Throughout history, rock ‘n’ roll and classical
music have been locked in an endless war of the genres. Not so for
Christopher O’Riley, classical pianist and host of Public
Radio International’s “From The Top” radio
show.
The musician will premiere his tribute to American
singer-songwriter Elliott Smith tonight in a UCLA Live concert at
Royce Hall. The concert, which will also feature his renditions of
the music of the British rock band Radiohead, will be
O’Riley’s first performance dedicated to Smith.
O’Riley made headlines in 2003, when he released
“True Love Waits,” a collection of his solo piano
arrangements of Radiohead favorites. Though he was not the first to
adapt Radiohead to piano ““ jazz pianist Brad Mehldau included
a version of the epic “Paranoid Android” on his 2002
album “Largo” ““ O’Riley’s disc-long
project was the most ambitious. Impressively, it garnered four
stars from Rolling Stone in an issue that handed the same score to
Radiohead’s new release, “Hail To The Thief.”
O’Riley, a self-described “voracious” Radiohead
fan, followed up the collection with this year’s “Hold
Me To This.”
“It was just that there was more material. By the time the
first record came out, I’m sure I had half of a new record
ready to go,” said O’Riley, who conducted an exhaustive
search for rare songs and alternate versions before choosing which
to perform.
The culmination of the pianist’s efforts was a volume of
his arrangements created with art director Stephen Bryam, detailing
his versions of 30 Radiohead songs. With that project finished, he
has since turned his efforts to another pop luminary: Elliott
Smith, the musician behind the Oscar-nominated “Miss
Misery.”
O’Riley’s first encounter with Smith was hearing the
news of his apparent suicide in October 2003. A friend introduced
him to Smith’s album “Either/Or,” which quickly
developed into a new obsession.
“I went through all the albums and then started searching
much in the same way I was doing with Radiohead, just voraciously,
and so now there are 60 Elliott Smith concerts on my iPod,”
O’Riley said.
Smith allowed fans to record his shows, and a trading forum and
database of his concerts exists on his fan-run official site,
Sweetadeline.net. The recordings serve as a document of
Smith’s never-identical performances; unlike the technically
proficient Radiohead, Smith was notorious for cutting off songs in
the middle in order to try something new.
“Every time that he did a song live, it was not only
different from the studio version, they were different from each
other to an enormous and alarming degree,” said
O’Riley. “That’s because he was so completely
emotionally available and honest in all of his
performances.”
The surfeit of versions has given O’Riley a vast array of
ideas to distill for each song. “Pretty Mary K,” for
example, was first recorded as a haunting acoustic song during the
“Either/Or” sessions before reemerging on “Figure
8″ with drastically different instrumentation and lyrics,
while a third version was released as a B-side. A live staple like
“Clementine” has both solo acoustic and full-band
electric versions from Smith’s 2000 tour alone, in addition
to the expertly layered studio version.
“With each ensuing performance of “˜True Love’
or “˜Between The Bars,’ you have a different facet.
You’re getting another angle and that reveals another
character you hadn’t noticed before,” said
O’Riley.
Even the sheer amount of songs is numerous; as with Radiohead,
Smith has a daunting catalog of obscure and unreleased material in
addition to his six studio albums and three with the Portland band
Heatmiser. O’Riley has taken to playing Heatmiser’s
“Not Half Right” in his concerts, alongside Radiohead,
and preludes and fugues by Shostakovich. His diverse performances
reflect his musical upbringing, when classical training shared time
with classic rock.
“I listened to Iron Butterfly and the Doors and Santana
and we had a band that was doing that,” said O’Riley.
“Later on in high school we had a band doing sort of original
Mahavishnu Orchestra type stuff, and then I was into hardcore
jazz.”
Eventually classical won out, and O’Riley devoted himself
to the works of composers such as Beethoven and Stravinsky. In
2000, he helped start “From The Top” with the intention
of returning to his varied musical background. When classical radio
refused to play even a minute of non-classical music, he began work
on his classical arrangements of Radiohead and snuck them onto the
show. The performances fit seamlessly, and O’Riley soon
received e-mails asking where more music by “Mr. Head”
could be found. Radiohead had enabled him to fuse rock and
classical, though to the pianist, the limitations of genre
boundaries are ultimately less important than developing the
communicative power of his instrument. In this respect, the songs
of Elliott Smith speak as loudly as anyone.
“You’re trying to make a human voice out of the
keyboard. There are more inspiring ways of trying to achieve it
than others, and having Elliott as a template makes his a very
inspiring body of work to work on,” said O’Riley.