The video that Styx promised they would post this week is a quarantine performance of Tommy Shaw and Cleveland's Contemporary Youth Orchestra doing “Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)."
Orchestra director Liza Grossman says, "I started to pester Tommy about a collaboration as soon as the pandemic hit and we were shut down. I thought this would be kind of a cool thing for my students to do since we couldn't meet in person. He is always down for something new and something exciting, which I appreciate about him. For a musician who's done what he does for as long as he has, I really appreciate that he's still open to all these new ideas."
Shaw did his part first of the video on his iPhone. Liza then filmed a video of herself conducting the song before adding a click track for timing and sending virtual “packages” to the 90 students, ages 12 to 18, for them to record their parts.
Liza also says, "We wanted the video to reflect the movement of the music and also the vibrancy of Tommy and the children. When you're working with something as sacred as any kind of music, you want to do it as much justice as possible and really make sure that it looks authentic and exact. I think we've really capture that here."
Shaw and Styx also worked with Liza and the Contemporary Youth Orchestra back in 2006, which resulted in the One with Everything live collection.
[courtesy of Classic Hits Today]