roger Daltrey Celebration
Caravan and the New Symphonia
Procol Harum Live with the Edmonton Symphony
Procol Harum Live with the Danish National Orchestra
Deep Purple Concerto
Deep Purple Gemini Suite

 

Th Walkabouts did a couple of great records with orchestral arrangements in the mid 1990s, including one recorded live with orchestra. This one is from the album Devil's Road.



It's pretty hard to pull off without sounding lame. tindersticks handled it pretty well, too, especially on their second album.

 

YES did it on a couple albums:
“Time and a Word”, and “Magnification”.

I’m not sure either really gelled in the end... but the first attempt was much more interesting.

 

Camel - A Live Record (disc 2). Complete performance of 'The Snow Goose' with The LSO at The Royal Albert Hall, 1975

 

Yeah, the Concerto for Group and Orchestra was my first thought...but then I read what excited our thread starter.
Not sure it would be their cup of tea. These aren't rock songs with orchestral sweetening, but a full on rock meets classical fusion work.

 

Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballe doing “Barcelona”, although it’s not really “rock”.

 

One of the great ones, builds and builds and thunders along like a 200 car freight train

Grand Funk Railroad - LONELINESS
(

 

I love Magnification!

 

Tim Buckley's debut has some beautiful orchestrations
Tim Buckley - It Happens Every Time

 

Elton John: Live in Australia with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

The Moody Blues: Days of Future Passed

 

here's another stunner:

Dead Can Dance - Cantara

 

U2 recently did Abbey Road with orchestra. Bob Ezrin produced it I believe and.... It's really good.

 

Those first two Barclay James Harvest albums -

Mocking Bird:

 

thanks all of the great selection of choices. I will check out ALL of these. please don't base recs only on my initial post list. i have a much wider range of music taste than that. just listed the ones i had recently discovered to start my enjoyment of the rock/orchestra collaboration genre. definitely want more to discover.

 

the elton john has some outstanding tracks but some fall pretty flat too.

 

More pop than rock, but ABC performing The Lexicon Of Love with a full orchestra was pretty special.

 

There are a lot of European bands that do this on a regular basis. One of my favorites is Within Temptation's Black Symphony from 2008.

 

My suggestion is one that I mentioned in another thread here earlier today: Yngwie Johan Malmsteen's Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra in E Flat Minor, which comes recommended in both its studio and expanded live forms... Actually, the latter's visual aspect may prove a distraction from its musical content if you've no idea what to expect, so I'd go with the original album then work up to the full shredding spectacle.

 

The live DVD that Portishead cut with an orchestra is pretty great

 

There might be a good reason for that... The Melbourne live album was recorded on the last date before Elton underwent surgery to remove nine (!!) vocal polyps from his throat, and the video release shows him regularly spitting blood into a bucket placed at the side of his piano. He really shouldn't have continued on with those last concerts of the "Tour De Force" tour, yet he decided to go all-out, these shows also being the last time he'd dress as flamboyantly on stage. Even though his performances were often understandably rough, that version of Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me will always remain a personal favourite because of how much you could tell he was pushing to give what could easily have been his swansong. Fortunately, as the following studio album's title suggested, Reg would strike back, and while his voice would suffer a major decline over the subsequent years, that operation meant there was plenty more to come.

P.S. Despite the claims on such websites as Wikipedia, I don't believe for a second that Elton's voice changing was a direct result of the surgery, but rather his ongoing cocaine habit. Really, he should have spent until 1988 recovering from his various problems and then launched a proper comeback the following year with a vocal coach, making a greater effort to sing in his upper pre-surgery register instead of pushing on with the lower delivery first suggested to him in the late '70s by Thom Bell during their brief period of sessions together.

 

Elbow with the BBC Orchestra, "Live At Abbey Road":

 

...and Ben Folds, this one I believe, with the National Symphony Orchestra, at Kennedy Center (oh hells yes, this man is a national treasure):

 

You may like:

Kiss: Symphony Alive IV (With Melbourne Symphony Orchestra)