The following are additional excerpts from my interview with pianist Christopher O’Riley, who performs Saturday and Sunday at Riverside Municipal Auditorium.
Q: Regarding your recent CDs of Nick Drake, Elliott Smith and Radiohead, were you pleasantly surprised by the positive critical response they received from jazz and rock writers? A four star review in Rolling Stone for the first Radiohead CD was impressive.
A: It’s been a mixed bag. One camp doesn’t know what to think of the other. It’s always gratifying for me to read somebody who obviously got what I did and writes well about it.
Q: Which of the three artists’ transcriptions were the most challenging?
A: I never approach things in terms of projects. It’s always the song. I’ve been doing Nick Drake arrangements for as long as Radiohead. They’re just different songs and different ways in. I would never callously say, ‘I’m going to do Radiohead.’ It’s really been an accumulative process. After I did the first songs on NPR, Sony picked it up and by the time the recording came around, I’d already done six more because it was driven by the song. I was also doing a song here and there by other bands. Then it became apparent the next records would be Elliott Smith and Nick Drake. Every song has its own difficulties. Some make sense right away; some take a couple drafts to really make sense, others become something completely different that the song they started out with. It’s also a matter of which song you’re ready to tackle now. Is it one of the simpler ones you have a textural idea about? Is it one of the more difficult ones that are going to encompass a real concentration of effort? Actually, I’m still doing Radiohead songs since they have a new record out.
Q: How often do you tape the “From the Top” program for National Public Radio?
A: We actually tape all over the country. It’s more a matter of where and when we’re invited. Often it’s at the home of one of our 250 stations across the country. We did a show (recently) in Rochester, N.Y…we do 26 new episodes a year. Of that is 20 live tapings – three or four may take place in our broadcast home of Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.
Q: What do you enjoy most about hosting it? Is it seeing the burgeoning young classical music talent and giving them a national outlet to shine?
A: They shine very well and we’re happy to give them the platform. I think what I find most valuable in our young guests is their ability to not only play well, but let the listening public know that musicians are just like normal people and classical music is not an indispensable part of their lives, but just part of their lives. I think many people have been driven away from the prospect of listening to classical music because they have this exclusivist idea about it. If you don’t know all the names and dates and places and if you god forbid clap in the wrong place, we don’t want you around. That’s left a lot of people out in the cold and leaves the repertoire under appreciated. What better than to have these young kids who are also great emissaries to their peers? Having our kids come into the schools as they often do, are playing for kids their own age who can look at them and say, ‘these kids have obviously worked really hard at this. It gives me the idea that anything I work hard at, I can be good at.’ It’s really exhilating to see that and feel that between performer and audience. These kids aren’t just the end of “American Idol” or something, they’re not the top of the crop, they’re from the heart. They not only communicate the music but a general sense of hope which I think is the most rewarding thing.
Q: Turning to some background, you played keyboards in rock and fusion bands in high school, right?
A: Yes. All the rock music that involved keyboards at the time is nothing I’m terribly proud of now [laughs]. It always had a classical tinge – Emerson Lake & Palmer and there was sort of a baroque thing to The Doors.
Q: What about early musical influences?
A: Keith Emerson, then it was into jazz rock: Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea, McCoy Tyner.
Q: What prompted the move to classical?
A: I’d been doing it all along, just on the side doing bands here and there. When I was finishing high school in Pittsburgh, I was playing jazz professionally. At that point, as I entered New England Conservatory, because they had a good jazz department as well a wonderful classical piano department. Once I got to New England, I realized my idea of jazz was based on avant garde. All the people I admired had strong roots in jazz history…I wasn’t willing to start over and reinvent the wheel. On the other side of it, I felt the body English of my jazz playing was not contributing to the clarity and pristine quality needed in the classical realm. So I decided to follow classical entirely and not the other.
Q: I noticed on your web site that you’ve been doing new arrangements of artists like Cocteau Twins, Rickie Lee Jones, Tori Amos and Guided by Voices.
A: I’m sure the next album will be a compilation of all those new songs by various artists. I’m hoping to get these new Radiohead arrangements recorded. I would hope that would involve juxtaposing (Dmitri) Shostakovich and Radiohead. But there’s no real plan.
