It was just gonna be for fun when three Eastman School Of Music cello students --- Patrick Laird, Erin Keesecker, and Chris Thibdeau --- hooked up with drummer Ivan Trevino in 2003 to play Metallica covers. In no time the quartet was tweaking ears and turning heads as Break Of Reality.

Heavy metal making its way into Eastman's hallowed halls was unheard of. Shostakovich, Mahler, Beethoven... Metallica? Eyebrows furrowed and objections started to rise. But the thunderous applause and the buzz generated by the group's jaw-dropping performances swayed bigwigs to ultimately acknowledge Break Of Reality, its legitimacy, and its impact --- not only on the cello, but on classical music itself.

Four years later the members of Break Of Reality are on the brink of graduation, and the band is on fire; the gig schedule is crammed despite the members carrying full course loads, and major management companies and record labels have come a-courting.

But the biggest testimony to the band's credibility is the amount of seminars and workshops it holds at high schools and colleges. The band is in demand and academia has finally recognized. Administrators like those who originally balked at the band playing Kilbourn Hall have since relented. Break Of Reality was even asked to perform for this year's freshman colloquium.

"We do a lot of workshops," says cellist Patrick Laird. "The thing is, there's this whole new movement --- it's not new, but it's new that they're pushing it in schools --- of breaking boundaries with your instrument. We're the perfect thing for these schools 'cause they bring us in and we show these students we can be classically trained and we can have worked this hard, but we're being successful by broadening the barriers.

"What's happening now is that they're teaching students to learn by hearing and to work on improvisation as the very first thing when they first start their instruments, instead of reading music and learning how to play classical music. They're learning how to improv and they're learning how to write music and to play with other musicians and jam. We've inspired a lot of kids, for sure," he says.

"That's probably one of the best parts," says cellist Erin Keesecker. "People will come up to us and be like, ‘I get together with my violin friends and jam after school.' That's great. It's exactly what they should be doing."

From rock's arguably more open-minded point of view, Break Of Reality's approach makes perfect sense. With rock, the unconventional is embraced and anything playing rock music is OK. Lets' face it: the majority of styles within the genre came from someone doing something wrong.

"I think we just found out how great everything sounded on cello," says Laird. "And we just continued with it because it was a lot of fun. The instrument is perfect for the genre."

The cello certainly suits metal's darkness. When horsehair is drawn across gut, it is millions of times more ominous than the heaviest of guitars in the most minor of keys. And metal takes a lot of its construction and frequent use of pentatonic scales and dramatic dynamics from classical music as well.

Break Of Reality isn't just shoehorning its sound into the classical set. The band is playing rock clubs like The Knitting Factory and Joe's Pub in NYC, and Montage Live in Rochester, where it recently played with progressive metal maniacs Psyopus.

"So we're setting up on stage," says drummer Ivan Trevino. "And I remember hearing somebody say, ‘There's a weird band on stage right now.'" By the time the band finished its set, the headbanger crowd was sold.

"The reaction was really cool," Trevino says.

Still, the novelty aspect comes into play. When the band sets up and plays in New York City --- in the park, on the street, in the subway --- huge crowds gather to see, listen, and create a scene. Laird says they can sell almost 200 CDs in one afternoon of busking, and the performances often get broken up by NYPD when the crowds routinely get too big.

"We take the expectations that people have when they see the cello and we try to give them something that's totally different," Keesecker says. Break Of Reality is saving the cello...or at least giving it new life. Same goes for classical.

"You know there is classical chamber music that rocks," Keesecker says. "It's just sometimes people don't necessarily hear it."

After graduating from ESM in May the members of Break Of Reality are moving to New York to pursue the band full time. Though none are Rochester natives, Laird says he'll miss the large metal community here and the creative atmosphere at Eastman.

"We're planning on coming back quite a bit, Laird says. "But right now what we're trying to do requires a bigger city."

Labels and management companies are salivating over the band, but for now Break is gonna go it alone.

"We're actually bent on staying independent for a while," Keesecker says. "Just because of where the record industry is right now; everything's in flux."

"Right now we're really experimenting with our sound and what we can do with it," Laird says.

Trevino has begun augmenting the band's set with forays onto the djembe [an African drum], which according to Laird complements the bands journey into more exotic and Middle Eastern sounds.

"This has opened our world up from being a classical/rock fusion band where we cover Metallica or write songs that are similar to that sort of genre to a band that encompasses all these styles while still keeping with the heavy rock and experimenting," he says.

Break Of Reality may not be the first band to try this sort of genre-busting, but by bringing its influence and inspiration into the classroom, conventional musical practices are getting the doors blown off. And the kids love it. The band recently held a workshop at a high school in NYC where Laird kicked off by sending his cello through a distortion pedal.

"They heard this heavy electric cello and they just went nuts," he says. "We finished and they were screaming like it was Justin Timberlake up there."

Break Of Reality plays its farewell show Wednesday, April 18, at Roberts Wesleyan College's Hale Auditorium, 8 p.m., free, all ages. For more information visit www.breakofreality.com.