At a Chicago event, Dominic Johnson jams on the electric violin (center) while DJs Duke Kumnerdpet and Ryan Bockenfeld hit the wheels of steel. (AP Photo/HO)

Owen Pallett (aka Final Fantasy) plays his own brew of classically-influenced indie rock in clubs around the world. (AP Photo/Davida Nemeroff)

Javier Mendoza leads the Chicago Arts Orchestra, a group aimed at hitting a younger audience by offering cheap tickets and innovative programming. (AP Photo/Martin Ryter)

Dominic Johnson (from left to right), Connie Shoepflin and Chihsuan Yang play for a party in Chicago's Millennium Park. (AP Photo/HO)

Javier Mendoza started attending classical concerts when he was in fourth grade. He learned two things fast. One, he loved classical music. Two: "I pretty quickly realized that I was the youngest person there."

Mendoza, now a 28-year-old Chicagoan, didn't let the complete absence of his contemporaries stop him. He studied conducting in college, then moved to the Windy City in quest of a paying job behind the baton. But it got him down.

"It was very disconcerting, to say the least, to realize that I'd chosen to do this with my life, and no one my age was interested in the slightest in what I was doing," he says. "Even worse, no one was really courting us, either. The way concerts are presented is always just the same old thing -- the energy level is flat."

In 2004, Mendoza decided to act. He founded his own group, the Chicago Arts Orchestra. In striking out on his own, he chose a path that more and more young, classically trained musicians are, one way or another, finding.

While the major, big-money institutions that have defined serious music for centuries cast about for ways to attract younger audiences, a new breed of classical players favors a DIY approach. Consider it a crafty repurposing of finely honed skills: instead of seeking their fortune in tuxedos, increasingly musicians are creating an alternative to the classical establishment. Some, like Mendoza, are launching ensembles that straddle classical tradition and an independent ethos. Others are taking their training into unfamiliar new realms -- and just maybe, unearthing new fans for a genre that's hurting for fresh support.

RIPPING CLASSICAL MELODIES

One very different act that seeks to unlock the less tidy passions latent in the classical tradition is Toronto's Final Fantasy. Essentially the one-man project of Owen Palett, who also writes string arrangements for Canadian alt-pop stars Arcade Fire, Final Fantasy walks the knife-edge dividing delicate beauty from complete insanity. Spiralling strings, spooky falsetto, surreal, screamed lyrics -- this is music that scares and seduces by turns. Final Fantasy rips classical melodies and technique out of their stereotypical context, exposing their irrational and exciting dark side. In other words, it sounds anything but dead.

"I started out playing in baroque, Medieval and Renaissance chamber groups," says Sherry Fraser, leader of the Olympia, Wash. indie-rock band Two Ton Boa. "I started studying oboe and English horn. I toured China with the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, played in multiple chamber groups, youth orchestras, camps, competition...At the same time, I had just begun experimenting on the bass, and starting to write music. I realized I couldn't commit to dedicating my life to the classical discipline for decades. It felt like a huge sacrifice."

Today, Fraser says, Two Ton Boa is "all about the rock." But the band's riveting, black-as-coal sonic palette, with its gloomy basses and dark, woody tones, definitely owes a lot to the fact that Beethoven is just as important to her songwriter's consciousness as Led Zeppelin.

"I rarely listen to other rock music when I'm writing -- just mostly classical music," Fraser says. "It clears my head, like a walk in strange nature."

CHEAP TICKETS, WALKING DISTANCE

In Mendoza's case, his Chicago Arts Orchestra sticks more closely to classical tradition. He envisions CAO as something of a hybrid: a full orchestra capable of all-pro quality, but with a relentless focus on underserved audiences and underplayed music. Tickets are cheap -- about $15 a head. While Mendoza obviously hopes to tap Chicago's vibrant citywide cultural scene, he insists that Job One is winning over the young crowd in CAO's home neighborhood of Lakeview, near Wrigley Field.

"It's important to me that most of our audience can just walk to our shows from their houses," Mendoza says. "I want this to be based on a real sense of community, and to keep it on that scale while we continue to get better musically."

Mendoza is not alone, even in his own town. The New Millennium Orchestra of Chicago, founded by a 32-year-old violist named Dominic Johnson, pursues a more radical take on classical's future. A former member of Rachel's, a band that blends chamber music with experimental indie rock, Johnson envisions an outfit that may have classical roots, but is just as comfortable with DJs, video and laptop-driven electronic elements.

"It's probably because I straddle those worlds," he says. "I've played in bands, and I've tried to make my living as a freelance classical musician. I want to take turntablists and laptop artists and give them a shot in the concert hall -- to let people see them as the serious artists they are. And kids who want to see that stuff already, I want to show them that the classics have some value, too."

Flexibility is key to New Millennium's post-everything ambitions. Its dozen shows so far ranged from a full performance of Beethoven's Fourth (plus a DJ remix, naturally) to small-ensemble shows at neighborhood taverns. It's a far cry from union-scale, tuxedo'ed work for a socially rarified clientele -- which, to Johnson's mind, is precisely the point.

"It's the 21st Century, and we're 200 years away from some of the music being contemporary," he says. "At the same time, there's something there. You just have to present in a way where people can discover what's exciting about it."

NEW POINT OF ATTACK

To steal a football term, you could say that some young classical musicians are changing the point of attack. In Portland, Ore., an ensemble called Vagabond Opera fuses seriously trained voices, near-absurdist cabaret and a repertoire embracing both "real" opera and forlorn Gypsy folk. The group plays nightclubs, festivals and weddings. Is it a band? A theater company? An artsy circus?

"To me, opera is a performance where the voice is paramount and where you need trained voices. It's theatrical and ritualistic. So we meet my definition," says Eric Stern, Vagabond's leader.

Stern cut his operatic teeth with the Delaware Valley Opera Company, a convivial troupe based in an old mansion. There, he learned the value of mowing through high-brow pretension and getting to the music's underlying raw emotion. "It was a community. It was a place you could physically go and experience the music. And though I don't endorse this necessarily, there was a lot of drinking involved.

"The fact that very often classical music is presented by these big, established institutions lends a certain sterility," Stern says. "Think Jimi Hendrix at Monterey Pop, setting his guitar on fire. It's not like classical music doesn't go there. But it can be hard to find those moments in a concert hall."

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