How the Australian Chamber Orchestra came to release a vinyl record with Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood

Last week, the Australian Chamber Orchestra released their first vinyl record in 20 years, with a little help from Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood.

Water is the result of a collaboration between Greenwood and the ACO when he was Composer-In-Residence in Sydney back in 2013, and was inspired by British poet Phillip Larkin’s ‘Water’ from The Whitsun Weddings.

But the decision to release the track from the unlikely pairing on vinyl is a very conscious one, and one that sees the instrumental ensemble move to capture a more unorthodox audience.

TMN chatted to ACO Artistic Director and Leader Richard Tognetti to find out more about the project, and what other curious collaborations the orchestra has in store for us. 

What prompted the decision to release the track now?

Vinyl has been growing in popularity, and 2017 marks 20 years since the last Australian classical vinyl. It seemed an apt time to release a new LP. At the same time, we’d been looking to release Jonny’s piece for a while – and vinyl seemed the perfect opportunity.

What’s the significance of releasing the music on vinyl?

Vinyl affords us the opportunity to be bold and daring about what we put on each side. And we have chosen an outrageous combination of works that you would never consider pairing, unless it were on an LP: Jonny Greenwood’s Water and Mozart’s Eine kleine nachtmusik. So consider this a curated, deliberate juxtaposition.

Are there any further plans for the ACO to collaborate with other non-classica, alternative artists?

The ACO loves to explore collaborations of all sorts with artists from many genres; classical and beyond. We have just completed a hugely successful collaboration with film maker Jennifer Peedom - the documentary film Mountain - and we regularly collaborate with Brian Ritchie from The Violent Femmes and Jim Moginie from Midnight Oil with our ACO Underground program.

Earlier this year we toured nationally with Nonesuch folk artist Sam Amidon, last year we performed a cabaret program with Meow Meow and Barry Humphries in London and Edinburgh, and Tangelwood in the US. As for future plans – there is nothing we can announce publicly just yet but there is always something in the works…

Learn more about the collaboration with Jonny Greenwood in the video below.