Artist: Portland Cello Project

This Saturday, May 5 , the Portland Cello Project teams up with Portland School of Rock students to form a giant behemoth called Portlandportland Rockproject Celloschool . Okay, I just made that up, but the two groups are performing a special show together at the Aladdin Theater that they're calling "Beck, Brubeck and Bach"; the program naturally will comprise pieces by those three composers. (Somewhere, Burt Bacharach is taking a long hard look in the mirror.) Actually, this is precisely why Portland Cello Project is so great: They've found the [...]

A new video for Portland Cello Project with Patti King playing "Please Leave a Light on When You Go" from Beck Hansen's Song Reader (available now) Shot at Whitaker Ponds, in Portland, Oregon.

The Portland Cello Project , the six-year-old string ensemble that has covered the likes of Radiohead, Justin Timberlake, Kanye West, Rihanna and even Pantera, has expanded its palette to tackle the latest music from Beck. The 42-year-old songwriter, of course, released his latest effort, "Beck Hansen's Song Reader," as a book of sheet music. And the string-wielding group enlisted the help of vocalists such as Jolie Holland, Chanticleer and Patti King (of Radiation City) to cover Beck's 20-song excursion, which has been released digitially . The bleak weather the group endured for the video shoot at [...]

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Last month Beck released his much talked about Song Reader  - an album that came in book form and featured twenty songs as sheet music. Over the last few months lots of musical folk have been uploading their covers/interpretations of songs from the album - some are terrible, some are delightfully peculiar and loads of them are a little bit 'too safe' and slapdash - but there are a few jewels to be found. Here's S lacker Shack 's [...]

photo: Tarina Westlund The Portland Cello Project are quick to release an album featuring all 20 songs from Beck 's sheet music project Song Reader . It took them only three days. A wealth of guest singers takes care of the vocals. The album is available from iTunes and Amazon . » portlandcelloproject.com » beck.com

• portlandcelloproject - Portland Cello Project Play Beck Hansen's Song Reader

If you were worried that your shameful sight-reading skills would mean you'd never get to properly hear Beck 's new "album," the McSweeney's-published Song Reader , a collection of sheet music that only existed on the printed page—worry no more. The Portland Cello Project have recorded the collection in full, committing it to tape at Type Foundry Studio in a few short days following their recent December concerts, which saw them performing these new Beck compositions for a live audience. There are numerous guests on the record as well, including Jolie Holland, Lizzy Ellison [...]

photo from bobbywomack.com Some tough news to start off the year -- soul great Bobby Womack 's doctor has confirmed that he is suffering from symptoms of Alzheimer's. Womack has been very musically active in the last few years, releasing his album The Bravest Man in the Universe on XL last year, and collaborating with Gorillaz on 20102s Plastic Beach and 20112s The Fall . The legendary singer has revealed his frustrations with forgetting songs he's written and forgetting names of his collaborators. [...]

• DJ Shadow - All Basses Covered (The Infamous South Beach Set, December 2012)

Portland Cello Project' s celebrated history book of artfully crafted cover songs already includes Radiohead’s “Exit Music (For A Film)” and The Throne’s “HAM ". Now, they're back with a full interpretation of Beck’s Song Reader , which you can stream in full at NPR.org . Recorded in three different studios across Portland over a matter of three days, PCP’s version of the 20-track collection features the group’s renowned orchestral arrangements overlaid with special guest vocals and instrumentation provided by various artists from the area, including The Decemberists' Nate Querry. PCP join [...]

Closing out the night here with some beautiful string music from Portland's Cello Project

PORTLAND CELLO PROJECT ( Aladdin Theater , 3017 SE Milwaukie) The hometown honeys in the Portland Cello Project bring you the usual bombast of their annual holiday show—now with extra Beck! They'll be playing songs from his new sheet-music-only release Song Reader , so this might be your only chance to hear that new album out loud—unless you're really good at reading sheet music. COURTNEY FERGUSON I'VE GOT A HOLE IN MY SOUL: DJ BEYONDADOUBT, DJ PRIMO ( Holocene , 1001 [...]

Next month Beck releases his new collection of music—it's not an album, it's a songbook published by McSweeney's called Song Reader . Rather than record these new compositions, Beck is sending them out into the world as sheet music, a callback to the days before recorded music became widespread, and songs were passed along as printed pieces of paper. But if your sightreading skills are a little rusty, and that piano in your parlor woefully out of tune, Portland Cello Project have offered their take on one of Beck's new songs, with a [...]

Adam Shearer has been a busy man over the past five years. He's released La Lamentor and Breaks In The Sun. He's also a member of both the Portland Cello Project and Alialujah Choir. We recently spoke with Adam Shearer about his newest album Los Processaur, being best friends, and crab fishing. [...]

The Portland Cello Project's OK Computer show was fantastic , and at long last, here's one of the highlights: "Exit Music (For a Film)," in which the PCP was accompanied by Weinland's Adam Shearer, wind quintet City of Tomorrow, and the (I do not like typing this name, but okay) Disassemble the Widget men's chorus. This comes via Consequence of Sound , which notes that this video's being released as "an early gift to Thom Yorke and Yo-Yo Ma, who both celebrate birthdays on Sunday" but that "the entire performance will be released shortly." This is [...]

The Portland Cello Project has built a career on adding an orchestral spin to Top 40 tunes, most notably on their latest full-length, Homage (which featured remakes of Kanye West and Jay-Z's "H.A.M." and Outkast's "Hey Ya"). But their latest endeavor is something of such monumental importance to the outfit that artistic director Douglas Jenkins originally said they'd never score because the "originals were perfect enough soundscapes as they are": Radiohead' s seminal 1997 album OK Computer . But after recruiting collaborators in lead vocalist Adam Shearer [...]

So you guys recorded that , right? And you're going to release it? So that I can buy it? Or, barring that, you're just going to get everybody together again—the City of Tomorrow wind quintet, the Disassemble the Widget men's chorus, that dude from Weinland who fucking killed "Exit Music (For a Film)," the drummer named "Nightdawg"—and perform it a few more times so that tonight's sold-out, repeatedly standing-ovating crowd at the Aladdin isn't the only group of Portlanders who get to witness it, right? Because—and this from someone who loves OK Computer to [...]

THE WE SHARED MILK, CHARTS, TALKATIVE, OLD AGE, OPERATION MISSION, LOG ACROSS THE WASHER ( Mississippi Studios , 3939 N Mississippi) Read our article on the We Shared Milk . PORTLAND CELLO PROJECT: RADIOHEAD'S OK COMPUTER ( Aladdin Theater , 3017 SE Milwaukie) This is inarguable: Radiohead's OK Computer is one of the world's perfect albums. And this: The Portland Cello Project is always [...]

Hey, what's that up there? Oh, no big deal. It's only MY FAVORITE ALBUM OF ALL TIME. Wait, what? The excellent Portland Cello Project is performing OK Computer in its entirety this weekend? I should go to that! OH WAIT, I ALREADY AM. Because not only will the Portland Cello Project be accompanied by wind quintet City of Tomorrow and a men's choir, but Weinland's Adam Shearer is going to sing "Exit Music (For a Film)," and... yeah. It's going to be good. (The official PR says there'll also be some "contrasting and complementary classical music," [...]

"This next song is by one of the greatest modern composers, Kanye West." The first time Douglas Jenkins says this on stage during a Portland Cello Project performance, there is usually a ripple of quiet, skeptical laughter from the crowd. But after hearing the Cello Project perform  "All of the Lights", no skeptics remain. [...]

As great as OK Computer is, can we all agree that this album cover is TERRIBLE? Hot on the heels of topping Pitchfork's controversial People's List , Radiohead 's 1997 classic—yes, it really is a classic—album OK Computer is going to be completely reinvented right here in Portland. The Portland Cello Project are performing the album in full, using their patented cello technology to reinterpret Radiohead's dystopian opus. It wasn't something that PCP artistic director Douglas Jenkins ever wanted to do; he once said [...]