Classicalite's Five Best: Rock Stars and Their Musical Mentors

The trend of recent decades of rock stars to turn to classical music isn't so very surprising.

No, especially not when you consider some very direct influences between the mainstream classical world and the rockers.

Here, then, are Classicalite's Five Best rock stars and their classical mentors.

Jon Lord, Malcolm Arnold

The progressive Deep Purple icon indulged his love of classical music at the end of his life with some rather wonderful excursions, such as his piano concerto Boom of the Tingling Strings. The works were deeply influenced by the major English composer Malcolm Arnold, Lord's teacher.

Thomas Lauderdale, Norman Leyden

Before he was the founder of Pink Martini, Thomas Lauderdale was a young pianist in Portland, Ore. He came under the musical mentorship of the American conductor (of the Oregon Symphony Pops Orchestra and others) and composer Norman Leyden.

Paul McCartney and Richard Rodney Bennett

When the great Liverpudlian decided to start writing series of classical works, he did at least one thing very right. He asked the composer Richard Rodney Bennett to give him a hand on the orchestrations. Bennett's influence can be felt on McCartney's Standing Stone (all the better for it!) and in some of McCartney's later works. He also was a master orchestrator, so McCartney could not have had a better guide.

John Barry, Sir John Barbirolli

Not quite a mentor/protégé situation, but Barry, who started his career as a jazz star (which wasn't a million miles from the broader Church of Rock) and ended it among classically-attuned film and concert scores, was much-influenced by the friendship between his parents and the Barbirollis. Barry senior owned concert halls in the north of England and the great conductor Sir John Barbirolli was a semi-regular dinner guest. How can that not rub off on you?

Bruno Martelli, Benjamin Shorofsky

Hint: You want to live forever? You figure this one out...