New Music: The Wordless Music Orchestra: "Popcorn Superhet Receiver" (composed by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood)
In 2005, Radiohead multi-instrumentalist and There Will Be Blood scorer Jonny Greenwood composed the 18-minute orchestral piece Popcorn Superhet Receiver as a commission for the BBC. The BBC Concert Orchestra premiered the work that April, and Pitchfork's Dave Maher described it as, like a lot of Radiohead stuff, "both pretty and a little creepy." In a recent performance recorded live at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in New York, Brad Lubman conducts the Wordless Music Orchestra for the U.S. debut of Popcorn Superhet Receiver. Lubman has worked with musical icons from Pierre Boulez and Steve Reich to Elvis Costello and John Zorn, while Wordless Music is, as its website puts it, "devoted to the idea that the sound worlds of classical and contemporary instrumental music-- in genres such as indie rock, free jazz, and electronic music-- share more in common than conventional thinking might suggest." Sounds like a good fit.
A recording of the performance is streaming over at WNYC's website. As a bit of a classical ignoramus, I don't have much to say about the piece, except: It is pretty. And a little creepy. Should I mention Radiohead again?
[There Will Be Blood OST is out now on Nonesuch]