Radiohead, A Jazz Symphony

Following the RTÉ Concert Orchestra’s Irish premiere of Radiohead, A Jazz Symphony in 2023, this incredible reimagining of Radiohead as arranged for jazz soloists and orchestra returns in March 2025.

This Radiohead jazz creation was first conceived as a tribute album by the Noordpool Orchestra and its founder and leader Reinout Douma, who joins the RTÉ CO again to conduct this imaginative programme featuring ‘Paranoid Android’, ‘Nude’, ‘Weird Fishes’, ‘Karma Police’, ‘Exit Music’, ‘No Surprises’, ‘15 Step’, ‘Suite: Everything in Its Right Place – Pyramid Song’, ‘You’ and ‘Creep’. The evening also features bonus Radiohead/Thom Yorke tracks ‘The Eraser’, a minimalist masterpiece, and ‘Spectre’, an existential meditation.

Jazzenzo magazine writes of Radiohead, A Jazz Symphony: ‘Whether it’s the moving, and dramatically small “Exit Music” with fragile violin solo, or the unstoppable “You”, the characters of the various songs are meticulously analyzed and magnified, but not in an ironic way. The specific properties of the material are emphasized. Noordpool Orchestra, similar to the Metropole Orkest, shows what an arrangement can do with a composition.’

Taking full advantage of Radiohead’s already formatively experimental works, featuring 7/8 time signatures and cascading arpeggios, the RTÉ CO bring the arrangements to life; as Reinout stated in the Irish Times, “that was actually the idea: what can an orchestra do with these songs?”