Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off” is a masterclass in earworm pop music. Like most infectiously catchy pop tunes, the song hinges on a simple, repetitive melody. In reaching mass audiences, reflecting a universal mood is more important than crafting complexity.
And given the video’s 600 million views on YouTube, “Shake it Off’ has done well for itself.
For Diane Chaplin who plays cello (of course) in Portland Cello Project, the song might be a perfect choice for the group’s reinterpretation. “Shake it Off” is ubiquitous — even people who avoid top 40 hits will recognize the opening bars, as will be the case when they play it at Vega tonight (RSVP).
Nevermind the song’s simplicity, which often hurts covers played on strings, instruments that shine best in complex, interwoven arrangements. The point, Chaplin says, is that it’s fun.
“The point of music, across the spectrum, is to bring joy to people,” she says. “Have people enjoy what they’re listening to. I think it’s super fun to play the pop music. It’s not super technically challenging, but that’s not what I’m looking for in music. I’m looking for an experience of energy and fun.”
Chaplin has been playing in Portland Cello Project for four of the group’s eight years. They’ve done everything from Kanye West covers to entire Pantera albums, as well as classical arrangements and original scores.
Earlier this year, the group released to e.s., a tribute to Elliott Smith conceived in 2012 for the tenth anniversary of the singer-songwriter’s death. The album features six covers of unreleased Elliott Smith songs and six originals written by six different composers. Each original composition is inspired by a Smith song.
Portland Cello Project strikes in the exact center of the reasons-for-cover-songs Venn diagram. Chaplin says they are equally invested in reinterpretation and preservation. Rework “Shake it Off” as something new and fun for audiences, but also use a familiar song as an entry point to insert cello into a pop music consciousness.
And it works on some level. A video from Portland’s Aladdin Theater shows Portland Cello Project performing “Shake it Off,” on which Chaplin plays lead. Laughter and applause erupt after the first few melodic notes are drawn from her cello.
Before the group’s show tonight, we talked with Chaplin about the nature of reinterpretation, the difference between playing chamber music and pop music and why there probably could never be a Portland Viola Project. Read the whole Q&A below.
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Hear Nebraska: You have experience playing in chamber groups and more traditional kind of ensembles. How is Portland Cello Project different for you?
Diane Chaplin: I really think of Portland Cello Project as a combination between a rock band and a chamber group. We interact like chamber musicians, playing off of each other, playing to each other, doing balancing things. People who have solos come out a little more. All those kinds of things you would see in a chamber music experience.
The difference is that we’re not playing standard chamber music repertoire. We’re playing our own arrangements of contemporary music.
HN: Is this your first experience in a pop-oriented band?
DC: I have played in bands, but I prefer playing with all cellos rather than being the cello in a rock band.
Skip vonKuske, for instance, what he does is play with bands. That’s his whole career, playing with a variety of different bands and touring with them. He plays with Vagabond Opera, Groovy Wallpaper and Pink Martini.
Our drummer has played with some famous bands, too.
HN: You prefer playing with all cellos to a rock band, why is that?
DC: I like the camaraderie, I like the sound. I like being on a cello team. We were talking about this the other day, violinists don’t get together and play in a group. It’s not as appealing. The sound isn’t as appealing from a bunch of violins. Cellists get together all the time and play cello trios or cello quartets. I play cello trios for friends. There’s a cello mentality there.
HN: Do you think Portland Cello Project could exist as Portland Viola Project, for instance?
DC: No [laughs]. The thing about the cello, I hate to say a hackneyed quote, but it’s the closest to the human voice. That’s why a bunch of cellos work together, especially when we’re doing covers of pop songs, hip-hop songs. You can approximate the intonation, the pitch of the human voice.
That’s one thing that makes covers sound really good. The other thing is cellos play super high, but they can also play low. We can cover most of the range of violin and bass. That’s why it’s so successful.
HN: So as far as covers go, it sounds like you’re equally interested in representing a familiar piece and reinterpreting it.
DC: Exactly. We try to stay current. We always have something very current. We’ll be playing Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Adele. We have Jay-Z, a whole range of stuff. Led Zeppelin. Then we have jazz stuff. Older classics and stuff from the last ten years.
HN: And right now you’re touring for the Elliott Smith album, right?
DC: Right. Our most recent recording is a tribute to him. Of course, he died in 2003. This came about as people were contemplating the tenth anniversary of his death in 2013. We started thinking about it then, getting it all arranged.
HN: How do you choose what deserves to be covered and how does his work fit into that?
DC: There are a couple ways. We started covering Elliott Smith in the first place because we’re very good friends with Larry Crane, his archivist. He owns Jackpot Recording Studios in Portland. He said he has all these recordings that were never released. He said that if we wanted to listen to some of them and cover them, he thought it would be a really nice acknowledgement.
So that was the first thing we did, we covered a song no one had done called “Taking the Fall.” It has a darkness about it that sounded really great on the cellos. You know Elliott Smith was troubled, a lot of his music is very dark and very introspective. There’s something about the mellow sound of the cello that I feel really captures that spirit.
We covered six of them, but we listened to them all to find what was going to translate best to the cello. We also want to find stuff that is complicated enough that we can divide it out between five cellos.
HN: And what about the six original scores on the record?
DC: Those are things we commissioned from six composers. Some of them were classical composers, some were rock band composers like Rachel Grimes from Rachel’s.
HN: Is there a difference for you between playing an original score and a cover?
DC: The original score tends to be more like classical music. There’s one that we play a lot by Peter Broderick. It’s kind of nostalgic, almost country-western waltz. It’s about the most pop of them. Some of the others are straight, hardcore classical music. We haven’t been playing those as much.
HN: You sort of hint at it, but I think pop music is necessarily less challenging than, for instance, classical music. How do you keep it interesting?
DC: As you know, I’ve played a lot of classical stuff. String quartets, stuff like that. The most recent video we released was Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off” and I play lead on that. Audiences love it, we play it with a bit of irony. It’s super fun to play, but it’s not as serious of a work of art.
I play lead on it and when the video came out, there’s that three-note melody, and one of my chamber music friends on Facebook posted an obnoxious comment that said “I hope you’re not reduced to playing repetitive three-note melodies now.”
I deleted that comment. I thought it misses the point of music. The point of music, across the spectrum, is to bring joy to people. Have people enjoy what they’re listening to. I think it’s super fun to play the pop music. It’s not super technically challenging, but that’s not what I’m looking for in music.
I’m looking for an experience of energy and fun.
HN: When an audience sees a song they recognize like “Shake it Off” on an instrument they’re not used to seeing, like a cello, what do you think that does?
DC: I think the audience thinks it’s fun. Every time we play it, people are coming up to us and saying it’s their very favorite song.
HN: For you personally, or you as a group, are you more interested in reinterpretation or preserving and inserting your instrument into pop-music consciousness?
DC: I don’t think I could say either-or. We’re interested in it all. We’re interested in exposing people to the sound of cellos, to the idea of cellos. We’re interested in surprising them with what we do. Maybe because we play a heavy metal cover and they don’t expect cellos to play that. If they’re an audience that really wants to hear heavy metal, then we play a Bach and it’s a different kind of vibe because those are not people who would ever go to a classical concert. They hear something like that that’s a wonderful contrast to a hip-hop song.
It’s like eating a different course. You eat a salad and it’s refreshing next to a main course. We think of a show like a meal with a lot of courses.
HN: It seems like heavy metal might be more intricate than a three-chord pop rock song. Are there genres that are more technically challenging for you?
DC: We choose our songs very carefully. In 2012 for the 20th anniversary of Pantera’s Vulgar Display of Power, we did that whole album in order for 500 fans who were yelling all the lyrics. It was one of the most fun things we’ve done.
It sounded amazing on cellos. I’m not particularly a fan of heavy metal, but I loved how it sounded.
HN: It reminds me of Apocalyptica, who plays heavy metal cello music.
DC: Apocalyptica was totally trail blazers playing metal on cellos. We don’t play their music, because they’re doing it. We try to do things that other people aren’t doing. Sometimes we choose stuff that lots of people aren’t already covering.
I know everyone is covering the Taylor Swift song, but we started doing it right when it came out, so it felt new to us.