Christopher O'Riley brings rock to piano

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By Charles Nunmaker

Every generation has a pianist who excels beyond the normal image of a classical pianist. Beethoven and Mozart are common names to everyone mainly because of their legendary musical pieces, but now modern musical pieces can be looked at as not just classical but also as mixtures of other music genres.

Christopher O'Riley is one of the pianists of our generation who has gone beyond classical music. O'Riley is famous around the world for his classical transcriptions of modern rock songs from bands like Nirvana and Radiohead. With this way of transcribing, O'Riley has collected a large fan base that is a mixture of both classical and rock genre followers.

"Basically, I started out transcribing pieces that weren't made for piano," said O'Riley. "For instance, they would be Stravinsky Orchestra pieces that I really liked, and since we don't have an orchestra, basically what I do is play them on piano. I would make piano versions of the stuff that I would really want to play."

"It was definitely my attention to make them sound classical. I mean anything can sound classical but the way I think of playing piano is just like how any jazz piano player would have in his or her way around the keyboard and just with the way their fingers move. My fingers have been moving to a lot of different styles on the keyboard, and then it forms kind of the way I explore different kinds of music.

"So that was another thing in the sense that they appeal to me with the songs I arrange and on the basis of what music I like. I like music that has not just one color, but other music that has interweaving voices, for instance Radiohead. I got into arranging because there was music out there I wanted to play, and if I wasn't going to play it myself, then it wasn't going to happen."

One of Christopher O'Riley's most famous songs are his piano cover of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" from one his two albums that covers Radiohead's music.

"I had been into Radiohead for a while, and it occurred to me that I could do a version of 'Paranoid Android' that was true to the way that I do all kinds of arrangements, but it's sort of one of those discovery moments where you decide how am I going to do Thom' [Yorke] screams, where he really isn't singing he's yelling. I found a way to make Thom's shouting and Johnny's guitar playing occupy this pianistic chord shape, and it's something that I found out when I was making my way through the piece. It's a hard piece to play, but it fell together so quickly and became so rich."

Christopher O'Riley is known for his Radiohead covers but he does not only cover them. He also covers songs by famous rock bands like R.E.M., Eliot Smith, Tori Amos, Pink Floyd, the Smiths, Portishead and others. Many of the covers by those bands can be heard on O'Riley's newest album called "Out Of My Hands".

"Out Of My Hands" is the first album O'Riley has done that is not a transcription album of one artist. The album features an amazing transcription of Nirvana's famous song "Heart Shaped Box," and even goes on to Pink Floyd's song "Us and Them".

"These are all songs and arrangements that I have been working on for a while. Some of the things are new, but a lot of these things have been pieces that I have been working on along the way for over the last five years. I thought it was a nice idea to have a lot of different bands represented, and the stuff has been around long enough that I would have really felt good about how the arrangements turned out. So, the idea of having different bands, you know like from Elliot Smith to Nirvana, is really amazing and it's a wonderful juxtaposition," stated O'Riley.

Christopher O'Riley will be performing at the Manship Theater on Oct. 23. This show will be a mixture of O'Riley transcriptions, plus his work in other classical pieces.

Originally Published: Issue 820 - October 21, 2009

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