Can Herbie Hancock and Lang Lang smash musical barriers?

The walls separating jazz, classical and pop music have been weakening for years, but they're about to be dealt another blow.

For when a revered jazz musician partners with a star of classical music in an openly populist program, the ghetto-izing of our musical culture faces another setback.

That's precisely what jazz icon Herbie Hancock and classical phenom Lang Lang had in mind when they conceived their joint world tour, making its American premiere Tuesday night at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park. Playing perhaps the most celebrated crossover work of all time, George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," as well as jazz solos and modernist classical pieces, the concert seems as much a cultural manifesto as a musical evening.