Jonny Greenwood plays his own pieces and Reich's at Big Ears

Jonny Greenwood played two concerts at the Big Ears festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, this weekend, both at the Tennessee Theatre. On Saturday afternoon he played his own pieces with the Wordless Music Orchestra, and today Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint in the all-Reich concert that closed the festival. In one of his own, “Self Portrait with Seven Fingers”, for electric guitar, strings and electronics, the audience took part, and each press of a button on a web page on their phones set off a different sound.

The orchestra, playing as a string septet, opened with cues from his film scores mixed with pieces mostly by Iannis Xenakis before he came on with his guitar. Besides “Self Portrait” he played “Loop”, first heard in London last month, and the septet also played “Detuned Septet” from There Will Be Blood without him. Nonesuch billed the afternoon as the US premieres of some of his works.

His place in today's finale was announced in December. In the same concert Brad Lubman led Ensemble Signal in Radio Rewrite, Reich's 2012 piece built on “Jigsaw Falling into Place” and “Everything in Its Right Place”. Earlier in the day, at a talk at the Knoxville Museum of Art, Reich said he doesn't much care for live versions of Electric Counterpoint with many players on stage.

Greenwood at Big Ears