Greenwood: Popcorn Superhet Received
(February 2008)
Best-known as indie rock band Radiohead’s lead guitarist, Johnny Greenwood [Faber Music, Ltd] has proven his hand at composition with his eighteen-minute piece for string orchestra, Popcorn Superhet Receiver, which received its U.S. premiere in New York City on January 16-17 as part of the Wordless Music Series. Commissioned by the BBC Orchestra and premiered in 2005, the work uses a live string orchestra to recreate the effects of white noise as inspired by shortwave radio.
“Greenwood is better understood as a composer who has crossed over into rock… [He] hardly comes off as a neophyte; the piece possesses a solid architectural shape, with slow-moving, darkly meditative passages framing a kinetic, rock-tinged midsection.”
The New Yorker
The New York Times proclaimed Popcorn Superhet Receiver “by far the most viscerally exciting and intellectually engaging piece [on the program]… And where pure white noise is an undifferentiated hiss, Mr. Greenwood’s score, even at its most densely atonal, has a consistently alluring shimmer and embraces everything from lush vibrato, glissandos and sudden dynamic shifts to slowly rising chromatic themes.”
“Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood [is] the world's first rock star to forge a non-embarrassing side career in classical music. … [Popcorn Superhet Receiver] makes for a jarring listen… The Wordless Orchestra gave it an impressive read-through, decorating the pretty sections with stabs of ear-bending discord.”
New York Magazine
Popcorn Superhet Receiver is also heard as the original soundtrack to Oscar-winning film There Will Be Blood, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
> Further information on Work: Popcorn Superhet Receiver
Photo: Jason Evans
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