Perhaps best known for the NPR series From The Top, musician Christopher O’Riley is far more in-tune with music than most of the world. Not only does he host and mentor young musicians, O’Riley also transcribes and arranges songs by Radiohead, Arcade Fire and more for the piano and, more recently, the cello. O’Riley has just released a new album with cellist Matt Haimovitz, Shuffle.Play.Listen. (Oxingale), a tribute to contemporary composers and some of the most modern musicians. Owing to his virtuosic abilities and interesting outlook, we invited O’Riley to guest edit magnetmagazine.com this week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.
O’Riley: Even though I took the misinformed rumour of a six-hour director’s cut of The Tree Of Life being released on DVD in gleeful anticipation, the fact of its existing now on DVD, a medium that allows sampling and pausing for reflection midfilm such a work of visual and intellectual rigor and fantasy, is reason enough for celebration. I’m a lover of films that celebrate the Gesamtkunstwerk, the melding of all great art into one, as in a Wagner opera in their own saturation of the musical, narrative, visual opulence and editorial virtuosity, not to mention acting. The last film to fill that bill for me was Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell And The Butterfly. The Tree Of Life left me awestruck.
Video after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXRYA1dxP_0
