For most musicians the worlds of
classical and pop music move in different orbits, if not galaxies. But when he
sits down Tuesday at the Steinway piano in Kilbourn
Hall, Christopher O’Riley will bring these spheres
together.

O’Riley is best known as the host of From theTop(5 p.m. Sundays, WXXI FM 91.5). The
program, showcasing the best young musicians in the country, is the most
popular classical music program on the air. But, over the last two decades, O’Riley has also released a steady stream of recordings
featuring music by a variety of composers, from Beethoven to John Adams.

Lately
he’s specialized in breaking down barriers, recording True Love Waits and Hold Me to This, two highly regarded albums featuring
interpretations of the music of Radiohead. And in
April, when he releases Home to Oblivion,
he’ll pay tribute to arguably the greatest singer-songwriter of the last
decade, Elliott Smith.

“It was an epiphany, just like when I first
heard OK Computer,” O’Riley says. “I just started collecting everything I could
find of Radiohead. I was never disappointed. The same
thing happened with Elliott. I listened to Either/Or and spread out from there. I have 100 of his concerts on my iPod. He was an emotionally available performer, so I find
it inspiring to hear 20 different versions of ‘Speed Trials’ or ‘Between the
Bars.’ You hear 20 different points of view on the same song.”

O’Riley’s gorgeous arrangements of rock tunes are
in a class by themselves. Radiohead can sound like
Debussy and Scriabin; Elliott Smith can be
transformed into Chopin. O’Riley attributes this to
his classical background.

“In the same way jazz pianists would have a
particular physical relationship with the instrument and that would inform
their spontaneous improvisations on whatever they were playing,” he says. “I
like to think my relationship with the instrument has been shaped by physical
relations with the instrument on behalf of composers such as Shostakovich,
Rachmaninoff, or Liszt. My solutions to playing certain things on the
piano have to do with the tradition of people who made piano transcriptions or
arrangements of other people’s music or other types of music.”

In terms of quality, O’Riley
has no doubts about his new material. He believes Smith’s songwriting rivals
that of Cole Porter and George Gershwin.

“I really feel that his songs have a depth to
them and a staying power. I think he was a great poet, a wonderful musician,
and a fantastic songwriter. “

And,
O’Riley adds, a disarmingly fine pianist. When he was
first getting acquainted with Smith’s music, friends recommended a documentary,
Strange Parallel, in which Smith
plays part of a Rachmaninoff prelude.

“It isn’t even the slow part,” says O’Riley. “All you see him play is this fiendishly
difficult, zephyr-like middle section and he’s really nailing it.”

O’Riley says he’s not as much of a tourist in
the rock world as it might seem. He began playing piano at 4 and was in a rock
band at the age of 12. He played jazz fusion in high school and, by the time he
graduated, was playing jazz at a nightclub on weekends.

He
admired pianists like McCoy Tyner, Keith Jarrett, and Chick Corea,
but ultimately decided that “jazz playing wasn’t helping my Mozart,” he says.
“I didn’t want to keep both going, but I kept listening and had a respect for
the spontaneity and trust.”

Considering
his open-mindedness, it is not surprising that O’Riley
attended New England Conservatory of Music in Boston in the 1970s when third stream music
champion GuntherSchuller
was president.

“Gunther lives by
the Duke Ellington adage that there are only two kinds of music in the world:
good music and bad music,” O’Riley says. “I agree. I
present things that I believe in and expect the audience to judge not based on
genre prejudice or market forces but on the evidence of their own ears. It’s
important to get inside of the style and relate it to one’s experience and find
a way that informs the music in sort of a prismatic way.”

At
his Kilbourn concert O’Riley
will play a Shostakovich fugue, a host of Radiohead
tunes, and “Not Half Right,” a song Smith performed with his early band, Heatmiser.

“Shostakovich, Radiohead,
and Elliott have a certain commonality in terms of their sense of irony,” O’Riley says. “Shostakovich being the first composer in
history to master the art of irony in music, trying to get a message across
without treading on Stalinist toes; Radiohead having
lyrics gleaned from conversations overheard on a bus. And both Radiohead and Elliott have pretty songs undermined by
suicidal lyrics.”

The
forthcoming Smith tribute album features 18 tracks, including a haunting
rendition of “Everything Means Nothing to Me.” O’Riley
is not sure what’s next.

“The
only other artist I can find at this point who I think can stand a whole album homage is Nick Drake.”

Christopher
O’Rileyplays
in the Eastman School of Music’s Grand
Pianists series Tuesday, February 14, in Kilbourn
Hall, 26 Gibbs Street, at 8 p.m. $15 to $30 (discounts to UR ID holders).
Tickets are available at RPO Box Office (108 East Avenue), by phone (454-2100), on-line
(www.esm.rochester.edu/concerts), and at Wegmans
Video Departments.

This article appears in Feb 8-14, 2006.