K-OS Goes Orchestral In Burning To Shine

When Toronto rapper K-OS agreed to collaborate with the CBC Radio Orchestra on a one-off song, it was worthy of being preserved on film.

The resulting documentary, Burning To Shine (named after the song), will make its national television debut tonight on CBC at 9 p.m. Zed Real will air the special director's cut at 11:35 p.m. on February 7.

Executive producer McLean Mashingaidze-Greaves was originally inspired to undertake the project when he heard that Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood was serving as a composer-in-residence with the BBC Orchestra in England. Eventually it was decided that if anyone in the Canadian music community were open to exploring fresh avenues to create music, it would be K-OS. The idea of filming the entire process only added to the uniqueness of the project.The cool thing about documentary films is that the scripts are ever-evolving, seeing that life never unfolds how you expect. Burning To Shine was no different. The musical collaboration was appealing enough, but creative tensions and spontaneous inspiration helped spark a dynamic and exciting plot line for the film.

"Documentaries are, by nature, unpredictable," says Burning To Shine director Jennifer Ouano. "Even when the subjects agree to participate in the filming, you never know how they will feel or react to it once the cameras roll and continue to roll. Nor can you anticipate how the story will actually unfold.

"Frustrating moments abound in the film as K-OS and the CBC producers try to find common ground on how the song should be built. It's the sort of drama you can only dream of as a director.

"The music-making process proved very challenging for everyone involved," says Ouano. "K-OS was a lot more spontaneous and impulsive than any of us realized, from the orchestra side to the documentary-making side.

"He really kept the story alive with his own impulsive nature, and the doc crew really had to stay nimble to keep up with the changes that would happen. On the most basic level, we were expecting to record the creative process in the first creative session, and then the orchestra session a month later. We got involved in a lot more hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth, but the results were a ton more interesting and satisfying and showed a lot more personalities all around."

Watching the hip-hop and orchestra worlds collide is worth a look, but the added pressures of recording the song while knowing that everything had to be done within the orchestra's allotted three-hour block of time brought tension and suspense to the process.

Burning To Shine's success begs the question: Will the CBC try this again? It's very possible that the indie rock world would shit itself if Arcade Fire sat in with the orchestra for a few hours. So what's everyone waiting for? Let's sign them up.

"We would love to do more of these kinds of music collaborations," says Ouano, "but it's really hard to say what CBC's programming goals will be in the fall."

Alden Habacon, the partnerships manager for Zed and CBC Radio3, says: "Unfortunately, we can't speculate if this [collaborations] is something CBC will do more of. Certainly, CBC Television strives to be relevant to Canadians, and something like Burning To Shine and the new Zed is a great example."

Once the director's cut airs on Zed Real, the documentary will be posted in its entirety on Zed's Burning To Shine web page.