{"id":2421639,"date":"2026-05-18T11:26:04","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2421639"},"modified":"2026-05-18T11:26:04","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:26:04","slug":"eric-andre-just-dropped-an-insane-classical-album-and-its-actually-pretty-brilliant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/eric-andre-just-dropped-an-insane-classical-album-and-its-actually-pretty-brilliant\/","title":{"rendered":"Eric Andr\u00e9 just dropped an insane classical album \u2014 and it’s actually pretty brilliant"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cGuys, thank you for coming to my midlife crisis,\u201d said Eric Andr\u00e9, standing on a podium in front of the Colburn Orchestra in a black tuxedo with tails and wielding a baton. \u201cI started getting tattoos,\u201d he continued, \u201cand then I thought: not difficult enough. Why don\u2019t I compose some really niche, obscure film scores for films that don\u2019t exist and burden your Monday night?\u201d<\/p>\n

Imagine getting high and watching a concert where Bugs Bunny conducts an orchestra, except Bugs Bunny is on cocaine. That\u2019s sort of what this experience felt like \u2014 and, to be fair, the scholarly Zipper Hall at the Colburn School of Music has likely never smelled more of pot. But it really happened. The anarchic, frequently screaming, frequently high comedian, host of the Emmy-winning \u201cThe Eric Andre Show,\u201d wasn\u2019t pulling one of his signature pranks on an audience who paid to see him conduct his original compositions for orchestra and electronics.<\/p>\n

Or was he?<\/p>\n

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Eric Andr\u00e9 conducting on stage alongside Prateek Rajagopal, who collaborated with him on his debut classical album.<\/p>\n

(Carianne Older)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

The concert, which took place April 27, was in promotion of a new album, \u201cFilm Scores for Films That Don\u2019t Exist,\u201d which Andr\u00e9 composed with serious help from Prateek Rajagopal, a 31-year-old composer and guitar player, out now on Stones Throw Records under the name of Andr\u00e9\u2019s band, Blarf.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe dare you to market this,\u201d says Andr\u00e9, 43, lounging in basketball shorts in a piano classroom at Colburn two days before the show.<\/p>\n

The musical project comes as a shock to most people who know Andr\u00e9 as the guy who, on his long-running Adult Swim show, often demolished his own set and terrified celebrity guests, or from his prank-based Netflix movie \u201cBad Trip,\u201d where he freaked out unaware bystanders by sticking his hand in a blender or getting his clothes sucked into a vacuum (and a few other things that would be unseemly even to describe in a family newspaper).<\/p>\n

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Eric Andr\u00e9 projects a photo of him as a young classical music student during his recent show in L.A.<\/p>\n

(Carianne Older)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

But, as Andr\u00e9 explains, \u201cI was obsessed with music since I was a child, like since kindergarten. I only pivoted to comedy because I didn\u2019t know really how to make money making music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Growing up in south Florida, Andr\u00e9 started taking piano lessons when he was 5, and played tuba in middle school and cello in high school. He took up the double bass in 11th grade, and then, as he explained to the Colburn audience, \u201cwent to Berklee College of Waste Your Money Music to play the \u2018Seinfeld\u2019 theme song on upright bass for four years.\u201d<\/p>\n

He formed the Frank Zappa-styled Blarf with classmates at Berklee, but \u201cas I was finishing college,\u201d he says, \u201cI just didn\u2019t see a future in jazz bass.\u201d So he turned to stand-up comedy. \u201cYou know, I had to make my immigrant father rub his temples even harder.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9 wrote some \u201cgoofy songs\u201d for his talk show and co-wrote and performed more goofy songs in \u201cBad Trip\u201d \u2014 at one point breaking into a love ballad, \u201cI Saw a Girl Today,\u201d in front of unsuspecting diners in a food court. It was while supervising that film\u2019s score, written by composers Ludwig G\u00f6ransson and Joseph Shirley, that Andr\u00e9 expressed an itch to get some of these \u201cfilm scores\u201d floating around in his head out into an orchestra.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere does anyone\u2019s creativity come from?\u201d he says when asked about this. \u201cIt\u2019s a neurochemical con job. It\u2019s just synaptic, electronic explosions in your brain. It\u2019s just a meat computer,\u201d he says, bursting into his infectious, double bass laugh.<\/p>\n

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Prateek Rajagopal and Eric Andr\u00e9.<\/p>\n

(Harry Israelson)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

Joseph Shirley referred Andr\u00e9 to Rajagopal, a recent (at the time) graduate from USC\u2019s screen scoring program who was described as \u201ca musical wizard.\u201d Andr\u00e9, whose influences range from Ren & Stimpy to John Carpenter to Ennio Morricone to Gy\u00f6rgy Ligeti, found an unlikely brother in Rajagopal \u2014 an Indian musician who grew up in Muscat, Oman, and then went to college in Mumbai, whose tastes were shaped by Indian film music as well as Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails.<\/p>\n

\u201cEric and I have a lot of similar influences in terms of just people who are singular,\u201d says Rajagopal, \u201cwho have a perspective that\u2019s not just off-center, musically, but even in the way they show up as artists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rajagopal was also skilled, and patient, enough to translate Andr\u00e9\u2019s chaotic voice memos \u2014 on which he would describe what melody or rhythm the violas or percussion, et cetera, should be doing \u2014 into MIDI demos. Over the course of five years, Andr\u00e9 and Rajagopal co-created these instrumental miniatures, which fluctuate from pastoral to death metal, and recorded them with session musicians in L.A. as well as a small orchestra in Budapest.<\/p>\n

But is it a joke? Some of the tracks \u2014 like \u201cPiano Concerto No. 0,\u201d which features Andr\u00e9 literally smashing a piano to smithereens \u2014 are obviously comedic. But the straight-faced quality of the others, which include a Spaghetti Western pastiche, a disturbing cacophony called \u201cMercury Dripping Down My Spine\u201d and a lilting tone poem (\u201cStars Without Light\u201d), suggest something slightly more earnest. In the parlance of traditional genres, Andre\u2019s 31-minute record would probably be shelved in the \u201cNovelty\u201d section.<\/p>\n

Still, it was mostly played for laughs at the premiere concert. Andr\u00e9 entered the hall dramatically to the strains of the \u201cChariots of Fire\u201d theme. \u201cDrunk on power,\u201d as he put it, he giddily puppeteered the orchestra like the Sorcerer\u2019s Apprentice.<\/p>\n

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