Q&A: Classical Pianist Christopher O'Riley

07/11/2005 2:42 PM, AP
Claudia La Rocco

Between hosting the popular radio show From the Top, performing around the world and preparing to record an Elliott Smith album, classical pianist Christopher O'Riley, 49, has lots on his plate.

Then there's his little obsession with Radiohead, which has resulted in two albums of reinterpretations — 2003's "True Love Waits" and the new "hold me to this."

In between sound and light checks for an evening show at Joe's Pub, O'Riley — in an immaculate black suit, cell phone in hand — spared a few minutes for The Associated Press.

AP: I hear you're an I-Pod Shuffle man.

O'Riley: I haven't read a book in about a year because I'm constantly going back and forth. I've got complete works of Radiohead and 20 concerts of theirs, 60 Elliott Smith concerts, Cocteau Twins, Guided by Voices, Nine Inch Nails, Tori Amos, the Smiths, Shostakovich and Bach. Right now, I've got about 80 songs, or versions of songs, that I'm thinking of doing.

AP: Do you see more Radiohead albums in your future?

O'Riley: No. I think two is enough.

AP: What makes Radiohead so compelling for you?

O'Riley: Any music that I play has to have a compelling harmony; the chords, the way that the song goes, a change of harmony that's just spine-tingling. That's always been compelling about Radiohead and also about Maurice Ravel or Igor Stravinsky. Probably more important than that is texture. In most pop music you have a very vertical structure, you're just chunking away on chords and it's very much up and down. With Radiohead, most of the time you have all five members contributing a particular motif or idea, and there is a harmonic structure but more importantly there's an interweaving of voices. That gives me a way into the song, a way of coming up with a texture unique to a particular song.

AP: Was there a tension between wanting to remain faithful to the originals and wanting your interpretations to be their own entities?

O'Riley: I've only changed things when I really felt like there was something about the way the guitar sounded that needed more than the prevailing notes themselves. Or for instance, in "Like Spinning Plates," I used the reharmonizing of the vocal line in the way that Thelonious Monk used to do it — what people would call wrong note playing. What he was trying to do was imitate the sound of the saxophone. It wasn't wrong notes so much as between the cracks — that gave the plangency of the sax, or the voice, in this case.

AP: You discovered Radiohead with "OK Computer," right?

O'Riley: Right. It was basically critical mass, reading about it and being dumbfounded at the incredible interest and passion and enthusiasm with which the record was received. I didn't know anything about Radiohead. I heard it and fell in love. I've had very few of those kinds of epiphanies. Being a sort of snobby classical music listener, you buy a Mahler symphony on CD, there aren't any weak tracks. That can't be said for 80 percent of the pop music that's out.

AP: Eighty might be conservative.

O'Riley: Yeah. I don't want to have to fast-forward through stuff. With Radiohead, all the B sides are great, all the unreleased tracks — we're ravenous, always downloading, always looking for their new thing. It's just a phenomenal body of work.

AP: Greatest band in the world?

O'Riley: Absolutely. Hearing Elliott Smith's music for the first time was really the only similar experience I've had of hearing someone and then immediately having to have every note that he sang or wrote.

AP: From the Top is all about encouraging younger performers. What do you make of the "graying" of American audiences. Is it inevitable?

O'Riley: No. I think there have been several missteps along the way. The reason you don't hear classical music a lot in the air these days is mostly the fault of public radio stations. You have on the one hand public radio stations who decide they have to represent all of their constituencies, so unless you tune in on Tuesdays between 3:45 and 5 o'clock, you're not going to hear classical music. Or they've given in to marketing and aren't willing to play anything difficult or longer than 4 minutes during drive time. If I was trying to turn someone on to classical music the last thing I would do is turn on public radio — Lehar overtures and Souza marches, Vivaldi ad nauseam. On From the Top, we're playing whatever the kids want to play, basically. I think what we're doing is much more sincere and much more to the point than dressing up a conductor in a Superman outfit and having him do John Williams scores. A poor kid shows up to see a Mahler symphony the next week and thinks, where's superman?

AP: Did that happen?

O'Riley: Yup. Cincinnati. The conductor was flown in from the wings. He's now the conductor of the Boston Pops. It was for a kids concert.

AP: Do you see your Radiohead albums as experiments in audience outreach?

O'Riley: Yeah, I do. I'll get e-mails from somebody saying, I really love your Radiohead record, I see you're playing a Mozart concerto in San Diego, I've been meaning to give him a try. If classical music can give you the same charge as being in a mosh pit, then that's great music.

AP: On a scale of one to 10, how would you rate yourself as a Radiohead fanatic?

O'Riley: 10.

AP: You met Thom Yorke and Colin Greenwood for the first time a couple of years ago, right?

O'Riley: Backstage at Madison Square Garden, just after "True Love Waits" came out. ... I shook (Greenwood's) hand and he said, "We're so excited about what you've been doing." I thought that was better than a restraining order.

AP: Do you see yourself as an obsessive fan?

O'Riley: The obsessive fan thing is what makes me covetous of their music to the point of wanting to play it — introducing people to music that they may not have known and having them love it is quite gratifying. That's actually what I've been doing in classical music all along.

AP: What draws you to the fringes?

O'Riley: I've always been that way. Even when I was in sixth grade and starting to get into pop music, I was always listening to the underground station in Chicago. Led Zeppelin was just more interesting than — I couldn't even tell you who was popular then. I think The Association or something.

AP: Was classical music always what you were going to do?

O'Riley: Oh yeah, always. Realizing I was never going to be a popular kid playing Bach and Mozart, I did start a rock band when I was in sixth grade. ... After that I had a fusion band for a while, and we did a lot of original material. Some of it was pretty lame but a lot of it was good stuff. My family moved to Pittsburgh and I ended up playing professionally at a jazz club toward the end of high school. So when I went to the New England Conservatory, it was as a classical musician, but also with an ear toward continuing that, and then I decided cold turkey to continue with classical music.

AP: You don't compose, correct?

O'Riley: I don't. It's something that you either have the bug to do or you don't. I've always been really turned on by, OK, there's a song I want to play, I'll find a way to do it. With the confidence of playing more and more of them, I'm putting more and more of myself in them, but I still don't sit down and say, gee, here's this tune I want to write.

AP: What's your take on the controversy over the Internet's role in the music industry?

O'Riley: I'm on a Radiohead fan site constantly, ateaseweb.com. They'll say, I feel so guilty, I'm downloading your record right now. I'll say, well, the people who are objecting to downloading are the people who are putting two decent tracks on a record, and are afraid that the shit's gonna stink when people hear the whole thing. I'm not worried that people are going to hear my record and not want to buy it. You know, I own every single Radiohead ever did, and it's not for lack of having downloaded all of them at various times in various forms.

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On the Net:

Christopher O'Riley: www.christopheroriley.com