Christopher O’Riley was interviewed for the Intelligencer Journal (From Lancer O’Rileaster, PA): “There are two types of music – good music and bad music.” Rameau, Brahms and Radiohead have all written good music, albeit 250 years apart.
Christopher O’Riley on his shows where he plays both classical music and Radiohead: “I felt like my own lamest back-up band,” he said. “They were clearly just waiting for the classical music to get over with so we could get to the good stuff.”
If, at the Whitaker Center Thursday, O’Riley notices kids who seem to have come specifically to hear Radiohead, O’Riley said he may be more generous in the second half of his program.
“There might be a couple of 70-year-olds looking at their watches,” he said.
Christopher O’Riley had a chance to meet the band last year at Madison Square Garden, where Colin Greenwood told him, “We’re so excited about what you are doing. It was a gratifying moment, a conversation I’d been having in my head for years,” O’Riley said. [thanks Alex]
INTELLIGENCER JOURNAL (LANCASTER, PA.)
March 26, 2004, Friday
From Rameau to Radiohead with Christopher O’Riley
Pianist Christopher O’Riley plans to perform a deceptively simple program next week in Harrisburg. The first half of the concert will feature classical selections; the second his original transcriptions of music by the rock band Radiohead.
The split concert is a convention O’Riley devised to appease his own fans and Radiohead devotees. The pianist can bridge the dichotomy, even when the audience cannot.
Speaking by phone recently from his home in Los Angeles, on the hill beneath the “Hollywood” sign, O’Riley said his mantra is the same as Duke Ellington’s: “There are two types of music – good music and bad music.” Rameau, Brahms and Radiohead have all written good music, albeit 250 years apart. O’Riley will play them all Thursday at Whitaker Center.
O’Riley is best known for hosting the Public Radio International program, “From the Top,” a weekly show featuring performances and interviews with young musical prodigies. Between weekly tapings and rehearsals, O’Riley pursues an active concert career. He’ll be back in central Pennsylvania April 24 to perform Brahms’ Piano Concert No. 2 with the York Symphony.
He set about transcribing Radiohead songs, in part, to circumvent restrictions on what solo music he could play on “From the Top.”
“We designed the program to involve musicians of all sorts. We had visions of bringing musicians of all sorts – jazz musicians, bluegrass musicians – a nice cross-pollination of all kinds of music. Then classical music stations said, ‘You play three minutes of jazz, you’re off.’ “
So “From the Top” evolved into an all-classical program, until the day O’Riley played Radiohead.
“It was nice to get e-mail from listeners saying ‘Who is this Mr. Head and where can I find his music.’ They really thought it was some classical piece.”
He read about the quintet from Oxford, England, before he heard them. “OK Computer,” the band’s breakthrough 1997 album, sold 4 million copies worldwide.
At first listen, Radiohead doesn’t sound like the sort of band that would intrigue a classical pianist. The alternative rockers layer sonic dissonance over bass lines that often double as the melody. But O’Riley isn’t alone in his erudite admiration of the band. Alex Ross, The New Yorker’s classical music critic, arguably wrote the definitive Radiohead profile in 2001. Ross points out that chords from Wagner’s opera “Tristan and Isolde” lurk at the heart of Radiohead’s song, “Idioteque,” and that the band frequently employs pivot tones, a favorite trick of Romantic composers in which one chord is held until a new chord is formed around it.
(Here is as good a place as any to note Radiohead’s Lancaster connection. Bass guitarist Colin Greenwood is married to a Lancaster Catholic graduate, Mollie McGrann. The couple had their first child, a son, in December.)
O’Riley’s Radiohead shows have thrown concert promoters for a loop. Ticket sales were slow running up to a recent recital at UC-Berkeley.
“It turns out kids don’t buy tickets three months in advance like orchestragoers do. They walk up a few hours before the show,” he said. “We had a good house, but it scares the hell out of these people who are waiting for their tickets to sell.”
He tested the Harrisburg program in Portland, Ore., and at Wesleyan College in Connecticut, with mixed results. O’Riley will open with a work by Rameau and Brahms’ “Variations on a Theme by Handel.”
Rameau is known as the father of French opera, but his career spanned the same years as Bach’s. “His music is much more lyrical, much more songful and tuneful than Bach’s music, so it’s a real pleasure to play it on the piano,” O’Riley said.
At the split concert in Portland, O’Riley spotted a clear dichotomy in his audience, a divide that virtually broke down when he started to play. “The Radiohead listeners were really turned on by the classical stuff that I was playing. Depending on their point of view, the classical listeners liked the Radiohead.”
The Wesleyan concert was another matter.
“I felt like my own lamest back-up band,” he said. “They were clearly just waiting for the classical music to get over with so we could get to the good stuff.”
If, at the Whitaker Center Thursday, O’Riley notices kids who seem to have come specifically to hear Radiohead, O’Riley said he may be more generous in the second half of his program.
“There might be a couple of 70-year-olds looking at their watches,” he said.
He wrote all of the Radiohead arrangements by ear, based not just on the band’s six studio albums but hundreds of live tracks that he’s collected, many through the Internet.
“Translating guitar to piano and the human voice to piano are very tricky things, things that I continually tinker with and hopefully get better at,” he said. “I never do a song unless I feel I have the ideal performance in my head. I always try to make a translation that gives me the same rush that hearing the original track does.”
Sony released “True Love Waits,” O’Riley’s album of 16 Radiohead transcriptions, in July. Based on his interactions with fans on the Radiohead message board, O’Riley said the CD has been well received. He had a chance to meet the band last year at Madison Square Garden, where Greenwood told him, “We’re so excited about what you are doing.”
“It was a gratifying moment, a conversation I’d been having in my head for years,” O’Riley said.
These days, it’s not Radiohead, but the late Elliot Smith whose music is keeping O’Riley up until 2 a.m., slaving over piano arrangements. Smith’s acoustic driven folk-pop diverges sharply from Radiohead’s music, but O’Riley finds it just as compelling.
O’Riley also has tried his hand at transcribing songs by R.E.M. for piano. He saw the rock band three times during their last tour alone, including a show at the Hollywood Bowl with the critically acclaimed alt-country band Wilco.
He was disappointed in the opening act. “I hate Wilco, deeply.” O’Riley said. He called their lyrics “ultimately predictable,” and the music “banal.”
But O’Riley is quick to justify his high standards for pop music.
“Probably the classical music training does make me a snobby listener,” he said. “When you buy a recording of a Mahler symphony, there aren’t any weak tracks.”
Radiohead news on this day..
- Radiohead’s The Universal Sigh, here’s what’s inside [download] – 2011
- Thom Yorke & Stanley Donwood handing out The Universal Sigh in London – 2011
- Radiohead to release 2-track vinyl on Record Store Day – 2011
- Radiohead set to work on new material – 2008
- Radiohead rumoured to play at Zodiac re-opening – 2007
- Thom & Stanley: Question for the minister – 2006
- Arpeggi & Where Bluebirds Fly already online – 2005
- Ed: four weeks in the studio – 2005
- Salt Lake City Date? – 2003
- XFM: Two versions of ‘There There’ – 2003
