Friday evening, the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio will begin with an opening ceremony that will undoubtedly be colorful and dazzling with dancing and wonderful music. There's sure to be choro, samba, bossa nova, and other popular music forms, but I hope there is also a nod to classical music with something by Heitor Villa-Lobos, the best-known Brazilian composer to blend classical and native Brazilian themes, as in his Bachianas brasileiras.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mZSm1TfQHM
Looking back thirty two years, here's a look at a great blending of classical and popular music in the opening ceremony of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, but given an unusual rendition with the rather strange-looking phenomenon of 84 pianists playing George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in unison. See article here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7LT5F32Cis
