The Baker Bros

The Baker Bros were (presumably) a project by Andrew Horowitz and his younger brother Steven Horowitz. In 2004, they released the hip-hop/classical music mashup album The Classical Album.
For a many years, the only information linking the project to Andrew and Tally Hall were some links on the Toy Orchestra website and on their MySpace page. Only recently, in episode 4 of the Keep Up The Good Work Instagram livestreams, did Andrew and his brother discuss a mashup album they created in 2004 that was uploaded to SoundClick without ever naming The Baker Bros.

## About

Found on their MySpace and SoundClick profiles is the following biography

The division between popular culture and the classical music world is perhaps greater today than ever before. With the continued disappearance of all things classical, from the reduction of symphonies to decreased attendance at concert halls, from cuts in arts funding to an alarmingly elitist composer pool, society has been relegated to mainstream culture. This mainstream culture wants little to do with the classical world, and vice versa. The concert hall is mostly inhabited by retirees while the arenas and clubs are filled with everyone else. When did this transgression take place or has it always existed and just become more prevalent with the advent of new communicative technologies? Was classical music always so detached from pop culture? The appearance of Jay-Zs "The Black Album" led to a curious phenomenon. For the first time, the remix album became feasible. All you needed was a computer, cheap software, and an acapella, commercially available "The Black Album" to make a remix. With the launching of careers of remixers like Danger Mouse ("The Grey Album") and 9th Wonder ("Black is Back: The 9th Album") came the possibility of anyone throwing in their two cents. Tons of albums appeared, from albums that put Jay-Z on top Pavement, Weezer, and Metallica. But the classical music world, as it has in the past, went largely overlooked. "The Classical Album", our first remix project, takes mostly 20th century classical music and attempts to find common ground with Jay-Z. And it succeeds. Not only does the concept work, but it forces entirely unique ways of listening. Structure, harmony, rhythm, form, and fundamental distinctions between the two musics begin to question themselves. How different are hip-hop and classical in actuality? There's no reason this shouldnt have been done before. The classical world needs to start listening elsewhere and mainstream culture must stop limiting its intellectualism. If more projects like "The Classical Album" are attempted, we might find ourselves bringing new collaboration between classical and popular cultures. As Ellington once said, after all, there are only two types of music: good and bad. Once society understands such, the future of music becomes all the richer.
On SoundClick, their musical inspirations are listed as Jay-Z, Frank Zappa, The Beatles, The Residents, John Zorn, Notorious BIG, Leonard Bernstein, J.S. Bach, and Gyorgi Ligeti, which is expanded to include Conlon Nancarrow, The Rolling Stones, The Neptunes, Talib Kweli, Meshell Ndgeocello, Ornette Coleman, Brad Mehldau, Lil Kim, Mos Def, Madlib, etc. [sic] on their MySpace page.

## External Links

* Toy Orchestra Website (Archived)
* SoundClick Page