Dynamically building a command in bash

Question

I am construcing a command in bash dynamically. This works fine:

COMMAND="java myclass"
${COMMAND}

Now I want to dynamically construct a command that redirectes the output:

LOG=">> myfile.log 2>&1"
COMMAND="java myclass $LOG"
${COMMAND}

The command still invokes the java process, but the output is not redirected to myfile.log

Additionally, if I do:

BACKGROUND="&"
COMMAND="java myclass $BACKGROUND"
${COMMAND}

The command isn't run in the background.

Any clues on how to get the log redirect, and background bits working? (bash -x shows the commands being constructed as expected)

(In reality, unlike this example, the values of LOG and BACKGROUND are set dynamically)