In Paris, Detroit techno pioneer Jeff Mills is mulling over a perennial problem. In Europe his electronic-classical music fusions are readily embraced, but back home in the US, they’re largely ignored.

“I’ve been doing this for about a decade and have never once received an invitation to come to the US, so I have to assume there isn’t much interest,” he admits.

Mills, who premiered the deep dive into the mind of an electronic musician, Exhibitionist 2 at the Louvre earlier this summer, has found much success in France, having also performed alongside the Montpellier Philharmonic Orchestra and the Île-de-France National Orchestra.

“I’m from Detroit but I have more luck elsewhere,” he notes. “There is very little in Detroit electronic music that is negative, and I think that America – especially when thinking about black men – when it’s not negative, if we’re not poor and broke and desperate and coming from the ghetto, it’s not as appealing to the public because there isn’t this great story, this very compassionate story.”

One Man Spaceship: Jeff Mills in Porto with Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto. Photograph: João Messlas

“Planets and stars and futurism and time travel – these types of visions aren’t supposed to come from black guys from Detroit,” he adds.

Yet back in Detroit, one-third of the Belleville Three and techno innovator Derrick May is testing the waters by performing Strings of Life with live instrumentation in North America for the very first time. Despite carrying the flag as the birthplace of techno, nothing like this has ever been done here.

Positioned at a keyboard alongside the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and a pair of opera vocalists, May is also joined by fellow keyboardists Jon Dixon of Underground Resistance and Luxembourg’s Francesco Tristano to help make an idea previously only conceptualized in Europe a reality in the Motor City.

The performance at Chene Park is led along by conductor Dzijan Emin of the Macedonian Philharmonic Orchestra, who worked with May on three earlier versions of the project in Europe. May, who typically exudes high energy in fast-paced DJ sets, looks calm and relaxed while seated at his keyboard, in a state of pure bliss that is nothing short of serene for both those on stage and in the audience.

While Chene Park looks jarring at just over one-third sold, with ticket sales at an estimated 2,350 out of 6,000, it still carries an air of fullness charged by a vibrant spiritual energy rather than physical density. “Even an audience of [around] 2,500 in Detroit – with something that has never happened before – really says a lot,” says Mills.

The venues Mills performs at in Europe typically hold 2,000 to 3,000 people and sell out each time, making May’s North American debut numbers promising both in sales and potential for similar shows to make their way to the US in the near future.

The connection between electronic music and classical music is an important relationship for the techno pioneers. Mills has found a number of ways to synchronize the two, such as working alongside classical pianist Mikhail Rudy on When Time Splits as part of the Carte Blanche series at the Louvre. While in October, he’s also collaborating with the BBC Symphony Orchestra on Light From The Outside World.

But the connection is equally essential – if not more essential – for the classical ensembles themselves, who are fighting to stay afloat, and looking for innovative ways to draw in new audiences. “In the past 10 years, it has become a trend because classical orchestras are losing audiences and losing funding,” Emin says the night before his Detroit performance with May. “A lot of orchestras around the world are getting closed, and I think they’re looking for other ways to attract audiences.”

If we’re not poor and broke and desperate and coming from the ghetto, it’s not as appealing to the public Jeff Mills

Many orchestra patrons are lifelong attendees. As that fanbase continues to grow older, the new generation ushered in doesn’t care for classical sounds – and why should they? Today’s youth isn’t exposed to traditional music, which has all but been replaced by electronic music (namely EDM) in popular movie soundtracks, commercials and everyday life. Adding techno-fused shows, rock music collaborations (like Pete Townshend’s Classic Quadrophenia) and grime-classical clashes have allowed considerably emptier orchestra halls to once again draw crowds from outside the usual demographic.

It’s a difficult shift in course for classically trained musicians, but Emin believes it’s crucial to accept and play newer styles of music to stay focused. “It’s good to play something that I’ve never played before,” he admits. “It opened a new world of understanding music because this is [our] present culture.”

While pop culture might be revamping present-day orchestra culture (Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood holds a residency with the BBC Concert Orchestra, Clean Bandit are classically trained, Alt-J’s style owes as much to Gregorian chanting and chamber music as it does indie rock), the roles often reverse. Techno is sci-fi and future-oriented, but adding in classical elements – that are not electronic – can be a breath of fresh air impossible to recreate via machine, thus allowing traditional sounds to stay relevant while at the same time, pushing techno into new dimensions. “I could never generate this unless I had 30 synthesizers playing at the same time, slightly fluctuated to create this type of feel – and [even then] it would not be the same,” Mills says.

He explains how the orchestra’s breathing is tied to the time signature of the score, a very human trait nonexistent in straightforward electronic music. (Take into consideration early house and disco pioneer Arthur Russell, who shaped his career around cello-integrated club music or the various producers who’ve cribbed from the classical canon for decades.) “That aspect creates a different type of soundtrack you can really hear and see – it’s like a lung that’s contracting and expanding.”

Strings of Life: Derrick May in Detroit. Photograph: Asia Rapai/Photos courtesy of Detroit Symphony Orchestra

Here’s how the process breaks down: a producer crafts the original score, which is then explained to an arranger – why certain sounds are used, what they mean and how they connect. The arranger then translates the original score into a classical score and assigns sounds to individual members of the orchestra, working alongside the producer in making the idea more adaptable to a live setting. “The score has to allow the musicians to explore a bit,” Mills explains. Once the score is done and verified, it’s sent to a conductor for yet another round of approval before rehearsals begin.

Marrying electronic music and classical music is a long and tedious process. It took Emin nearly half a year to turn May’s catalogue into symphonic arrangements, which include instrumentations as abstract as bassoon on 1988’s It Is What It Is. “The blending of the classical, symphonic orchestra with electronic sounds is really a difficult task,” Emin says. “I put everything from strings to woodwinds, to brass, and a lot of percussions from marimbas to xylophones to glockenspiels, to snares and cymbals – I wanted it to be really colorful.”

Classical curves: Mills in Exhibitionist 2.

There’s a wide array of tricks musicians can do with their instruments to generate atypical sounds, but some are better left in the hands of the producer. For example, Mills played all music that needed to be addressed with analog synths and sound effects himself during his rendition of Planets with the Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto in Portugal in July.

“You notice immediately that it’s not perfect,” he says. “When you’re dealing with machines and sequencers and synthesizers, you’re always working with a certain amount of perfection, but when you play with live musicians, you feel more of the human feel, and that’s something I wasn’t quite used to hearing.”

Exhibitionist 2 is released on 25 September; Jeff Mills plays Light from the Outside World with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican on 24 October