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Home to Oblivion: An Elliott Smith Tribute
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Artist
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Christopher O'Riley, piano.
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Label
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World Village
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Format
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cutout CD
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Runtime/Release Date
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65'50/2006
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Label Number
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468056
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Daedalus Item Code
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76610
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This item is not available.
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Description
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Classical musician and public radio show host Christopher O’Riley has generated a surprising crossover buzz for his pianistic interpretations of rock songs by Radiohead and Nick Drake. Now, singer-songwriter Elliott Smith, who died in 2003 of an apparent suicide, is the latest to receive the O'Riley treatment. Heard on the Good Will Hunting soundtrack, Smith’s “Miss Misery”—typically intimate and melancholy—was nominated for an Academy Award, bringing him a modicum of mainstream notoriety. O'Riley says he was drawn to Smith's work because of the way Smith "inhabits a wide and deep world of lyrical expression" and the exceptional intimacy of his voice. O'Riley convincingly translates the haunting ambiguity of Smith's lyrics and music on 17 songs including "Oh Well, Okay," "Speed Trials," “Coast to Coast,” “Let’s Get Lost,” “Roman Candle,” “Cupid’s Trick,” “Christian Brothers,” “Everything Means Nothing to Me,” “Waltz #1,” and “Bye.” "O'Riley introduces a certain amount of complexity and technical finesse in his interpretive performances, but successfully manages to retain the essential characteristics of the originals, capturing most of their emotional core and translating them into a new medium…. A fine effort—sonically interesting, emotionally moving, and technically accomplished."—Audiophile Audition “Understated and relaxed.”—All Music Guide “What O’Riley is after above all is discovery, and the intensely pedaled opening to this performance of piano compositions, perhaps transcriptions or piano equivalents of orchestrations, does stir attention. The musical language is of the earliest 20th-century; for all that there are lots of echoes of earlier composers of the 19th century piano repertoire, which is really the precedent for the present endeavour.”—Pop Matters
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